Adam Shields

Takeaway: God Loves you personally.

I understand why Max Lucado is such a popular author.  He is a great story teller.  He wraps up good lessons in humorous stories and retells scripture in modern versions that help the reader to think about them in a new way.  Lucado does what a good Christian author should do, gets us to think about God and and spiritual matters as part of daily life and not just as a portion of life.

I am not really sure whether this was a free promotion or if someone that shares my audible account purchased this.  I know I have had it for a while and just never listened to it.  It is a short books (really short if you have the abridged audiobook).  Still it feels a bit meandering (the positive version of the word, like walking on a wooded path).  Lucado keeps walking around the subject and taking different approaches.  The basic point is that God knows you as an individual.  That we feel want and desire because we long for God and that want and desire will never fully be satisfied short of Christ’s return.  It is a good message, one that I think that many people need to hear and to respond to concretely.

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Summary: As an adult these are just good enough that I keep reading/listening if I can find them free.

This is another power of free illustration.  I found the audiobook free for the first book on Audible.com.  Liked the series and bought the second book.  The second book was not as good so I decided not to buy the third book.  Then found it free from the Overdrive library system.  The third book was even less entertaining than the second, so I decided to just stop.  But then I found book four free on Overdrive as well and I didn’t see anything else that was really interesting.  So I listened to book four.

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Takeaway: I am not sure all of the interest in heaven is completely positive.

I want to say up front, I am very skeptical about this book.  I am very skeptical about anything that is based heavily on the account of a young child.  There was an extended section in Mistakes Were Made, But Not By Me about how easy it is to get children to give detailed accounts of things that never happened.  Things that you think children could not know about, horrible things, children can talk about with candor and sincerity.  The children are not ‘lying’ they are telling you want what you want to hear and you are hearing what you want.  This can be true with adults as well.  We do many things in an attempt to justify our own actions and make ourselves feel better.  Todd Burpo says repeatedly throughout the book that he tried hard not ask leading questions or suggest things that would influence Colton (the son that goes to Heaven).  But it is impossible to independently verify anything about Colton’s trip to heaven or the family’s influence on Colton.  So we have to take their word for it.

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Takeaway: God wants us to be holy.

I, and I think many modern Christians, have an difficulty getting my mind around holiness. While I know that there are several passages that encourage us to “Be Holy as God is Holy”, I  have been tainted in my understanding of holiness by the legalism that some Christians of the past 150 years. I believe that a mix of social progressivism, post-millennial understanding of Christ return, and the pietist denominations means that there was a greater focus on external issues of holiness, to the detriment of internal holiness. It is always easier to create rules and follow them than it is to truly focus on heart issues of holiness. After all, what is harder, not playing cards, not drinking alcohol, not dancing or not being jealous of someone else, not desiring what someone else has, and not calling someone a fool in your heart.

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Takeaway: As with many other areas of life, holding grudges against the church hurts you more than the church.

Purchase Links: Hardcover, Kindle Edition

Stephen Mansfield has become well known for writing about the faith of politicians.  His books on Bush, Obama, Delay, Palin and Churchhill have sold well and helped Mansfield become a regular on the talk show and speaker circuit.  I have not read any of those books, so I cannot speak to them.  I did read God and Guinness and thought it was decent. ReChurch is a very different book from all of those.

Stephen Mansfield before he became a writer, speaker and consultant, was a pastor.  For ten years he was the pastor of a growing church until a disagreement with church elders left him without a church, job and bitter.  He does not give details about the incident, but does talk frankly about the hurt.

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