In this book Max Lucado asks: “Can you imagine your life without fear?” and then sets out to try and answer that.
Max starts the book by introducing us to his brother Dee and with this anecdote he also tries to identify why we fear – or to put it in the title of the chapter “Why Are We Afraid?”. It’s a good question and Max does a good job of identifying some of our personal fears from unemployment to terrorism to death.
Most of his anecdotes stem from scripture, but although plentiful he doesn’t over use scripture and cleverly segues between that and other life anecdotes… at one point early in the book he asks; “What if faith, not fear,was your default reaction to threats?“.
The book cover includes this extract:
Imagine your life, wholly untouched by angst. What if faith, not fear, was your default reaction to threats? If you could hover a fear magnet over your heart and extract every last shaving of dread, insecurity, or doubt, what would remain? Envision a day, just one day, where you could trust more and fear less.
Max then delves into each of the main fears that we ‘suffer’ from on a daily basis, devoting a chapter at a time to these.
- Fear of Not Mattering
- Fear of Disappointing God
- Fear of Running Out
- Fear of Not Protecting my Kids
- Fear of Overwhelming Challenges
- Fear of Worst Case Scenarios
- Fear of Violence
- Fear of the Coming Winter
- Fear of Life’s Final Moments
- Frea of What’s Next
- Fear that God Is Not Real
- Fear of Global calamity
- Fear of God Getting Out of My Box
Each chapter discusses the fear and frequently reverts to scripture to back up his stance on why we shouldn’t fear. Even I, as a self proclaimed fearer of little (except those natural things that perhaps should be feared … deadly snakes; earthquakes; etc) found a lot of encouragement from this easy to read and unputdownable book.
I am certainly going to be recommending my friends to read this book – though it has a lot of excellent information included, I don’t really see this book talking to non-Christians.
I confess, my only prior experience of Max Lucado was with his “Hermie and Friends” series for children (which mine love) and was pleasantly surprised by this book and I look forward to going through the included discussion guide.
Here are some extra links that you should check out:
And these Fearless videos:
Q&A – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OVR0n4KiIyQ
General Greeting http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NRVjHVOlsX4
60 sec commercial http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ih_L7w0-_p4&feature=related
