Although the book is geared toward teens I would recommend it to anyone that needs a little inspiration (or swift kick in the butt). The pages are full of inspiring stories of teens that decided to step up and make a difference in their community or around the world. It is also full of hard question that will challenge and inspire anyone looking for more in life. 

I would sum up the book with this one sentence taken from the book:

"If you always do what you've always done, you will always get what you've always gotten." - from Start Here
​
Change is required in our patterns if we want things to go differently than they always have.

For more information on their cause, visit their website: https://www.therebelution.com

​“One minute you’re cursing Him, the next minute you’re defending Him?”
 
“I don’t dare to curse Him!” She screamed, “I cursed you, His filthy whore! I was made beautiful in His presence. I rebelled and He banished me from His presence for all eternity. You were created in His image. You rebel and the Son is sent to pay your debt. And yet, here you are stealing His glory like Lucifer himself.”
 
“Stealing His glory? I just want my mom to be better. I’m not trying to steal anyone’s glory.”
 
“When your heart cries for yourself it no longer turns to Him.”
 
“The Lord gives and the Lord takes away, His name is blessed.” My sister said softly.
 
I turned to my sister. Tears were dripping from her cheeks. “Mom’s not ours. I don’t want to see her sick anymore. I want her to be better but more than anything I want what God wants for our lives.”
 
“God wants mom to be sick? To potentially die from cancer?” I yelled.
 
“I don’t know what God wants!” she yelled, “I’m not God! And neither are you.”
 
“That’s not good enough. That’s just a weak copout.” I shook my head. “Saying that God doesn’t want mom to be sick and then saying it’s ok that He lets her continue to suffer? What kind of God is that?”
 
“A just God.” The woman cried. “The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. The God of Israel. The God of all those who call on the name of His Son.” She glared at me. “The same God that created you to be with Him in fellowship but allowed you to have free will so you could choose to turn your back on Him. The same God that despises sin so much that he allowed fire and water to devour thousands upon thousands of people to cleanse the Earth of their filth. The same God that demanded blood to cover the sin so that He could continue to fellowship with you, His filthy wretched whores!”
 
“Since the beginning of time, mankind has understood the power of deity. Even if it was one created with their own hands. Odin, Zeus, even the Native American spirit gods had more respect than God Himself has today.” She stood up, “That’s his plan. If you want a strategy it’s been the same since the beginning, since the fall. Steal God’s glory! You are your own god and that is why I’m here in this cell. Because you cannot accept that God’s will may not align with yours!”
 
 
Copyright © 2018 Nicole Donoho. All Rights Reserved.  

​My sister looked at the cage and then back at me. “Ok. I think you should take a moment and listen to yourself.”
 
“Or maybe listen to your sister.” The woman yelled gleefully.
 
“You’ve kidnapped somebody. What exactly do you think this is going to accomplish?”
 
“I have to know how to make it stop. This is the only way. Mom’s getting worse every day.”
 
“Kidnapping somebody isn’t going to help mom. We need to pray and trust God with mom.”
 
“Those words won’t work.” The woman sighed, “This hypocrite is too blind to see or hear any truth.”
 
“I’m the hypocrite? You’re the one acting like you love God. Who’s lying now?” I yelled.
 
The woman threw her fist towards the cell door, turned at the last minute and hit them on the ground. “Grace and mercy are wasted on filthy wretches!” She stood up, blood was dripping from where she had smashed her hands against the floor. “Did He offer us forgiveness? Did He offer us a second chance, or a third, or a fourth? No! But for you He sends the Son to pay your debt. Filthy wretched whores!” Her face shook so fast it became a blur for a moment. She dropped down to her knees and began whispering under her breath.
 
I turned to my sister. “See I told you.”
 
“This isn’t the way to help mom. You have to trust God. Put her in God’s hands and…”
 
“NO!” I shook my head. “We’ve already tried that. She’s not getting any better. This makes more sense.”
 
“This?” my sister waved her taped hands toward the cell, “This makes more sense to you?”
 
“In wars, they interrogate soldiers to get inside information. You keep saying that her cancer is not from God so I thought maybe I should go to the source.”
 
She looked at the cell and then at me. “You’ve lost your mind! You need to pray and talk to God, not interrogate demons!” She shook her head. “This isn’t what mom would want and especially not God.”
 
“How do you know what God wants?” I threw the chair across the room, “If He cared, if He was real why would He just let Mom suffer every day?”
 
“Because He is just.” The woman sobbed.
 
I turned to the cell. “What did you say?”
 
She stood up and stared at me with tears streaming down her face. “He is just! His ways are great!”
 
Copyright © 2018 Nicole Donoho. All Rights Reserved.  

​My sister stood in the doorway. Her backpack fell from her shoulder and hit the ground. “What’s going on?”
 
“I can explain. This woman is going to give us the answers we need.”
 
“Please, please have mercy.” I turned and seen the woman was on her knees bowing to the floor. “I just want to be free from here, have mercy.”
 
My sister rushed into the cabin. “Have you lost your mind? Did you kidnap this woman? You’ll have to excuse my…”
 
“Don’t touch the cell it’s electrified!” I yelled as her hand touched the cell. She dropped to the ground.
 
“Now, look what you’ve done!” the woman hissed, “She is the real deal! Hypocrite!” She yelled. “Help! Somebody help!”
 
“Shut up!” I yelled as I put my arms underneath my sister’s arms and drug her over to the bed. I sat her up and duct tapped her waist to the post at the end of the bed. I taped her ankles together and then taped her hands together.
 
She moaned and started coughing. She coughed a few more times and then opened her eyes. “What…what’s going on?”
 
“What are you doing here?”
 
“I came up here to get away for a few days.” She reached her hand to her head. She looked at her wrist and then at me. “What’s going on? Why did you duct tape me? Have you lost your mind?”
 
“I can’t let you release her until I get the answers that I need.”
 
“You kidnapped somebody!”
 
“She’s demon possessed. She can tell us what we need to know.”
 
My sister looked at me with confusion. “What we need to know about what?”
 
“How to stop all this. How to beat him.”
 
“How to beat who?”
 
“Satan!”
 
Copyright © 2018 Nicole Donoho. All Rights Reserved.  

“You wouldn’t understand his strategy if Satan himself was standing here explaining it to you. He’s already got you so blinded.”
 
“I’m not blinded.”
 
“You think you know the Christ? You say you are one of His followers? If that is the case then show the same mercy, he showed us all those years ago.”
 
“Mercy? When did Christ ever show demons mercy?”
 
“When we begged him to. I was there when we ran into him and begged him not to send us back.”
 
“What are you talking about?”
 
“The pigs. He sent us into those dirty disgusting pigs. Even if it was just for a moment it was better than roaming the air.”
 
I sat down and opened my notebook. “Wait, are you trying to tell me that you are one of the demons that Jesus cast into the pigs?”
 
“Yes!” she closed her eyes and shook her head. “I can still see his eyes. They burned with the fire of the Father.”
 
“Why do you talk about Him like that?”
 
She opened her eyes. “Like what?”
 
“Like you’re in love with Him. I thought demons and angels were these arch enemies and demons hated God or something.”
 
“How could I hate my Creator?”
 
“You still love God even though He threw you out of Heaven?”
 
“I was beautiful once.” She looked down at herself, “More beautiful than anything I could describe for you to understand. Lucifer convinced us, convinced me, that I was beautiful on my own.” She squeezed her hands into fists. “But it was all lies! We soon realized the truth as we were banished from His presence. The moment we left His presence we realized there was no beauty apart from Him. How could there be? There was no life apart from Him, only death.”
 
The door to the cabin opened.
 
Copyright © 2018 Nicole Donoho. All Rights Reserved.  

​She rolled her eyes. “Don’t you read your Bible? What’s that little acronym they came up with a few years ago? Wait, what year is it? Maybe that was last century.” She shook her head. “It doesn’t matter. It still applies. Basic instruction before leaving Earth. Christ already laid it all out for you to study. You should already know.”
 
“I’ve read the Bible. I’m tired of things going good one day and bad the next. I want to know how to shut him down in my life entirely.” I stared at her, “And I’d appreciate it if you told me. The last guy wasn’t willing to cooperate.”
 
She jerked her head up from staring at the floor. “Last guy?”
 
“Yeah, you’re the fifth one I captured and the other four didn’t stick around for very long.” I walked over to the sink and filled a cup with water.
 
“Wait, wait, wait…” she snapped her fingers, “You’re that demon hunter I heard about before I came.” She looked up. “Why me? Haven’t I been punished…” she stopped quickly, got on her knees, and bowed her face and hands to the floor.
 
She was whispering something that I couldn’t understand. I walked closer to the cell. “What are you doing?” She continued to stay on the floor with her face down. “Hey!”
 
She sat up. “Listen, I don’t now what you’re looking for but I can’t give it to you. Just let me go. I only came back to have a moment of peace.”
 
“Peace?”
 
“Yes.” She closed her eyes, “Like you feel in His presence. If I could just have one more moment in His presence…”
 
“Who’s presence? God?”
 
She jumped to her feet and glared at me through the cell. “Don’t speak his name. You’re not even worthy to think it.”
 
“Excuse me? I’m the Christian, you’re the demon.”
 
She spit at my face through the bars. “You’re blinded and disgusting. You disgrace His name.” She looked up and glared at me even harder. “Why He allows such mockery to continue is beyond my knowledge. You are no follower of Christ! Give me Paul or John any day. Even Jesus himself. I’d rather go back into those pigs than suffer this.”
 
“Answer my question and I will let you go.”
 
Copyright © 2018 Nicole Donoho. All Rights Reserved.  

​My fingertips brushed the switch and a jolt of electricity zipped through my body. I felt the hand release me as I dropped to the ground. Everything went black. I coughed a few times and sat up quickly. I looked at my watch but it had stopped working, probably from the electric shock. Judging by the clock on the wall I had only been unconscious for about ten minutes. I looked at the cell. The woman was standing by the cell door glaring at me with those black soulless eyes.
 
I grabbed my notebook and pen off the floor, picked up my chair, and sat down. The woman reached for the mat on the floor. “I wouldn’t do that. You’re in a modified shark cage. Divers use them to safely observe sharks. The rubber mat is there for your protection, so the bottom of the cage doesn’t electrocute you.”
 
“What do you want with me?” She hissed.
 
“I want to know how to beat him.”
 
“Beat who?”
 
“Satan.”
 
She tilted her head to one side and raised her eyebrow. “That’s why you kidnapped me?” Her voice sounded more like the woman’s regular voice.
 
“Yes, I want to know how to beat him. I’m tired of feeling helpless and at a loss. It’s stupid. There has to be a way to live better.”
 
She shook her head. “What exactly do you think that I can give you?”
 
“Inside information. How do I stop his attack? What’s his battle plan?”
 
She sat down, crossed her legs, set her elbow on her knee, and rested her chin on her hand. “So, I’m to believe that you are a Christian?”
 
“I am a Christian.”
 
“What exactly does that word mean in today’s world?”
 
“Stop playing games, you know what it means. I’m a follower of Christ. I follow his teachings.”
 
She laughed. “If you did, you wouldn’t be asking me for advice right now.”
 
Copyright © 2018 Nicole Donoho. All Rights Reserved.  

She moaned as I carried her across the room. Her unconscious body was a lot heavier than I had anticipated and the sedatives were wearing off a lot sooner than I had hoped. I pushed her into the cell and quickly shut the door. She sat up, leaned against the bars, rubbed her head, and looked around the cell. “Where am I?”
 
“Listen, I’m really sorry to have to do this but it’s extremely important and it won’t take very long.”
 
“Wait, are you kidnapping me?” She ran to the cell door and reached her arms through the bars. “Let me out. Why are you doing this?”
 
“Don’t worry. I’m not kidnapping you. I’m not going to hurt you. I just need to get some answers from you.” I grabbed a notebook and pulled a chair up next to the door.
 
Her bright blue eyes filled with tears as she looked around the room. “Where are we?”
 
“We’re just in a cabin. You’re safe, don’t worry.”
 
“Don’t worry? I’m locked in a cell and you’re telling me not to worry?”
 
“I told you, I just need to ask you some questions. I’m not really sure how this works but I need to talk with…well, your demon.”
 
“My what?”
 
“The demon that possesses you. I need to talk to it.”
 
She stared at me blankly. She started shaking the cell door. “Can anybody hear me?” she screamed, “Please, someone let me out of here.”
 
“Listen, you can put on an act but I know the truth. I’ve been studying them long enough to know.” I pulled out my cell phone and played the video. I turned the screen toward the cell. “This is you, on the subway.” I had seen it enough times to know what was happening just by the sounds. “That’s five men trying to hold you down. You’re not that big of a woman. How do you explain that? It took ten police officers to restrain you and get you off the subway.”
 
She looked at the screen in terror. “You don’t want to do this.”
 
“Yes, I do. I need to talk with…”
 
“With me?” Her eyes turned black. She reached her arm through the cell bars faster than I could blink. She grabbed hold of my arm and squeezed. “What business do you want with me?”
 
I reached for the switch on the wall but my hand missed the switch entirely. As I attempted to pull away, I could feel her boney fingers dig deeper into my skin. I stared at the switch. It was so close, if I could just reach a smidge further.

​Copyright © 2018 Nicole Donoho. All Rights Reserved.  

A some point in the book, the setting/location/characters shift and I found myself struggling a bit to get to the end. I wanted to stick with the original characters, I wanted to hear more about what they were going through. However, despite the shift, the overall message has sunk into my soul. What would Jesus do living in my life? What choices would he make? 

My favorite nugget within the book was a simple reference to Titus Salt by a business man in the story. On a visit to England in 2017, I was able to have a brief tour of Saltaire that was almost cancelled due to the lateness of the day. I'm grateful to Jason and Shelley (you know who you are) for taking the time to give me this memory. It made reading "In His Steps" that much more real and powerful in my life.