Customer Reviews

Renewing Your Spiritual Passion (Gordon MacDonald Bestseller Series)

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MacDonald scored a home run with this excellent book. The author looks at the journey of life we are all on and catalogs the issues that drain us and slow us down. He then states that spiritual passion has an ethereal quality about it, and if not taken care of it will soon disappear. He then shows us how to regain lost spiritual passion through safe places, still times and special friends.

Macdonalds passionate writing style is a welcome breeze of refreshment. Finally, I was reading an author who not only writes of the things of God, but employs beautiful prose in doing so. As I read his chapter on positive and negative people, it brought to mind the people I have dealt with over the years. I realized that it was the Very Nice People and the Very Draining People who occupy most of my time. It is the authors contention that while we do not ignore these people, we should try to focus our time on those who enhance our ministries. In this respect, he echoes John Maxwells dictum about spending most of our people time with the top twenty percent of influences in the church.

MacDonald needs to be more precise in distinguishing between ambition and passionate desire; the distinction he makes seems somewhat artificial. He says that ambition is the urge to get ahead, to establish oneself powerfully. My question is this: Just what is the difference between this and the urge to do great things for Christ and profile security for one?s family. Ambition, in itself, is not evil. It is the motivation behind our ambition that either enhances it or taints it. Too many pastors have too little ambition; they settle for small vision, mediocre ministries and call themselves spiritual.

I highly recommend this book. It is written in a style and manner that is delightful to read and gives solid advice on how to renew our passion for God.

Speaking clearly from experience, and perhaps even from a wearied condition, Gordon MacDonald does a thorough job of identifying various kinds of habits, individuals, attitudes, and situations which are prone to drain us of spiritual passion, or quite likely of any passion whatsoever. In fact he does so thorough a job that the men in my Bible study class began to question whether the book would do much more than define the problem. MacDonald does offer some wise counsel after a clear transition from "problem" to "solution" is made on page 119: "After all of this discussion about weariness and passionlessness, is there anything positive to say? Are there principles and truths that, when properly applied, permit one to put the inner, and even the outer, life back into form in much the same way as we realign the pool balls at the beginning of a game?" At this point the book does begin to outline the sorts of practices and relationships that help a person recharge. Reservations expressed in class had to do with labeling people as "the very draining people", "the very important people", "the very nice people", etc. and advocating the need to recognize people as such so we can appropriately tailor our responses. Students questioned the wisdom here and doubted whether the "normal Christian life" is truly intended to always exhibit passion. Several cited examples of people like Paul, Elijah, Job, Jonah, etc. who seemed utterly despondent at times. Another reservation had to do with the relative lack of scripture references as the foundation for the specific points being made and for the book as a whole. Some of MacDonald's other works come highly recommended and may be better starting points for those who are not familiar with his writing.

For those, like me, who find themselves wondering why such hard work for jobs, family, church, etc. result in such little joy and satisfaction, Mr. MacDonald's writing may bring some solice. I found great relief in his experiences and antecdotes and also found the initiative to investigate why I lacked spritual passion. The book provided me with answers as to why I lacked passion, what sapped my passion and what elements could be placed in my life to maintain passion. This book was recommended to me and I would recommend (and have recommended) it to others.

"Renewing Your Spiritual Passion" by Gordon MacDonald focuses on how a Christian renew their original depth of relationship with Jesus Christ when life's challenges bring the reader to a state of spiritual exhaustion. Indeed, as one travels the Christian walk, you will eventually either find yourself in such a state or being severely challenged to the point of exhaustion.

Among the points covered include:

1. How our busy schedules leave little time to grow our relationship with Jesus Christ.
2. Threats we encounter to spiritual passion.
3. People who bring joy.
4. People who drain us.
5. How we can develop "safe places" where we can spend time alone with God.
6. How people in church can either encourage or drain us.
7. The types of special friends we need in our lives.

A great read for anyone who is spiritually exhausted or headed that way and wants to change direction.

Read, enjoy, and be encouraged.

Recommended.

Even though this book is written for people of the ministry, it can help us all identify folks that we need on our spiritual journey and those that perhaps should be avoided. Filled with Biblical references.