This is the second anthology of heartwarming stories that I have read by James Stuart Bell. While I feel they are all inspiring, if I had to pick one, I would say the the experience that Jeff Adams had was my favorite. He was hit in the eye with a racquetball that broke his glasses, cut his eyebrow and left him blind in one eye. Astonishingly enough, the hospital had just hired an ophthalmologist two weeks before; however, she couldn’t do a thing to help him. He had developed a hyphema: his eye was bleeding on the inside. Because of this, he was told he may never get his eyesight back. Furthermore, because of this, he could end up with glaucoma and lose his eyesight in the other eye too. Jeff asked God to help him because he couldn’t help himself . The remarkable thing is that Jeff’s faith never waivered. He believed that God would heal him, so he kept checking to see if his eyesight was coming back. The next day, when the doctor tested him, his eyesight was fine.

There are other stories of amazing miracles and some where prayer wasn’t answered in the way that the person had hoped. Sometimes, the answer took awhile to come, other times, the answer was on the way before a prayer was spoken. Every person in the book felt that God listened to them and loved them. I appreciate that Bell included such a vastly different selection of stories.

I love books like this, and I highly recommend these anthologies by Bell.

This was a lovely book idea, but it just seemed very amateur.

What a wonderful book to show how good and merciful Our Heavenly Father is. This book is a testimony to faith and just allowing the Divine Father's blessings in our life. Some of these stories are so heartwarming and wonderful, they will bring tears to your eyes. The stories are short enough that you can read and digest a few at a time or read at all and get your filling in one setting. If you ever doubt the amazing things God can do, read this book. It will make a believer of you. Thanks to NetGalley, the author and the publisher for allowing me to read this wonderful book in return for my honest review.

This book is a collection of stories written by the people who experienced what they felt were miraculous answers to prayer. Some of the stories seemed average, while others were absolutely jaw-dropping. You will read stories of joy, enlightenment, healing, and many others that touch the heart.

Gifts From Heaven is for those who love to read about other people's answers to prayer. Some stories are of everyday problems while others are what seems to be unscalable mountains. But, those mountains some of which may include death where the odds are surely stacked against the person have been moved. They are nothing short of a miracle and even have doctors questioning their own beliefs. What appeared to be facts of science that were sure to have led straight to an unforgiving outcome where disease and illness had ravaged bodies have now been intervened upon by a loving creator who seemed to reach down from heaven at just the right moment and provide his healing touch.
I read the book in the morning while having my cup of coffee. I thought it would be a good way to start my day off. I am sluggish in the mornings and need something to help get me going. Some of these stories were truly inspiring.and provided just what I needed to give my day a little boost.

One of my favorite stories in the book is The Final Authority by Volke and takes place in Germany in the spring of 1946 just after the war. It's about the Typhus epidemic and what his family went through during this time.

I also read the book in the evenings before I went to bed as a way to relax and have something nice to think about before I went to sleep.

Gifts from Heaven delivers just what it describes it will - stories of answered prayers. It is a kaleidoscope a cacophony of wonderful stories of near death experiences, people seeing JESUS, people who had a death sentence on their life from doctors and JESUS had other plans, etc. For example a man had a bad heart valve and was told to check on it yearly or he would die - well he let it go for 7 years - he went back to see how bad it was - the techs who took the tests called other techs in and then doctors - then the tests where over and he had to see his doctor - the doctor was upset - which made him worried - he said he had never seen anything like it before - and that there was no explanation - but his valve grew another valve and that that was impossible you are either born with it or not - well we all know what happened - GOD gave it to him - as an answer to all his praying - this is the kind of stories you will find in this book - it is intense, it is emotional - you will find yourself praising the LORD, crying, and knowing that your life is in GOD's hands for ALL THINGS and HE is faithful and just - why some of you ask - because HE loves us with ALL of HIS Heavenly Heart......

Bell has collected a nice assortment of stories from believers who experienced answers to their prayers. Most of the answers were what people wanted while a few were not.

We read of medical conditions miraculously healed, visions of Jesus, hearing God speak, financial provision, dreams, near death experiences, and much more. There were stories of being an answer to another person's prayer too.

I liked that this collection included stories that showed God's intervention in the midst of not being miraculously healed. There's a good story of learning to trust God through a difficult situation, when people wondered why God did not intervene. There are stories of people still waiting with the assurance that the answers to their prayers will come.

This book is a good encouragement to Christians. Reading these stories help build faith, even when we are still waiting for God to answer our prayers.

I received a complimentary egalley of this book from the publisher. My comments are an independent and honest review.

[Note: This book was provided free of charge by Bethany House Publishers. All thoughts and opinions are my own.]

In the course of our lives, many of us find ourselves facing difficulties and trials and look for encouragement from those around us or, failing that, from the written word [1]. This book clearly meets a need and manages to deal with a problem that is underrated when it comes to trials. This book could have taken the angle that trials are the result of a lack of faith and gotten appeal from Job's contemporary friends today, and I am glad this book chose to avoid taking that approach. The deliverance provided by God is deliverance through trials as well as from them, and that is a lesson that is worthwhile to remember. Even if the book is more than a little bit samey, even though it is fairly short, the fact that the book's editor manages to focus on a good approach to trials and the way that God answers prayer in a variety of ways and not always in the ways that we would expect.

The book is organized in a very simple fashion, with various stories from people I have never heard about. Perhaps I would have felt a lot more excited about this book had I known who anyone was, but as it was I did not know any of them and that made it more difficult for me to really get into the stories. The people have short biographical sketches at the end and the stories themselves deal with a wide variety of trials, from health trials to trusting in God's ability to provide for us to overcoming the death of loved ones, and offer a fair slice of the sort of trials that people would want encouragement about. Even though all of the people in the book were strangers to me that I had never heard of before at all, which is remarkable given the sheer number of books I write and the writers I am familiar with, some of these stories were gripping. The most interesting story came from a woman named Elfriede Volk who talked about her father's experiences during World War II, which was quite a moving story, but many of the stories told very heartfelt stories as well.

Overall, this book is designed for those who like stories of faith and answered prayer including angelic intervention. There is a large market for books like this, although I would recommend to readers to take this book a bit slowly and only read a few stories at a time because the stories start feeling really similar if you read them all at once. Perhaps most readers do not read books as quickly as I am and would not need the reminder to take this one a bit slowly in order to appreciate it as much as possible. Other than that, the book is written in such a way that will likely appeal to evangelicals and charismatic Christians and at least one story (that of Ms. Volk) is aimed at a Sabbatarian audience, surprisingly enough. Although I am not the ideal reader for a book like this, I found the book to be of value and to have a lot of worthwhile stories. I would have liked a bit more variety in the approach, but many readers will likely enjoy the consistency a lot more than I did, and I can see this being a book that encourages many readers about the way God answers prayers.

[1] See, for example:

https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2016/11/10/book-review-facing-trials-thoughts-for-meditation/

https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2017/01/30/book-review-so-you-want-to-grow/

https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2016/12/27/book-review-windows-of-hope/

https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2016/12/26/book-review-bloom-where-youre-planted/

https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2016/12/20/book-review-fearless-how-a-diagnosis-of-a-chronic-disease-turned-my-life-upside-down/

https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2016/12/20/book-review-a-spectacle-of-glory/

https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2016/11/24/book-review-the-100-most-encouraging-verses-in-the-bible/