Customer Reviews

When Being Good Isn't Good Enough

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This is one of those rare books that is able to touch people where they are really hurting, heal their wounds, and restore to them a vision of God's grace in their lives. It is designed for Christians who are particularly weary of all the burdensome rule-keeping they encounter in so many churches, and who have been spiritually injured by other Christians. My wife and I read it during a period when we were trying to recover from severe spiritual abuse in a small, cult-like group of Bible-believing Christians. Soon afterward we were priviledged to meet the author, and to share our sad experience with him. Steve Brown is a delightful writer -- but he is even more delightful in person! Now, as my wife and I go back to this book every once in a while for spiritual refreshment, we can hear the voice of the author (it doesn't hurt that we also listen to his "Key Life" radio program), and we know it's the voice of experience, sincerity, and grace. Steve Brown is a thoroughly orthodox, committed Christian who doesn't let that stop him from being gracious and loving, as so many these days seem to do.

This is a great book to read if you're thinking of backsliding due to criticism by the "spirit-filled" members of your church. I read this book in Spanish and it is just as powerful. The book deals with many aspects of daily christian life and how we get caught up with trying to meet with other's expectations. It brings you back to the basics of being a child of God, that feeling you had when you first believed. If you're struggling, like I was because of other people's opinion as to what you should be, then this is the book for you. The first chapter alone will convince you to keep God, and not man, in the right place.

This book does a great job of helping us keep our perspective where it should be. It helps us understand how God sees us. It also helps us understand our flawed, culturally influenced view, of ourselves. I thought the Piano Teacher story was an awesome glimpse at how a loving God desires to relate to us.

All of Steve Brown's books contain great illustrations, stories, quotes, and make you laugh and sometimes cry. He has the ability (as few do) to make reformed theology fun.

This book is no exception. I think that Chapter 2 "The Music of Freedom" (a marvelous parable on sanctification) is worth the price of the book. Brown writes this book to help stave off the legalism that is so prevalent among Christians. He writes this book to articulate this thesis: "Obedience doesn't lead to freedom. Freedom leads to obedience. If that is backwards you lose both your freedom and eventually your obedience."

The number one reason to read this book is that it will encourage you. It will fill you with practical principles from God's Word that will help you tap into the glorious riches you already have in Christ.

This book carefully and conscientiously explains how one should conduct him/herself with regards to an imaginary figure in the sky. The "humanized" divine towards which the author would ostensibly direct us is based on a collection of folk-tales first circulated a few thousand years ago. Apparently sequential translations and rampant inconsistencies do nothing to dilute the power of this text. Think of a stern, slightly judgmental, Santa Claus and you are on the right track. Apparently this magical being (like a unicorn?) wants things from us, and these things free us from the expectations of our fellow humans. If thinking about bunny rabbits also works to console you, then this book is for you!