Have you ever felt that your faith is just not up to snuff? I have questioned and critiqued my own faith and compared it to others and have often found myself lacking. I have allowed lies and misperceptions to derail me. I have felt unworthy of God’s amazing grace.
I know in my heart that Jesus loves us right where we are at.He doesn’t critique or compare us. He loves us all the same, in spite of and because of our imperfections.
It has been hard for me to fathom that I could have remarkable faith. How could I, an ordinary woman, have remarkable faith? I need to remind myself that I am not lacking or a disappointment to God and neither are you! I think we all struggle with comparison and feeling less than. Jesus never sees us that way. He created us in His image and He loves us more than we can imagine.
I recently had the pleasure of being on the launch team for Shauna Letellier and her inspirational book “Remarkable Faith” and I was so blessed by it! This is the first book written and published by Shauna and I think she did an amazing job! I was drawn in by her writing style and her interweaving of fiction and nonfiction.
Shauna Letellier’s book “Remarkable Faith” is an outstanding collection of eight unlikely people from the Bible that showed remarkable faith in the direst of circumstances. Broken, sickly, needy, ordinary and not so ordinary people, who exhibited extraordinary faith. Shauna retells the stories of the following people in the Bible: the father of a demon-possessed boy, the paralyzed man, the Roman Centurion, the hemorrhaging woman, the Samaritan leper, the mother of a demon-possessed girl, blind Bartimaeus, and a forgiven woman that honors Jesus. The author uses Bible verses with a fictional overlay (the author’s description, which I love) to further expand on the various Bible stories. She does this in such a beautiful, inspirational, and knowledgeable way!
I loved seeing faith and miracles unfold and learning more about these Bible characters stories’ and encounters with Jesus! Shauna wove theology, scripture, and fiction into a great marriage of beautiful writing. They all circled back to the main theme of the book, which is seeing that remarkable faith is not performance based. Remarkable faith can come about in the most ordinary ways and people. The Lord loves us because of our weakness and brokenness, which drives us into His loving arms.
Each character’s story was a little different in their approach to Jesus but each one had the same result, Jesus brought healing, forgiveness, and salvation. Their afflictions, their source of sorrow, pain, and desperation brought them right to the place they needed to be, to Jesus. Each vignette portrays the gospel of Jesus and His unending love and grace. Shauna also shares powerful, faith-filled prayers at the end of each chapter. I loved these! Beautifully poetic and filled with hope.
The author skillfully drives home the powerful truth that we are not a disappointment to God by our perceived unremarkable faith, it is that very thing that brings about our remarkable faith in Jesus. The human needs and struggles of the biblical characters make them relatable and relevant. I felt the depth of their pain and exclusion, I could feel their loneliness, their desperation, and I was astounded by their acts of remarkable faith! The author’s vivid descriptions give a wonderful layer of visual insight into each story and the circumstances each real character faced.
Shauna explains that Jesus finds remarkable faith in the weak who beg for His help, the helpless that don’t show a single good deed to point to faith, the unworthy, the suffering, the outcasts, the panicked who have deluded themselves by false gods, the defiant, and the flagrant worshipper. How great is our God??!!
“Worship is the result of the person wowed by the grace of God and gripped with affection for the Almighty.”
“When we recognize our inability to earn fellowship and favor with God and realize we must simply receive it as a gift of grace, this divine exchange-Jesus’ righteous is exceedingly good news!”
“When we admit we lack anything that could earn God’s favor, we are finally free to receive what Jesus gives in exchange for our sin-grace, God’s undeserved love, favor, and righteousness. Grace can’t be earned. It is a scandalous gift.”
“Remarkable Faith defies silencing and calls out to Jesus for the help needed. With arms outstretched to Jesus, defiant faith gladly receives vision, life, and the irresistible desire to follow him. As we delight in him, he transforms affliction into affection and makes beggar into disciples.”
“Worship and gratitude intertwine, and while we might think they are services we render to God, they are actually his reward to us. They are gifts by which God nurtures his relationship with us and evidence of remarkable faith.”
“Even when we do not understand it, even though we lack the external marks of what humans normally applaud, faith that suffers and seeks Jesus because he is good is remarkable faith.”
I absolutely loved the rawness, powerful truths, mercy, grace, and hope within the pages of “Remarkable Faith” and I highly recommend it! Shauna’s beautiful writing style and faith-filled message are such a blessing.
Shauna Letellier is married and a mom to three wonderful boys.She draws upon her Bachelor’s degree in Biblical Studies from Grace University in Omaha, Nebraska, as well as a variety of Bible commentaries to drape the fabric fiction over the framework of Scripture.
Shauna’s writing has been published on The Huffington Post, Day Spring’s (in)Courage, and in MomSense Magazine (now Hello Dearest), a publication of MOPS International.
Shauna is a self-proclaimed expert second-guesser but finds certainty in knowing Jesus Christ. She blogs about finding rest and relief in Him at www.shaunaletellier.com.
With her husband Kurt, she has the wild and hilarious privilege of raising their three boys along the banks of the Missouri River where they fish, swim, and rush off to ballgames.
The above “about” section is taken from Shauna’s website at shaunaletellier.com/aboutme.
You can find Shauna on her website shaunaletellier.com, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.
This post was inspired by the book Remarkable Faith: When Jesus Marveled at the Faith of Unremarkable People by Shauna Letellier. You can learn more about the book and order at shaunaletellier.com.
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