Blog Archives
Becoming a Diamond
Becoming a Diamond, by Nicole Lindhorst, is a faith-centered guide for women who feel caught between the life they’ve built and the person they’re still becoming. Framed around “Facets,” including identity, purpose, self-worth, authenticity, decisiveness, focus, relationship, and brilliance, the book blends memoir, coaching, scripture, reflection prompts, and small action steps. Lindhorst begins with the tender ache of her daughter Emma’s graduation and move to Omaha, then follows that emotional opening into deeper questions about motherhood, purpose, business, faith, and the courage to stop living inside roles that no longer fit.
I appreciated how personal the book feels. Lindhorst writes from the middle of lived experience, not from some polished mountaintop where all the pain has been neatly solved. The scene of Emma in her white dress and diamond tiara gave the whole book its emotional doorway, and I found that vulnerability disarming in the best way. The later moments, like her retreat at Sedona Mago, her decision to sell the rhinestone and sign businesses, and the grief of closing her boutique, give the ideas real weight. This isn’t just a book saying “find yourself” in a pretty font. It’s a woman admitting that identity can quietly attach itself to motherhood, work, usefulness, and being needed, then asking what remains when those things shift.
The writing is warm, conversational, and deeply encouraging, with a rhythm that feels closest to a long, honest talk with a friend who also happens to be a coach. I liked the recurring images, especially the closet full of old roles, the untouched guitar as a symbol of forgotten joy, and the phone-at-dinner scene that makes the chapter on focus feel immediately recognizable. The book repeats its central language of polishing, facets, brilliance, and becoming. I think that repetition is part of the book’s design. It’s meant to be absorbed slowly, almost devotionally, with the “Reflect” and “Polish” sections nudging the reader toward action rather than passive inspiration. The ideas are strongest when they’re grounded in story, like Sally’s painful reimagining of motherhood through fostering or the “just a mom” passage that gently pushes back against the ways women diminish their own sacred labor.
I felt that Becoming a Diamond succeeds because it understands transition not as failure, but as an invitation. It has a tender, steady confidence about women’s capacity to change without discarding who they’ve been. This is a heartfelt and useful book for Christian women in midlife, empty-nest seasons, career transitions, identity shifts, or any moment when “I’m fine” no longer feels like the whole truth.
Pages: 236 | ISBN : 978-1970329148
Effective Leaders
Faith in Flux is a collection of Christian leadership essays that frame leadership as a moral practice shaped by change, faith, critical thinking, and service. Why was this an important book for you to write?
Writing this book was important to me because it was an outlet for my reflections on my doctoral journey. I authored these essays while attending Liberty University’s School of Education, studying for a Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) in Educational Leadership. Postgraduate students can get overwhelmed by the volume of scholarly reports, peer-reviewed studies, and primary sources they must scrutinize before drafting their own academic prose. While reviewing and preparing for my dissertation, I decided to revisit my journey and share some of the leadership knowledge I had amassed, curated, and synthesized during my four years of study. I think education’s purpose is more than a simple knowledge transfer; it is knowledge shared to encourage deep thought and spark honest debate – a true collaborative effort.
Why do you believe listening is such a foundational leadership skill?
Listening is a foundational leadership skill because it builds trust, encourages diverse perspectives, informs decision-making, and mitigates potential conflict. As a child, adults told me that God gave us two ears and one mouth because we should listen twice as much as we speak. Although it’s commonly attributed to the ancient Greek Stoic philosopher Epictetus, the quote “We have two ears and only one tongue so that we may hear more and speak less,” was written by Diogenes of Sinope, the founder of Cynic philosophy. The Cynics were a precursor philosophy to the Stoics; therefore, it makes sense that they share core beliefs. Likewise, Hellenistic culture influenced the Christian Bible. In the Old Testament, there are two references in Proverbs 10:19 and 17:28 advising to “hold their tongues.” Also, the New Testament has a similar quote in James 1:19: “My dear brothers and sisters, take note of this: Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to anger.”
Mentorship feels central to the book’s worldview. What makes a mentor truly transformative?
Mentorship is a critical component of education. The mentee determines whether a mentor is truly transformative. As my favorite mentor once said, “I’m not training you to do your job, I’m training you to do mine.” Anyone can be a mentor: family members, friends, coworkers, classmates, neighbors, or authority figures. Mentorship is a relationship. Both parties are responsible for nurturing any healthy relationship. However, a good mentor inherently has the mentee’s best interest at heart. Mentorship is not a self-serving endeavor, and sincerity is difficult to fake in the long term. All relationships take effort and time. However, not all advice is prudent or actionable. Mentors provide guidance while allowing the mentee to make mistakes without achieving total failure. As General David Goldfein wrote, leaders share success but own failure. I think effective leaders are mentors, and good mentors are leaders.
What audience did you most hope would connect with this book?
I view education as a collaborative effort with educators as mentors. My intent is not to proselytize but to share academic literature from my studies and personal anecdotes from my military experiences. Although I wrote this book from a Christian lens, ethics and morality are human ideals. Ethics is a branch of knowledge focusing on virtues, obligations, and consequences. It originated from the Greek ēthos (character or custom). Morals are one’s particular values concerning right and wrong that inform one’s conduct. It is derived from the Latin word mōs (custom or habit). Culture, traditions, customs, and religion influence both societal beliefs. Anyone who wants to behave ethically and morally (in the classroom or the boardroom) is my target audience.
Author Links: GoodReads | X (Twitter) | Website | Amazon
In a world of constant change, this collection of essays distills four years of doctoral research at Liberty University into a practical, faith-grounded exploration of educational leadership, ethics, and modern pedagogy.
Author Michael W. Cook bridges the gap between rigorous academic scholarship and accessible prose, weaving in candid military anecdotes and a distinctly Christian worldview to make complex ideas both relatable and actionable.
From the timeless wisdom of Saint Augustine and the Founding Fathers’ vision of an educated citizenry to today’s most urgent challenges—campus ideological tensions, academic freedom battles, STEM integration with robotics and maker spaces, game-based learning, bureaucratic hierarchies, and technology ethics-—the essays show Christian leaders how to navigate constant change (life is flux) while staying firmly anchored in biblical morals and principles.
More than a scholarly exercise, this book serves as both an engaging narrative and a practical reference guide, equipping educators, administrators, ministry leaders, and professionals with biblical wisdom for faithful leadership in the classroom, boardroom, and daily life.
Ready to lead with conviction when the ground is shifting beneath your feet?
Faith in Flux shows you how.
Faith in Flux: Christian Leadership Lessons From Classroom to Boardroom
Faith in Flux is a wide-ranging collection of Christian leadership essays drawn from Michael William Cook’s PhD studies in educational leadership, moving from classrooms to military teams to higher education debates and organizational ethics. Cook frames leadership as a moral practice shaped by change, faith, critical thinking, and service. He writes about Heraclitus and “life is flux,” Augustine’s belief that education should form virtue, Jefferson and Rush’s competing visions of public education, Freire and campus speech, conflict resolution at work and home, mentoring in the Air Force, project-based learning, bureaucracy, STEM, technology, and the educational damage left by COVID-era distance learning. It’s less a single-argument book than a cabinet of essays, each one turning over a leadership problem under a Christian and academic light.
I liked how personal the book becomes when Cook steps away from the machinery of citations and lets experience do some of the teaching. His memory of Mr. Miller stopping trigonometry class to measure a basketball hoop, then a water tower, and a church steeple, has a lovely plainspoken power because it makes his point before he explains it. The same is true of the Air Force satellite exercise, where students worked with a transparent little box, test equipment, diagrams, and failure itself as a teacher. Those moments gave the book warmth. I felt the author most clearly there, not just as a doctoral student assembling scholarship, but as someone who has been changed by good teaching and wants to pass that change along.
Cook’s convictions are sincere, and I respected the moral seriousness behind his concerns about campus speech, leadership legitimacy, and education without virtue. Some passages land with more force than nuance, especially when discussing Marxism, Freire, and contemporary university culture. The writing can become compressed by its academic scaffolding, with names, theories, citations, and conclusions arriving in a steady march. I appreciated that the book doesn’t pretend to be neutral. Its best ideas are grounded in responsibility: leaders should listen before correcting, delegate without abandoning accountability, protect children, teach for mastery rather than mere grades, and treat authority as something earned through character rather than title.
Faith in Flux is thoughtful, earnest, and often thought-provoking, especially when Cook connects leadership theory to lived moments of mentorship, classroom discovery, and moral choice. The prose is strongest when it breathes, and the ideas are strongest when they’re embodied in stories. This is a passionate book about becoming the kind of leader who can stand inside change without losing his ethical center. I’d recommend it to Christian educators, school leaders, military mentors, and readers who enjoy reflective essays that blend faith, leadership theory, and practical experience.
Pages: 247 | ASIN : B0GWWNC92F
Depth, Honesty, and Context
Through the Lens of an Ancient Yisra’elite Bible Study walks readers through the history, language, culture, and theology of the ancient Yisra’elites. What inspired you to write this theological guide?
Writing a book was never my original intention. My goal at first was simply to research, gather data, and develop a study I could teach in local churches or through online platforms. Over time, people who attended those studies offered thoughtful feedback and repeatedly encouraged me to publish the material in book form.
What ultimately inspired me was a growing concern that much of modern teaching approaches Scripture through a Western lens that ignores the linguistic, cultural, and historical world of ancient Yisra’el. I saw pastors avoiding difficult topics and doctrines being taught without a solid scriptural foundation, often because that ancient context was missing. The more I studied, the more I realized how much meaning is lost without it.
After prayer and reflection, it became clear that transforming the study into a book was the right choice. My intention is not to argue for novelty, but to help readers engage Scripture as its earliest communities would have understood it—with depth, honesty, and context.
Did you learn anything that surprised you during your research for this book?”
Absolutely. The research process was full of surprises. One of the most eye-opening discoveries for me was realizing how differently ancient Yisra’elites understood concepts we often take for granted—things like covenant, identity, honor and shame, communal responsibility, ritual purity, and even time itself. These ideas do not translate neatly into our modern Western categories, and I was often surprised by how much meaning is lost when we try to fit them into our own frameworks.
I also encountered linguistic surprises. Hebrew names, idioms, and expressions that modern translations flatten—sometimes for readability—carry layers of meaning that change the tone of a passage entirely. For example, understanding terms tied to covenant language, marriage imagery, or the “appointed times” of Yahweh revealed connections I had never been shown in church settings. Even the way ancient Yisra’el measured days and months reshaped familiar timelines, such as the biblical festivals or the crucifixion and resurrection accounts.
Another area that surprised me was how much clarity emerges when we consult non-canonical literature—not as Scripture, but as cultural context. Works like Ḥanok (Enoch), Jubilees, or Jasher reflect the worldview, vocabulary, and assumptions of Second Temple Judaism. These writings don’t replace the Bible, but they help us understand how ancient communities thought about angels, the afterlife, judgment, marriage customs, and cosmic order. When you combine that with linguistic study and the biblical text itself, the result is a fuller and more coherent picture of the ancient world.
All of this taught me how much beauty and continuity live beneath the surface when Scripture is allowed to speak from within its original cultural world. Passages that once seemed disconnected suddenly fit together with remarkable clarity. That realization humbled me and reminded me that the Bible was written within a real historical context, to real people who shared a worldview very different from ours. Honoring that world not only deepens our understanding but also brings us closer to the heart of the text itself.
What is one thing you hope readers take away from your book?
If there is one thing I hope readers take away from this book, it is a deeper appreciation for how transformative Scripture becomes when we honor its original context. The Bible did not emerge in a vacuum, and when we approach it through the language, culture, and worldview of ancient Yisra’el, we begin to see truths that modern traditions often overlook or soften. That awareness can bring both clarity and curiosity—clarity in understanding what the text is actually saying, and curiosity to keep asking hard questions without fear.
At the same time, I hope it renews a sense of awe for the God who reveals Himself within that context. My prayer is that readers walk away not only with stronger historical and linguistic insight, but with a deeper faith—one rooted in truth, not assumption. If this book encourages believers to read with fresh eyes, greater humility, and a sincere hunger for the heart of Scripture, then it has accomplished its purpose.
Author Links: Goodreads | X (Twitter) | Facebook | Website | Amazon
More than a devotional guide and more grounded than a theological essay, this book functions as a lens-cleaner for students of Scripture who want to see the biblical text on its own terms. With clarity and accessibility, it explores how concepts such as honor and shame, communal identity, covenantal relationships, Hebraic idioms, and ancient Near Eastern worldview shaped the original meaning and intent of biblical passages.
Written from within a Hebraic worldview, and with a commitment to both historical integrity and discipleship, the study reframes familiar themes through the eyes of the ancient Yisra’elite community. The result is not speculation or novelty, but restoration—helping modern readers hear the biblical message as its first audience would have understood it.
In this study you will explore:
How the ancient Yisra’elite worldview differs from modern Western assumptions
Why concepts like honor, shame, covenant, kinship, and communal ethics are essential for understanding Scripture
The impact of Hebraic language and idioms on meaning and interpretation
How the Bible communicates through patterns, cycles, and narrative structures rather than abstract doctrines
The difference between covenantal relationships and modern contract-thinking
What happens when Scripture is read within its own cultural soil rather than through later philosophical frameworks
Ideal for readers who:
Want to understand the Bible in its historical and cultural context
Sense a disconnect between ancient Scripture and modern Western interpretation
Teach or lead Bible studies, small groups, or discipleship courses
Are exploring the Hebraic roots of the faith
Desire a deeper, more grounded approach beyond commentary-driven theology
Are curious how honor-shame culture shapes biblical narratives and ethics
