Jackie Hill Perry: Entertainment Affects ‘Our Life and Our Fruitfulness’
Author Jackie Hill Perry is sharing her thoughts on the importance of “redirect[ing] our attention towards God” in a new devotional, “Upon Waking: 60 Daily Reflections to Discover Ourselves and the God We Were Made For.”
“I think contemporary devotionals have a tendency to be a bit shallow, flowery, maybe inspiring, but not necessarily inspiring depth,” Perry told the Christian Post. “We are so inundated with all forms of entertainment that I think it’s affecting our ability to meditate, which in turn is affecting, I think, our life and our fruitfulness.”
“Upon Waking” is Perry’s attempt to help readers “reorient and redirect our attention towards God so that when we go about our day, we’re going about it with some power, and some clarity and some wisdom.”
A description of “Upon Waking” reads, “What if you could wake up each day to discover something so much bigger—and so much better for you—than all that chaos? What if you could discover God? In her lyrical, compelling, and poignant voice, bestselling author and Bible teacher Jackie Hill Perry offers 60 short, daily reflections on specific passages from Scripture to help you awaken to the God you were made for, the life you were made for, and the person you were made to be.”
The writer also reflected on why biblical teachings with depth don’t typically “go viral.”
“I don’t think those options coddle or accommodate flesh,” Perry said. “I think when you have teaching that doesn’t address sin, doesn’t address idolatry, doesn’t call us to repent, it only just speaks to our purpose, to our identity in the marketplace, to these really helpful, but not necessarily eternal things, I think that allows people to have a form of godliness, but actually reject the power of God that’s necessary for us to walk into power that God has called us to.”
Perry then spoke of the importance of biblical literacy today.
“There are scriptural precedents for how faith not only extinguishes the attacks of the dark and the arrows that the devil flings at us but also that faith has the ability, even just a little bit, to do mighty things,” she explained.
“The Bible talks about the power of faith, which is why we need to know God’s Word. Because it’s hard to trust the God you don’t know,” Perry continued. “If Scripture is the means by which we understand His nature, the Scripture must be the means by which our faith can be built up.”
“Upon Waking” isn’t Perry’s only big project. She recently announced the completion of her voice recording of the Bible.
“And finally, after almost two years, I’ve finished recording the Bible. All 757,439 words,” she wrote on Instagram. “I’ve thanked God many times for the grace this has been. To read scripture from beginning to end OUT LOUD is just….special. Following the storyline, I discovered details I’d never learned and will never forget.”
