For the Love: Fighting for Grace in a World of Impossible Standards

Jen Hatmaker

Aug 2015 · HarperChristian + ORM

About this ebook

New York Times bestselling author Jen Hatmaker believes that life can be fun, fulfilling, exciting, and beautiful. There's just one thing getting in the way: people.

So many of our joys, struggles, thrills, and heartbreaks are connected to others, starting with ourselves and the people we came from. As we grow, our community does too. Before we know it, our lives are full of people: people we became friends with, married, birthed, live by, go to church with, don't like, don't understand, fear, and endlessly compare ourselves to. It's easy to lose our love for ourselves and for others, but what if we let people off the hook instead? What if we let go of the need to criticize ourselves and our neighbors?

Jen shares the lessons she’s learned about how important it is to love people by teaching you how to:

• Break free of guilt and shame by dismantling the unattainable Pinterest life
• Learn to engage our culture's controversial issues with grace
• Release the burden of always being right and be liberated to love
• Identify the tools you already have, to develop real-life, all-in, know-my-junk-but-love-me-anyway friendships
• Escape our impossible standards for parenting and marriage by accepting the standard of "mostly good"
• Laugh until you cry

In this raucous ride to freedom for modern women, Jen bares the refreshing wisdom, wry humor, no-nonsense faith, liberating insight, and fearless honesty that have made her beloved by women worldwide.

Join Jen as she reminds you how amazing you are, how shockingly gracious God is, and how free we are to love others well and live the beautiful, wholehearted lives we were created to live.

Ratings and reviews

In the same way that '7' challenged me, this book shows me how to be a Christian in every aspect of my life. Christianity isn't just Sundays, it's constant, and this book reminded me of that. If you've read Jen's blog or any of her books then you'll know about her sense of humour and it's just as big in this book! I'm a loud laugher and I couldn't read this book in public as I'd embarass myself :) That for me is the sign of a good book, one that challenges but also cheers. One thing I struggled with in '7' was relating to their standard of living and sometimes I struggled to identify in this book too. It's not their fault, they're not rich or flaunting wealth at all, but it is far removed from my life at the moment. However, humour is universal and there are many lessons in this book to take and adapt to your own life. If you like your Christian books to challenge, encourage and most of all, make you laugh, then this one is perfect for you. I will post more soon on what I have taken from this book and it's impact on me as I continue to think it all through.

I read it aloud to my husband and we both cried and laughed out loud. Keep'em coming, Jen, we're best friends you just don't know it yet.

What an awesome and hilarious book! Her style is phenomenal and you will not be able to put this down!!! Highly recommended!

About the author

Jen Hatmaker is the author of the New York Times bestsellers For the Love and Fierce, Free, and Full of Fire. Jen hosts the award-winning For the Love podcast, is the delighted curator of the Jen Hatmaker Book Club, and she leads a tightly knit online community where she reaches millions of people each week. Jen is a co-founder of Legacy Collective, a giving community that grants millions of dollars around the world. She is a mom to five kids and lives happily just outside Austin, Texas in a 1908 farmhouse with questionable plumbing.