About the Book

Book: Significant

Author: Carol McLeod

Genre: Christian Living, Women’s Interest

Release Date: November 5, 2019

In the midst of our busy, stressful lives and the increasingly chaotic state of our world, we can lose sight of—or never really discover—our personal significance. We desire meaning and fulfillment but battle the stress and loneliness that often push their way into the forefront of life.

What makes you significant as an individual? As a woman? As a wife, mother, daughter, or friend? No matter what your age or current course in life, you can come to know your remarkable significance and eternal value. As you thirst for relief from stress and loneliness, you can build a foundation on what is divine and eternal, while also immensely practical for this life on earth. The truths God says about you as a woman are powerful and glorious!

In Significant, you will discover that you are the steward of your own self and will be challenged to embrace every season of your life. What is God calling you to do through the power of His Holy Spirit? The days of cowering in fear, hiding behind insignificance, and wallowing in lack of opportunities are over. God is blowing doors wide open for women as never before. It is time for women to march forward in grand anticipation of all that God can do through even one woman submitted to the call of God and filled with His Spirit.

So often we look for identity, purpose, and comfort in all the wrong places. We have sought lasting meaning from temporary fixes, immature voices, and cultural Band-Aids. This book is a call to women who possess a relentless desire to discover their unique purpose, to embrace their true identity, and to be comforted by irrepressible hope. Significant reminds women from every generation that identity, confidence, and purpose come from who God is—not from how we feel at any given time. How wonderful to know that we are allowed to be both God’s masterpiece and a work in progress at the same time!

You never know your true self until you know yourself in God.

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About the Author

Carol McLeod is a popular speaker at women’s conferences and retreats through Carol McLeod Ministries. She is the author of ten books, including Guide Your Mind, Guard Your Heart, Grace Your Tongue (Whitaker House, 2018), Joy for All Seasons (Bridge-Logos, 2016), Holy Estrogen (Harrison House, 2012), and Defiant Joy(Thomas Nelson, 2006). Carol hosts a daily podcast, A Jolt of Joy! on the Charisma Podcast Network, and a weekly podcast, The Joy of Motherhood, which is listened to by thousands of moms around the world. Her blog, Joy for the Journey (formerly A Cup of Tea with Carol), has been named in the Top 50 Faith Blogs for Women. After her 2013 devotional 21 Days to Beat Depression had nearly 100,000 downloads in the first month, YouVersion picked it up, where it has been read over 500,000 times in five years. She also has ten other devotionals on YouVersion, including Guide Your Mind, Guard Your Heart, Grace Your Tongue. Carol writes a weekly column for Ministry Today and often writes for Charisma magazine. She is also a frequent guest on and has cohosted 100 Huntley Street. Her teaching DVD The Rooms of a Woman’s Heartwon a Telly Award in 2005 for excellence in religious programming. The first Women’s Chaplain at Oral Roberts University, she currently serves on the university’s Alumni Board of Directors. Carol has been married to her college sweetheart, Craig, for over forty years and is the mother of five children in heaven and five children on earth. Carol and Craig are now enjoying their new titles as “Marmee and Pa” to seven captivating grandchildren! She and her husband recently moved to Oklahoma, where Craig serves as the North American Director for Global Partners, a missions organization that plants churches in remote areas of the world.

More from Carol

Significant is the book that I have yearned to write ever since I was a young woman in college and was deeply impacted by Elisabeth Elliot’s classic work Let Me Be a Woman. That book, which Elisabeth wrote in the form of advice to her daughter, Valerie, on the brink of her marriage, taught me, in every way that mattered, how to be a woman of value and purpose. Elisabeth knew that the only way a woman could exert any lasting influence on her culture was to embrace the truths found in the Word of God.

I remember longing to have a profound influence on a generation of women the way Elisabeth did on the young women of my own generation. I aspired, even at the naive age of twenty-two, to be a voice of wisdom and purpose for the women who would come after me.

The years flew by, and soon I was a young mother who was homeschooling her brood of five creative, active children. Every school-day morning at ten, I sent the children off to read alone or to go outside to play so that I could turn on my little transistor radio and listen to Gateway to Joy, the thirty-minute program that Elisabeth Elliot hosted for many years. In that season of my life, I was smitten by her knack for calling me out of the daily routine of dishes, laundry, and little sleep to a sacred place of loving and serving the Savior. Elisabeth reminded me time after time that even the mundane can be transformed into a place of beautiful worship. Even today, I can still hear her voice saying, “Anything, if offered to God, can and will become your gateway to joy.”

Isn’t it interesting to realize that a person you have never met has the ability to change your life? As I have learned from so many people whom I have never met in person, I hope that my voice will not just be static in your world, but that you will clearly hear and take to heart the life-changing truths I present in this book. You can be assured that these truths have been gleaned by a real woman who has embraced the fulfillment and joy that comes from submitting her life to God’s abundant calling.

My Review

Earlier this year, I read Carol McLeod’s “Storm Proof”, and it truly spoke to my heart and stood out as one of the best nonfiction books I read in 2019. Now, however, I think that “Significant” might be eclipsing it for the top spot! With any work of Christian nonfiction, there is a requisite balance of Scripture, information, and detail, and pulling it all together is not an easy task. Furthermore, engaging the reader and making them want to keep turning pages adds to the challenge. What is the best way to speak to and embolden women in today’s self-loving and judgmental culture?

Simply put, “Significant” encourages and builds women up in the Lord. McLeod addresses the contemporary issues that weigh us, as women, down, and she does so through friendly, uplifting, conversational dialogue. As we sift through our identity and purpose, we discover the glorious hope given to us. We can never understand who we are until we realize Whose we are. In God’s own Word, the Bible, He tells us that we are created in His image. McLeod points out two aspects of the Creation that I had not previously considered: that God referred to everything He created as good, but mankind he called “very good”, and that Eve listened to the serpent’s statement that she would become like God if she ate the forbidden fruit when in fact she was already like God! If we realize that we are the pinnacle of God’s creation, and that He has had plans for each of our lives since eternity past, even giving up His own Son Jesus that we might live, how can we feel anything but significant?

Another truth that stood out to me while reading this book is that because God loves us and will always do what is good for us and what will bring Him glory (Romans 8:28), we can trust that we are here, when and where we are, for a purpose. “We were created by God to reveal His heart and to do His good works during this singular moment in all of recorded time.” So we are living today and not at any time in the past because God needs us here, today. McLeod reminds us that “to live a truly significant life, we must simply leave a positive impact on those who surround us.” In five affirming sections, each beginning with the phrase “You Are…”, she demonstrates what God’s Word says about us, addressing the weary, the anxious, the hopeless. As a woman who has dealt with infertility and miscarriage, depression, and cancer, McLeod herself speaks from a place of experience. She uses Hebrew words throughout her book to demonstrate both the strength of meaning and impact of certain Scriptures, which I loved, and concludes each chapter with a quotation, most of which are from women.

For any woman struggling to figure out who she is, why she is, and where she belongs, I highly recommend “Significant.” Let it be a guide that points you to the Bible and to the Lord God Himself. After all, “Your life, dear friend, will only be as significant as your choice to lay down your life and tell Jesus’s story. The overriding, driving purpose of your life is to reveal Jesus to others!”

I received a complimentary copy of this book through CelebrateLit and was not required to post a favorable review. All opinions are my own.