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Thoughts on the Christian life in a fallen world

Sunday, July 27, 2014

A Beautiful Defeat - Kevin Malarkey

Find true freedom and purpose in total surrender to God.  Before beginning a writing and speaking career, the author owned a Christian psychotherapy practice, and has many years experience talking to people about the need for surrender to God in their lives.  He starts out the book expressing how many of us feel.  We would "rather have a root canal without anesthetic than get real and reveal my struggles."  But only by being authentic and dying to self can we receive true freedom in Christ.  These subjects are usually not brought up in the latest "Christian" bestseller. In a chapter titled, Prepare for Your Mission, the author encourages all of us to make Jesus our king and not just a consultant or consort.
  He states, "Jesus is the King.  He's not our consort or consultant to see us through the lives we make for ourselves."
He encourages us to "Define your mission and wear your armor." It is a struggle against the world, the devil, and the flesh.  Through personal stories and honest repentance, the author shares on a personal basis how God has worked in his life.  At the end of each chapter is a step to a surrendered life, and action step, and a prayer.  Some of the most powerful passages come in the chapter titled Where Our struggles really come from, where he states, "We'd better find something more reliable to base our understanding on than how we may be feeling in any given moment." and " Chose to believe God instead of your feelings." So many of us need to hear these words, because a lot of the world's reality, even for Christians, is how we are feeling at the moment.
The book can be summed up as this in Chapter 3, "The fact is that we must defeat the inclination of our flesh, This is what I call a beautiful defeat."
There is am appendix titled Ten steps to a surrendered life, which include an action step and prayer for each chapter, and an appendix titled, Ten Bible verses on Surrender and Dying to self.  This book was easy to read, and will keep your attention through the 10 chapters.
There are not that many authors today that are willing to write a book on surrender and dying to self, and this book is one of the few I have read recently.  I would recommend this book to anyone who is struggling with this world, and the flesh, and desires to live a God pleasing life, which should be any Christian today.
Published by Nelson Books, an imprint of Thomas Nelson.
I have received a complimentary copy of this book in exchange for this review.

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