I'm currently deep into the new book by Mike Donehey of Tenth Avenue North: Finding God's Life for My Will. I love how he changes the typical focus of "Finding God's will for MY life"

And he seems to know something about hearing God's Voice:

"I don’t know how you hear the voice of God or even if you believe it’s possible. But for me, when a word, phrase, or idea that aligns with Scripture grabs hold of my subconscious and won’t let go, I can’t help but feel it’s from Him."

This explains how I read. How listening for God's voice becomes a natural part of living.

And here, in his chapter on following. God calls us to follow him, which totally lightens so many burdens!

" When we realize that true leadership is a byproduct of following well, we can exchange all those anxieties for something lighter. We can conserve all that frenetic energy we used to expend trying to live up to a label and be what everyone needed us to be. We can let go and focus on the voice of God. Then we can begin asking the right questions, such as: “What is Christ saying to me right now?"


Mike Donehey is genuine and vulnerable in his book. His transparency encourages me (and hopefully others!) to be honest.

" I missed what was right in front of me because most ministry opportunities have a way of disguising themselves as inconveniences."


"God isn’t efficient. Why else would He use us?"

I was recently reminded of the fact that God doesn't Need us to do something for him (big or small). But he delights to work through us, and what a privilege it is. A source of joy for sure!

Anyway, if you want a solid testimonial on living God's life, the life God's laid out for you, I would recommend this book in a heartbeat.

🔽I did receive a free copy of this book through Netgalley, and chose to share my honest opinion with you here

**I received an advanced reader copy from WaterBrook and Multnomah.**

I was thrilled to have the opportunity to read this book early. I'd been anticipating it ever since seeing it announced on Tenth Avenue North's social media, and it didn't disappoint. Mike's got some interesting ways of thinking and has many insights and reminders about God and how to follow Him. The book touches on a wide variety of topics, from leadership to grace, marriage to prayer. Scattered throughout are fun bits about Tenth Avenue North, and various anecdotes from Mike's personal life. Highly recommended!

If you struggle with knowing what to do with your life, this book will be inspiring for you. Donehey takes the question "What is God's will for my life?" and flips it upside down. With authentic, (sometimes) humorous anecdotes, and honest, well-written challenges, he shows us how God gives us the freedom to determine our own will for our lives. Then - if we choose to listen carefully - God leads us on a life path that glorifies Him, draws us close to Him, and points others to Him. None of this is easy. It isn't for Donehey, and it isn't for us. Somehow, knowing we are all on this journey together makes each day just a little bit easier than it might have been. This book is one more reminder of that. Much thanks to NetGalley and Waterbrook Multnomah for the advanced copy of this book.

I have always loved the music of tenth avenue north and the reason is the message in their songs that reach straight to the cords of my heart. I have been watching some video devotions by Mike on Facebook and was touched by how deep his love for Christ and people reaches even outside his music.

This book was one of the best I have read in a while. So many great nuggets of wisdom. We all search for Gods plans for our life but want them to fit into the mold we have picked out in our minds. Mike really gets to the heart of the message and teaches us to look for Gods life in our will. I will definitely read it again and highly recommend it to my friends and family.

I received an ARC from the publisher and an electronic version from Netgalley. This review is my honest opinion of the book.

I picked this book because of the quirky title—after all, we’re always agonizing about what ‘God’s will for our life is,’ not what God’s life for our will is. Whether you’re 15 or 53, you’ll find inspiration in Donehey’s words.

Donehey, singer and songwriter with the contemporary Christian group Tenth Avenue North, shares his struggle with coming to understand the difference between living the life God wants for us and paralyzing ourselves wishing we knew what God’s exact will for us might be.

“Sometimes the only thing keeping us from God’s dream for our lives is our unwillingness to let go of how we thought our own dreams should go,” Donehey says.

While some people may hear God speak to them on a regular basis, not everyone does. God gives us guidelines to know his will, all found in Micah 6:8: Walk with God, advance justice, love mercy, and walk in humility.

“God doesn’t so much tell us what to do with our lives as tell us how to live them.”

For Donehey, that means learning to surrender every moment of distrust—and learning to trust that God is who He says he is. We also need to accept that God loves us—flawed, quirky, broken, unique, crazy, dirty, sinful human beings that we are. According to Donehey, when we let these two truths percolate into our lives, we will start to live God’s life for our will.

This book isn’t a how-to manual to hear God speak, nor will it give you pat formulas for figuring out how to choose a career, a mate, or even your next date. But it will help you see that an infinitely creative God has provided millions of possibilities for us.

We need to focus on snuggling up next to our infinitely loving Father, getting to know his preferences for how we love ourselves and our fellow humans, and then use what we learn as the plumb line for our lives.

You don’t have to love Tenth Avenue North, or even contemporary Christian music to receive a blessing from this book. Donehey writes from a deep place of understanding—he lives his own advice through success, failure, heartbreak, and adventure.

Young adults and teens will especially enjoy this book (a bonus if they love Donehey’s music), because they struggle with knowing what to do with their lives. Donehey will point the Way.

March 19, 2015- I didn’t want to go, I was in the worst of moods. But because I love the band that was headlining that night, I mustered up the strength to go, and thank goodness I did! Somehow, I had missed knowing about Tenth Avenue North before then. I sat there in awe - who is this band, who is this guy with all this crazy energy running into the audience, what are these amazing songs? I need more!! I’ve been following them since (and may have seen them several more times since then 😉)- needless to say I was stoked when Mike Donehey, the lead singer mentioned he was writing a book.

Mike’s book is a mixture of personal life stories and Biblical life applications. The book is written in a conversational tone- it’s funny, serious, hopeful, insightful, encouraging and easy to relate to. It’s full of truth and wisdom. I appreciate Mike’s openness, honesty and vulnerability. I laughed, I cried- and will again as this is a book I plan to read many times. Mike encourages all of us to quit asking God what his will is for our lives- rather seek to live in God’s presence every day.

Thank you to Netgalley, Waterbrook and Multnomah Publishers and Michael Donehey for an ARC copy in exchange for an honest review.

***I received an advanced copy (e-book) of this book through NetGalley, courtesy of Waterbrook and Multnomah.***

I have been a big fan of Tenth Avenue North for years, and I love Mike Donehey’s down-to-earth presence on Instagram. (I’ve also been to a concert, which was wonderful!) I was excited to hear that he was Mike was writing a book, and it did not disappoint!

Finding God’s Life for My Will reads like a series of essays. Each chapter is about a different time in Mike’s personal or professional life. The overarching theme is surrendering your will to God to allow Him to live His plans and purposes through you.

I highlighted so many parts of this book! It is one I will read again and again. There is a lot of wisdom in the midst of Mike’s humor and stories of failures and successes. I also enjoyed the sneak peek at life behind the scenes of Tenth Avenue North. I highly recommend this book.

“This is the ever-unfolding journey of finding God’s life for my will. Yes, you read that right. I didn’t say His will for my life. He’s made that perfectly clear:
• His will for my life is joy.
• His will for my life is rest.
• His will for my life is forgiveness, gratitude, and purity of heart.
No. I’m after something different.”

And with these words, I could already tell Mike Donehey was going to do something a little different from the ordinary. In a book that is best described as a mash-up of Christian Living and Band Memoir, he unleashes truth after truth with brutal honesty and introspection with plenty of doses of humor and raw emotion. I found myself highlighting passage after passage each chapter. He teaches how to be a disciple, a servant, and a follower of Jesus (I finally get why they named their album “Followers”). He also teaches a lot about not doing things for our ego, glory, or praise; this is important not just to lead singers on stage every night, but for us as well. My only disappointment was the mention of praying the prayer to be saved without any mention of baptism. Other than that, this is a recommended read.

* I received this book free from Netgalley and publisher Waterbrook & Multnomah in exchange for an honest review.*

For more reviews, check out my blog:
https://wadeurspider01.wixsite.com/website

Tenth Avenue North was my first concert. They were on their The Light Meets The Dark tour. So, yeah, they've been an influence in my life for a long time. Their latest album, Followers, one of their songs incorporated my confirmation verse. They are a special band that has really played a role in my life. I saw them again in concert when they were at Winter Jam 2017.

I say all that backstory to say, I was so excited to have the opportunity to read a book by Mike Donehey and it did not disappoint. I got an ecopy and I highlighted the heck out of that book. Thing after thing had me thinking, "YES! That's me!". I could really relate to what he talked about with wanting to know the future and overthinking things.

I loved the tone of the book. It was very conversational and you felt like you got to know Donehey. He's a good storyteller. He doesn't make the points difficult but he doesn't spare any punches either. He shares the lessons he's learned from mistakes made and life lived. It's really cool to see how God has worked in his life and is working in his life.

Michael's point is all about surrender and really desiring God above all else. If we are seeking Him, we rest in His presence and can relax about "the plan".

I definitely want to own this book when it comes out.

Finding God's Life for My Life is a play on words for a common phase in Christian circles: finding God's Will for my life. In this essay-style memoir shares how he has dealt with being a " Christian Celebrity" and how that has impacted his relationship with God, family, bandmates and dare I say "fans".

Donehey gets real honest about being finding one's purpose in the public eye in a very conversational way. He peppers his stories with Bible verses, quotes from his favourite books (including one of my all-time fave: Les Mis) and some really honest anecdotes that you probably experienced but would not openly share. I was touched by his honesty when recalled unknowingly playing basketball with an intellectually disabled boy and his lesson on self-centeredness.

He has a way of reframing conventional wisdom in light of what the Bible says. For instance, he reminds us that some common words and labels that we normally use today have changed meaning over the years like dapper, matrix, bully, matrix and even servant-leadership. (If I had a coin for every time, I heard this word but I digress) .

This book kinda picks up where Mike's video journals on their Youtube Page left off. This book took me to the early 2000s as he mentioned a couple of my favourite bands from back in the day like Sanctus Real Go listen to "Whatever You're Doing {Something Heavenly]". Finding God's Life for My Will would be a great book to give a young person in ministry.


Full Disclosure: If you haven't guessed it by now, I requested this book because I am a huge fan of Tenth Avenue North!

With humor and honest, Mike Donehey shares personal and vulnerable stories from the "behind-the-scenes" of his music career. As the lead singer of Tenth Avenue North, he opens up about how music wasn't originally his dream and it may not even be God's (exact) will for his life - and yet Donehey believes he is walking in obedience. In other words, Donehey could be doing other things with his musical talent. He doesn't necessarily *have* to be touring or writing songs. But in doing so, he feels that he is seeking God first and serving Him through obedience. There is not only one right thing, one exact plan where you can make a mistake and never get back on the path. Instead, Donehey suggests (and shares why it's a good thing) that God's presence is the plan; it's not really as much about us as we tend to believe.

The title is obviously a twist on: "I need to find God's will for my life" or "If I could just figure out God's will for my life..."

In this book, Donehey suggests that we have it backwards and that we don't need God's exact plan; we can simply invite Him to be part of our life and walk in daily obedience, trusting that He is with us. What if God is the plan?

I've never read a book with this take before, and it made me pause and think. One of my favorite lines is: "God didn't need me production as much as He wanted my presence."

Michael Donehey is the lead singer of Tenth Avenue North and a really great guy. ( I can say that, as I have had the privilege of meeting him years ago at a youth convention.) I enjoyed "Finding God's Life for My Will" and it drove home to me the issue we all have with submitting our wants and desires to God--our will to do what we want. Over and over the author shares his failed attempts at life choices that obviously were not in God's plan, and it reminded me of all those failed dreams that led me back to Him and His will for my life.

Michael is candid, honest and funny. You will feel like you've known him all your life. He speaks to the reader as an equal and as a friend. There are some very poignant moments in the book concerning marriage and a miscarriage he and his wife suffered while on tour. The performing life is not always what people imagine, and Michael opens up a lot about when he surrendered to God's plan over the plans he had for his own life, marriage and family.

I was an early reader, thanks to #NetGalley and Waterbrook Multnomah. All opinions are my own.

Disclaimer: I received an eARC through Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

In Finding God’s Life for My Will, Donehey takes the question, “how do I find God’s will for my life?” and flips it. The title is best described in Donehey in the “non-introduction” in which he explains his life changed when he stopped trying to know God’s exact plans and rather inviting God to be active in Donehey’s daily life and change him daily. (Due to the nature of eARC reviewing, I am unable to provide the exact quote for legal reasons, but this best sums up the explanation.)

Although the initial publisher blurb may lead you to believe that this book is purely a teaching book. I’d say it’s closer to about 50% Christian teaching and 50% memoir. Although some readers may be surprised by this, this works well for the practicalities of what Donehey is teaching.

For those familiar with Donehey’s band Tenth Avenue North, you will be familiar with several of Donehey’s personal stories as he has shared many of these stories on stage or in teaching videos over the last ten years. Coupled with the exact teaching (which has been heavily researched), these stories take on new life, and the reader will be able to see how exactly Donehey’s life experiences led him to experience Christ on a deeper level.

Additionally, several of Donehey’s teachings may be familiar to those who have attended a Tenth Avenue North concert over the past ten years. Instead of it being a three minute transition into a song, however, Donehey is able to expand on these teachings in addition to further explaining the research he has done in this.

For those unfamiliar with Donehey’s band, this should hold up very well with them. Personally, I have read a few memoirs/teaching books by other Christian artists, and most of them would not hold up well to a person unfamiliar with that Christian artist’s career. Donehey’s is an exception to this. While he does mention his band periodically, he does so primarily as either explanation or illustration before expounding on teaching principles.

Overall, if you are a person who reads a lot of Christian non-fiction, this will be right up your alley. If you are a person who seldom reads Christian non-fiction but are a Christian, this is also up your alley as well. Donehey uses very accessible language that’s sometimes missing in Christian non-fiction while never compromising the teaching.

Finding God’s Life for My Will comes out August 6.