A Look at a Book
by Sherryl Laffin

BOOK REVIEW:
Alphabet Soup
by Page Prewitt

Have you ever looked down into yourself and tried to make sense out of your life and found nothing but a mixed up mess? If you have, then Alphabet Soup by Page Prewitt, has been written just for you.

Page starts with her testimony of how her life had become a hopeless search to find a reason to live. She then met Norman Grubb and came to know who she was in Christ. After this, she saw that things were exactly how God wanted them to be and life was not a nightmare that had trapped her.

She shares about her life before this and how she became a Christian. She then went to college, got married and had children. Her knowing that she was the “Page form of Jesus Christ” helped her see herself and the life around her differently. “I began to experience a freedom and a poise that I had never known. It was now up to Him to live and be how and what he wanted to be through me.” However, sin and failure were still part of her life. She eventually found the explanation for this: that there is “no independent self.” She goes on to explain this.

One summer Page was asked to speak at a conference where she talked about when saying “who you are” is not enough. She said “before we can appreciate who we are in Christ, we need to understand who we were before Christ became our personal Savior.” She relates that in our non- Christian state our spirits were joined to Satan and he lived his self-for-self life out through us. After we became Christians our spirits are joined to Christ. The only thing that can block Him living His perfect self-for-others life out through us is the sin of unbelief—“ unbelief about who God says you really are”—Christ in our forms.

Page explains in detail how this unbelief—really a belief that we are “just us, alone”—convinces us that we are “a mess: a total mess.” The mix-up that happens to most of us is that we confuse soul with spirit. She then goes on to show us the difference between soul and spirit. This is the “missing link.” It is the key to operating our life. She said that when she found the distinction between soul and spirit and when she made the discovery that she had never functioned as an “independent” person, she had the key that opened the door.

Personally, the message of “no independent self” and the difference between body, soul and spirit has been life-saving for me. I heard it at a time when life felt hopeless and overwhelming. I had become a Christian a few years earlier but life wasn’t working. I had five children and life went from one crisis to another. With each crisis I would fall apart. I couldn’t cope. I went to Bible studies, read the Bible, prayed, went to co-dependent meetings, read every new self-help book that came out but nothing helped. My feelings would overwhelm me. I would go to bed and lie there and pray and try to calm myself so that I would be able to get up and function. I would also take long walks, hoping that they would get rid of all my nervous energy. A few times I even started smoking again but I felt so guilty that I quit. I was a basket case.

It was through Page that I learned about the difference between body, soul and spirit. I saw that I had been walking in my soul (my emotions). This is who I thought I was.

I saw that I was also seeing myself wholly independent. I saw myself as “just Sherryl who couldn’t cope.” I felt that I was lacking and incapable of living life. As Page pointed out, 1 Peter 1:3 says “His divine power has granted us everything pertaining to life” and James 1:4 says we are “perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.” She also pointed out that God said that “He that is joined to the Lord is one spirit with Him.” (1 Cor. 6:17) Consequently I saw that God was perfectly able to live His life through me. The feelings would still come up but I could now see the truth of who I was and live from that. I now carry Alphabet Soup in my purse, not only for myself but in case someone else may need it.

Until you have this answer, there is no way life will fully work for you. You will always be battling your thoughts and feelings. There will always arise a situation or problem that will seem too big to   handle or solve. As Page shares how she unmixed the mixed-up “soup” in her own life, she shows you how to do the same in yours.

Page ends by saying that “my life is no longer a confused bowl of ‘alphabet soup’! Just the opposite. My life has meaning, purpose and joy.”

This little book contains some big truths. I highly recommend it to all Christians.