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29 of 35 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
It is for freedom that Christ set has set us free, January 30, 2010
This review is from: Free Book: I am a fanatic about freedom. I'm tired of seeing people beaten down by the world's systems and by religion. God's offering real freedom. Get yours. (Paperback)
After reading a few of these reviews, I honestly wondered if I read a different book. Growing up in the "church," I routinely remember obeying the Law as the prerequisite for God being pleased with me. Guilt and fear were the common emotions I felt whenever I was reminded of all the ways I was "falling short." What Brian talks about in Free stands in absolute contrast to that...that my striving is not what the Lord desires, but that as I receive more of Him, I can walk in greater and greater freedom, knowing that my Father loves me because I'm his son, not because I follow all the rules correctly.
I'd say this book will ABSOLUTELY ruffle the feathers of those who believe their following of the rules religion has laid before them will earn them special status before the Lord. My prayer is that the Spirit of the Lord, spurred by this book, will awaken a desire to reconnect with the Lord on the terms he's laid out for relationship, not what religion has mandated.
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11 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Refreshing, February 1, 2010
This review is from: Free Book: I am a fanatic about freedom. I'm tired of seeing people beaten down by the world's systems and by religion. God's offering real freedom. Get yours. (Paperback)
I liked this book and I am free to say so, too. First of all it's just a good read. Tome's style is easygoing, conversational, and makes you feel as though you and he are engaged in a conversation. Like some other reviewers, I think the first couple of chapters could use some help, but keep going. It gets better the farther in you get. He finds his stride in the latter half of the book, but the front half is worth you time as well.
It is so refreshing to read about our freedom in Christ in a non academic tone and by someone who seems to live it. Make no mistakes, this isn't about setting aside God's authority and making up our own. Not by a long shot. What this author has accomplished is explaining a lot of that in ways that remove the harsh legalistic tendencies and replacing them with the joy and abundant life promised by Jesus. Of course, along the way he ruffles feathers and rattles cages. That's the point.
His work on strongholds is especially complete. He discusses the relapses with skill and clarity. The range of strongholds goes much farther than the usual mention of drugs, alcohol and sex. It gets into your personal space and challenges attitudes and crutches we all cherish. He uses personal experiences that the reader can easily relate to in his or her own life. No details that don't move the example into the reader's life.
Some will object to mention of no helmet, beer, gay and some vernacular terms that you won't find in the more erudite books that address the same topic. Could we have done without them? Possibly, but then the opportunity for an attitude check related to those areas would have been missed.
This is one of those books that I'd like my friends to read. Good work, Brian!
Reviewed for BookSneeze
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9 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Five Stars in Places, One Star in Others, March 16, 2010
This review is from: Free Book: I am a fanatic about freedom. I'm tired of seeing people beaten down by the world's systems and by religion. God's offering real freedom. Get yours. (Paperback)
Right on the front cover Pastor Brian Tome reveals his agenda for Free Book*: "I am fanatical about freedom. And I'm fanatical about coming at you hard in this book." In an effort to come at the reader hard, Tome spends the first couple of chapters making lots of extreme statements just to let the reader know how fanatical he really is. Frankly, he got off on the wrong foot with me, coming across as rather proud of just how free he is. I kept finding myself asking, "Did he really mean that?" or "Did he really need to say that?" For instance, Tome likes beer. I have no problem with that. But that seems to be his favorite liberty to flaunt, so he brings it up on a number of occasions. (The second most mentioned freedom is riding his Harley without a helmet.) It's as if he has a particular group of people in mind whose skin he is trying to get under. This group he calls the "Bible Thumpers" and most of the time they are an easily spotted straw man. I'm not sure how many times he contrasts his freedom to the bondage of Bible Thumpers, but it's more than I could have counted on one hand. The statement that bothered me the most was his claim that "we don't need another book about the cross. But another book about freedom? Yes." I'm wondering how he thought he could write a book about freedom in Christ without the cross being a central theme. (See Colossians 1:22 and Hebrews 2:15 for starters.)
After the first couple of chapters Tome settles down and offers a few valuable chapters. In the chapter titled "Evicting the Squatters", Tome uses the imagery of letting squatters make themselves at home in your backyard as an effective metaphor for how Christians allow sin to make itself at home in our lives. The chapter "Blahs, Break, Blues and Blessing" was also quite insightful. In it Tome uses the Iraelites' progression from slavery in Egypt to victory in the Promised Land to show how believers can progress through these four B's. In "When Grace Meets Truth" Tome unpacks these twin attributes in the life of Jesus and shows the need for both in both abundance and balance in the Christian's life.
There were times when I really wanted to make this book a five-star recommendation. But there were simply too many one-star moments for me to be able to do this. I say this as one who could stand to experience some of the freedom Pastor Tome writes about, not as one who has gone further down the road of liberty than he has. I truly believe when he has walked down that road a little longer himself, Tome will be able to rewrite this book and be just as fanatical about freedom but a lot more wise in how he expresses it.
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