Customer Reviews

Breaking the Rules: Trading Performance for Intimacy with God

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Every once in a great while you are privileged to be party to a life changing, game changing conversation...such is the case in my reading of Fil Anderson's Breaking the Rules...pretty much the entire book is highlighted. If you have ever wrestled with the heaviness of required rules and regulations and believed that you always came up short...this is the conversation to help set you free. If you have struggled with dogma that seems at odds with your own heart and head, this is the book for you. Fil Anderson reveals his own personal story with brilliance, respect, and profound love captivating the reader with both challenge and celebration. It is a story not to be missed. It is a message resonating within anyone who has grappled with working so very hard to "be more, to be better, to be worthy." If in any way, you might relate...buy the book. Read the story. And if you are lucky enough....young enough...to not yet relate to such weight....read the book as a pro-active measure against ever being entrapped by well-meaning, but sadly misdirected doctrine. Fil's book is an insightful voice that both compels the rebel and embraces that worthy of rebellion....As I said...buy the book..read the story...it is a life changer...a game changer..it is money and time very well spent.

Breaking the Rules is a must read. The transparency in which Fil Anderson writes is amazing. He had me from the first page. This book is a must for anyone who is seeking a closer, more intimate relationship with God. Read it, savor it, talk with God about it. Breaking the Rules is life changing and I'm sure I will read it many times.

I like Fil Anderson. His voice is authentic. He is vulnerable. He opens himself up willingly for all to understand the impact of following rules, pleasing others, and not living intimately with God. Getting caught up in following the rules can lead one to live up to others expectations and not those of God.

Fil shares honestly from deep within and in the process reveals insights that challenge you to evaluate your relationship with God and the freedom that intimacy leads to.

Reading the book is like sitting down with a trusted friend, having a real conversation about life. It is practical, full of examples one can identify with and a voice worth listening to.

Once I started reading this book, I could not put it down. I felt like I was having coffee with a good friend as I read the words on the pages. The transparency with which he wrote challenged me to take off my masks and be more real with God and others. This book is a must read for those who are tired of superficial, plastic Christianity and want to go deeper into the life God offers us. Thank you, Fil,for the inspiration you provide!

Fil Anderson's ideas are not particularly new as they reflect a great deal of what Brennan Manning has written before. What is revolutionary about "Breaking the Rules", is that it is very
down to earth and expressed in much more simple language than Manning. It is a plain spoken call to rethink everything that religion has mistaught us and return to the basics of what Jesus taught; to break the bonds that so many churches have used to keep us dutiful to their agenda. Fil Anderson calls us to accept the simple, complete love of God and live in a relationship with Him.

Want to read another book on how religious devotion is bad but a vibrant relationship with Jesus is good? Allow me to suggest Breaking the Rules by Fil Anderson

How long has this been a rallying cry: It's not about religion, but a relationship?

Following on the style of Brennan Manning (who writes the Foreward BTW), Anderson is very transparent in his failings as a human and as a follower of Christ.

He details how aspects of his religious activities trumped his relationship with Jesus.

Inside you'll get 10 chapters that cover:

Is Your Faith in God or Religion?
The Myth That Jesus Thinks Like Us
Beauty in Brokenness
What's a Picture Worth?
Right Rules or Right Relationship?
Worse Than Blindness
Why This Waste?
Doing What We Can
The Gift of Memory
Throwing in the Towel on Religion

Over and over again you see the focus away from organized religion and toward an intimate relationship with Jesus. Through his own stories, Anderson calls on us to admit our brokenness, our failures and to stop appearing as if we have it all together.

As many in the American Church are prone to do.

I didn't find this to be a book that promotes self-pity or self-bashing but aligns the truth about who we are as sinners with who Jesus call us to be.

It's a little, thick book so it may take you some time to get through it, but the personal stories and insight on the life we can live in Jesus will get you through the chapters.


This book was provided for review by InterVarsity Press

Fil Anderson is the perfect follow-up to his previous book Running on Empty. Again he directs us to examine our intimacy with Christ rather than our performance at church or related religious endeavors. He constantly points us to focus on Jesus (who He is, and what he loves about us) rather than our human efforts to impress others. Fil is completely void of "Christian-speak" and affectation. He helped me sift through my thoughts and feelings and look at Christ in a real and personal way. He helped me to see in myself, that which creates dissatisfaction with the church community.

My book arrived in a timely manner and was brand new so there was nothing wrong with it's appearance. Thank you.

In view of comments from other reader's of this book, I am definitely in the minority. Nevertheless, I never get much from an author who chooses a highly visible target (the church) and then denegrates it with such wide strokes that no one is left unscathed. He knows (as we all do) that there are millions who have had similar experiences in the church and are thus lured to purchase the book. But is it the author's objective to offer healing by curative suggestions or simply to commiserate in print with his fellow disenchanted?
The church is far from perfect. And why should it be; it is made up of people like me who themselves are far from perfect. So anyone who has spent much time in a church at a participatory level will be aware of this . Even Peter, the "rock" on which Jesus built his church, was little more than a work in progress. And Paul soon became aware that serving his churches with patience and forgiveness would be a never-ending job.
And yet the church was born, survived, and managed to grow despite too many imperfections, failures and disasters to mention here. And what we have today is no more than the imperfect offspring of imperfect church parents, but one that gives untold billions of person-hours as well as dollars to hurting people all over the world. I wonder if its detractors can say that.
Unfortunately, I see this book as no more than a step away from the feel-good spirituallity of writers like Marianne Williamson and Deepak Chopra. Being a Christian, I find little there to which I can cling once I put their books down, for "feelings" are notoriously short-lived. In other words, feeling one's faith should lead to doing one's faith outside of one's self. And to reach out will always entail the danger of making mistakes. But without accepting that risk, we have done nothing for anyone but ourselves.