Stand Up, Stand Strong: A Call to Bold Faith in a Confused Culture

“How does a Christian stand strong in such a confusing culture?”

Sara Barratt’s Stand Up, Stand Strong was written to answer this question. The book is a call to this generation to live with bold faith.

I had the delight and honor to review this new release in exchange for an advance copy. If you’d like to know what this book is about, who its amazing author is, and what I thought of it, you are in the right place. 

I’m so excited to share this book with you. 

Note: the book and author descriptions are not my own writing, but everything under “My Thoughts” is. 😉

Description

If we live according to the gospel, we’re going to make waves. Why? Because the way of Christ is countercultural. It doesn’t go with the flow, compromise on truth, or stay silent in the face of injustice—so neither can we. No matter how young or old we are, or how much or how little influence we think we have, God calls us to boldly engage our upside-down culture through the lens of his truth. 

With powerful examples from Scripture and stories from teens today and through the centuries, Sara Barratt equips teens to live with a biblical worldview, approach today’s hot-button issues with godly wisdom, and influence their generation for the glory of God. Tackling tough topics like sexuality, addiction, identity, media, and much more, Sara offers practical ways to stay rooted in God’s truth while engaging culture with the redemptive story of the gospel—no matter the cost.

Author

Sara Barratt is Editor-in-Chief for TheRebelution.com, a growing online platform that reaches more than half a million Christian teens, parents, and youth workers each year. She’s a frequent speaker on topics including using your teen years for Christ, biblically navigating culture, and godly dating and relationships. She’s also written for The Gospel Coalition, Desiring God, Girl Defined, and Crosswalk. She is the author of Love Riot and Stand Up, Stand Strong. She lives in Michigan with her family. Connect with her on her website www.sarabarratt.com, as well as on Facebook and Instagram.

My Thoughts

As I began to read Sara Barratt’s Stand Up, Stand Strong, my biggest concern was that it wouldn’t hold the same love she wrote into her first book, Love Riot.

So often, people in the church pick a side in a fight and they stand firm. But the problem is that they stand on their side with stubbornness, anger, and hatred. Somewhere in the process, they fail to stand with Jesus. They fail to imitate the way that he showed love to sinners, eating with them and knowing them, even as He shared Truth.

But as I read deeper into Stand Up, Stand Strong, I realized that Sara Barratt was not following this trend. 

She wrote with courage. She wrote with conviction, and she wrote truth.

Yet at the same time, she wrote with compassion. She wrote with understanding, fully knowing that there are real people tangled up in these complicated issues. 

Stand Up, Stand Strong is not afraid to delve into touchy topics. Purity, sexual orientation, abortion, addiction, etc. Like with The Restoration Story, I have to warn you that this may not be the best choice for a family read-aloud. 

However, it would make an excellent book club study for teens and young adults, with “Going Deeper” questions at the end of each chapter. The chapter endings also list lots of great resources related to the different topics. I’m looking forward to adding some of these to my to-read list!

It did feel like there were a lot of generalizations about the world, the church, and “this generation” in the book. They were all pretty true, but I’m a little tired of seeing generalizations everywhere, so it would be nice to see less of those in Sara’s next book. However, Stand Up, Stand Strong was still super well written and helpful to me on a personal level.

Before I read the book, I had been wrestling with the question of how to stand firm in my beliefs while loving and listening to people different from me. It’s hard to know what mindset I should bring when I leave for a secular college this fall. Did I need to find some sort of balance? Should I be doing less of one of them as I do more of the other?

Stand Up, Stand Strong helped me to face this question head-on. It has helped me to understand how love and truth can go hand and hand. It didn’t answer all my questions or magically solve all my problems, but I closed with more peace and clarity than I had before.

Read this book to be challenged to stand up and stand strong with a biblical, gospel-centered worldview.

What Do You Think?

What Christian nonfiction books have encouraged you lately? Does this book sound like one you would read?