• For the Love

  • Fighting for Grace in a World of Impossible Standards
  • By: Jen Hatmaker
  • Narrated by: Jen Hatmaker
  • Length: 5 hrs and 42 mins
  • 4.7 out of 5 stars (2,738 ratings)

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For the Love  By  cover art

For the Love

By: Jen Hatmaker
Narrated by: Jen Hatmaker
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Publisher's summary

For the Love is now a New York Times best seller! Don't miss Jen's latest title, also a New York Times best seller, Of Mess & Moxie.

Best-selling author Jen Hatmaker is convinced life can be lovely and fun and courageous and kind. She reveals with humor and style how Jesus' embarrassing grace is the key to dealing with life's biggest challenge: people. The majority of our joys, struggles, thrills, and heartbreaks relate to people, beginning with ourselves and then the people we came from, married, birthed, live by, go to church with, don't like, don't understand, fear, compare ourselves to, and judge. Jen knows how the squeeze of this life can make us competitive and judgmental, how we can lose love for others and then for ourselves. She reveals how to:

  • Break free of guilt and shame by dismantling the unattainable Pinterest life.
  • Learn to engage our culture's controversial issues with a grace-first approach.
  • Be liberated to love and release the burden of always being right.
  • Identify the tools you already have to develop real-life, all-in, know-my-junk-but-love-me-anyway friendships.
  • Escape our impossible standards for parenting and marriage by accepting the standard of "mostly good".
  • Laugh your butt off.

In this raucous ride to freedom for modern women, Jen Hatmaker bares the refreshing wisdom, wry humor, no-nonsense faith, liberating insight, and fearless honesty that have made her beloved by women worldwide.

For the Love is also available in Spanish, Por el amor de...

©2015 Thomas Nelson Publishers; 2015 Jen Hatmaker

What listeners say about For the Love

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    5 out of 5 stars
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She read my diary

Any additional comments?

Just do yourself a favor and buy this book. However, if you buy the audio version, buy the print version too. I promise you won't regret either purchase.

Let me start with my favorite part of the audio version: Jen Hatmaker reads the book herself. I felt like she was sitting in front of me, talking to me. I also felt like she had just read my diary, because she seemed to know every struggle in my life.

I bought the Audible version because I do a lot of driving. Here's what happened when I listened.

1. I cried. Because she gets it. A sob session while driving, umm, maybe not so safe, but I survived and so did everyone else on the road.

2. I wanted to underline, copy, or somehow save particular sections of the book. So strong was my desire to remember these sections, that I may have grabbed my phone, paused the book, and attempted to dictate certain lines into a note on my phone. Did I mention I was driving?

3. I didn't want to get out of the car when I reached my destination. I just wanted to keep listening. How bad would it be to walk through Target with my phone on speaker trying to listen to the book?

4. I laughed. Because she's hilarious. HILARIOUS.

So, why buy the audio and print version? Because it's so cool to hear Jen read the book and you will want to listen to it more than once. But you will want the print version so you can highlight certain sections and refer to it later.

This book was what I needed at this time in my life. Also, I now have the courage to make beef bourguignon. How did Jen know that that I made a goal at the beginning of 2015 to make beef bourguignon and I keep eyeing Julia Childs' recipe in fear and trepidation? See what I mean about the diary part?

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37 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
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    2 out of 5 stars
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Many laughs, if you can endure the delivery

Would you try another book from Jen Hatmaker and/or Jen Hatmaker?

I would probably be willing to read more of Jen's books, but I would not want to listen to an audio featuring her again.

What didn’t you like about Jen Hatmaker’s performance?

While I think Jen is probably a very wonderful and caring person, her reading style was tough to take. She has a very forceful, scolding quality to her speaking that I found really oppressive over time. There was very little variation in her speaking style, even when the subject matter was different. It would have been nicer to have a less severe delivery, with more appropriate variation of tone.

Any additional comments?

There are many laughs in this book, and there were several things that I found encouraging as well. Overall, I did not really feel like the content of the book had anything to do with the title/tagline, so if you're counting on that, don't. I think I would have enjoyed it more if I had just read it instead of listening to the audio.

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9 people found this helpful

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    5 out of 5 stars
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My favorite listen this year!

I just love this book. There's a little bit of everything all wrapped in to one big ball of grace and love. You will laugh and cry right along with Jen as she reads it to you. Definitely worth the listen!

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9 people found this helpful

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    3 out of 5 stars
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    2 out of 5 stars

Sorta her comedic diary with a few lessons

This book was difficult for me to listen to and get through because I'm not a huge fan of sarcastic humor...and also because her tone (meant to be funny) sounds angry to me and is sorta draining on me. It's just not my style. But if you are looking for a Christian stand up comedian, and you are okay with sarcasm and someone that spends a large part of the book sarcastically making fun of things.....this might be more your interest. I did gleam a couple lessons from it. .....but really found it hard to get through. I think she is probably a wonderful lady, but the book just wasn't my cup of tea. :)

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7 people found this helpful

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    5 out of 5 stars
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Feel so validated

I LOVE how Jen makes my crazy seem Ok and even designed by God. She makes me feel free while being broken.

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    4 out of 5 stars
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Required reading for church/ministry leaders

Jen Hatmaker has put to words what so many of her generation are feeling, noticing and reeling from. Her chapters on church are incredibly insightful. Churchgoers will learn how to love and support a pastor well. They'll learn how to live in community and take risks. And they'll learn how to do the only real things God asks of us: to love him and his people.
In general, "For the Love" reads like a "Bossypants" for disciple-makers. Like Tina Fey's terrific book, "For the Love" is quirky and witty and sometimes is completely from left field. At other times, it's poignant and stirs up self-examination.
It'll make you want to build relationships and be truthful and be kind. And in the end, isn't that what church is supposed to be?

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6 people found this helpful

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    1 out of 5 stars
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Barely got through it.

I absolutely hated this book! I did the Seven Bible study last year and enjoyed it a million times better than this book (and if you don't know, that involved things like eating only 7 things for a month and then wearing only 7 items for a month-- it was hard core!). This book, through it had its funny parts about being a mom, for the most part felt like a series of Sermons. I'm a regular church goer at a Baptist church, so this shouldn't have bothered me but man, by the middle of this book I was done. I don't like doing reviews (or attending my book club, which is why I read this in the first place) without finishing the book, and so I did and now can honestly say-- the whole thing sucked. The best part were the Thank You Notes, I did enjoy those so that is why it earned 1 star. I also like around chapter 12 when she told three things she wants for her kids, but that was about 12 minutes out of the hours of... well, CRAP. I also go so sick her her cute little pet names for me, the reader "dear one" and her kids, "littles" and a bunch more that I had to start tuning out just to get through the book without losing my lunch. Great concept but very poorly executed.

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    5 out of 5 stars
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Listen to it NOW!

I didn't want it to end. I thought Amy Poehler's audiobook of Yes Please would be my favorite of the year, but For The Love either just tied or surpassed it. Be my BFF, Jen?

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A MUST READ! Enjoyable and encouraging. Prepare to laugh.

After listening to this book, I feel like I just had a fun filled afternoon with a good friend that encouraged me in my walk with Jesus, shared my love of being a mom, oohed and ahhed over 20+ year marriages that have blessed our lives and made me laugh out loud over fashion disasters, etc.

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For The Love is Funny, Smart, Insightful

Jen Hatmaker has a way of making even the most profound biblical concepts (grace, atonement, sanctification) SO accessible and fun to read! This book is an encouragement for anyone in ministry trying to "hold it together" while the world continues to fly apart. Her humor and wit keep me laughing while she tackles tough issues common to every Christian: How do I love people who are very different than me (even anti-Christian)? How do I care for myself amidst all the burdens and demands of ministry? How do I (as a mom, wife, mother, minister) juggle (and keep my sanity) family, friends, spouse and ministry? I LOVE her grace-filled and grateful approach to sharing Jesus with the world. A really inspirational read. Love it! Love HER!

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