Review: Zip It

Zip It: The Keep It Shut 40-Day Challenge by Karen Ehman

As a member of Compel Training, I’ve come to know Karen Ehman through video teachings. She has a warm, inviting writing and speaking style I find appealing. She wrote Zip It as a companion to Keep It Shut: What to Say, How to Say It, and When to Say Nothing at All, a book I’m now rushing to read.

In Zip It, she addresses the many ways we can practice greater self-control in speaking. She tells her motivation for writing this book:

…as I surveyed my life a few years ago, I observed that I could tether almost every tense or fractured relationship I’d had back to something I said.

Ouch, how I can relate! That’s why I want to learn more about self-control in speaking. Karen continues,

As God began to deal with me about the way I used my words, I learned to apply the vast advice the Bible has for us about how we should–and should not–speak.

This book is structured in 40 devotions with a personal anecdote, two takeaways, one short lesson, and a prayer. I especially enjoyed Karen’s warm, funny anecdotes which stirred my thinking about all the ways I can improve the way I speak and think. She offers deep insights into Bible passages and then gives great application tips. For example, she outlined three parables in Matthew 9, then shows how Jesus hears my unspoken words, the words I speak, and the words I say to myself. I had never linked those passages together before, and I appreciated Karen’s fresh observations.

Since I enjoyed Zip It so much, I want to backtrack and pick up a copy of Keep It Shut. I want to honor God with my words and thoughts, and these books will convict me and challenge me to new obedience.

I’m also now reading Karen’s book Listen, Love, Repeat: Other-Centered Living in a Self-Centered World in preparation for the upcoming online Bible study at Proverbs 31 Ministries. Sign up for the online Bible study with me, which runs April 3 to May 5, 2017. Next week I’ll post a review of Listen, Love, Repeat.

I received a free copy of Zip It: The Keep It Shut 40-Day Challenge from the BookLook Bloggers Program in exchange for my honest review.

If you liked this post, I would appreciate your shares on social media!
This post will be linked up at #momentsofhope, #mondaymusings, #mommymoments, #modestmommondays, #theartofhomemakingmondays, #livingproverbs31, #goodmorningmondays, #dreamtogether, #soulsurvival, #glimpsesofhisbeauty, #testimonytuesday, #raralinkup, #tuestalk, #tellhisstory, #messymarriage, and #teaandwordtuesday. Visit my linkups page to find links to these wonderful blogs.

Disclosure: Some of the links above are affiliate links.