Customer Reviews

Tony Evans Speaks Out on Sexual Purity (Tony Evans Speaks Out on.. Booklet Series)

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Excellent information for the Christian world. Provides great discussion for Christian singles. A must read.

If you have never heard Tony Evans speak in person or on the radio, you should make every effort to do so. His energy and passion make him an extremely engaging public speaker. And he usually has some important stuff to communicate. He speaks very directly and to the point, which allows him to connect with people in ways that many pastors cannot because they refuse to speak with such candor.

I describe these things because they directly relate to this little booklet. It appears that these 50 pages of text were pulled directly from one of Evans' sermons. Whether or not this is true, it reads just like his public speaking technique, which is not necessarily a great thing. Evans does not seem to understand the difference in communicating via the spoken word and the written page.

Evans writes with his typical bluster and bluntness. What would surely sound interesting and challenging if presented with Evans' bombastic speaking style reads rather stilted and thoughtless. The fine art of writing is more complex than transcription of spoken thoughts. Evans would be well-served to consider this reality.

Nonetheless, this booklet does offer some important concepts. What Evans is able to do in this format is to lay out some truths about God's expectations for sexual purity without shrinking back from making what the world would call outrageous claims. He calls the church to complete and total sexual abstinence outside the confines of marriage, parameters that God has established but remain extremely elusive in our culture. His frank approach will surely irritate some folks, but this truth needs to be communicated. Hopefully, Evans reputation as a truth-teller will grant him a platform to connect with people who need to hear this message. Though I started the book already agreeing with his main ideas, it was good for me to consider why God places such seemingly demanding expectations on Christ-followers.

Though this booklet is too short to offer much profundity and too Evansesque to provide any nuanced analysis of these issues, it will hopefully speak those who need to know that God values sex and wants us to enjoy it appropriately.

In this booklet format, Tony Evans hits on some important topics which merely scratch the surface, and I would refer the readers to much more "meatier" discussions with authors who have written extensively on these topics. But this doesn't take away from Evans and his points of view.

He makes some statements such as:

"You can't enjoy sex the way God intended you to enjoy it if you refuse to stay within the lines He has drawn."

"Unrestricted sex is being touted as a shortcut to personal fulfillment and satisfaction. People have given up their virtue for sex, traded their families for it - and now they're getting sick and dying because of it." I wonder if he's speaking to his own racial group, here.

"A deeper purpose for sex, is to inaugurate or initiate, the covenant of marriage."

"The act of marriage is another form of consecration."

"What we have today is what I call the 'Alpo Crowd,' a generation of men whose sexual standards are no higher than my dog's."

If you like Tony Evans' confrontational style, you'll enjoy this booklet and even get a few laughs, if not a few provocative thoughts. It was an interesting read, and you can walk away chewing on some ideas, here.