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Review Summary: The inspiration to live a compelling life. |
Date: 2008-04-25 |
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Details: I really enjoyed this book. The book started off a little slow for me, but after two chapters I found it very engaging. The second section was particularly practical. It helped me to reconsider how I look at spiritual growth. To often my Christian life has been more talk than walk. This book encouraged me to live a more compelling life. |
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Review Summary: The Beautiful Fight |
Date: 2008-04-10 |
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Details: An inspiring, challenging book that reminds us not to take our faith for granted. It offers new perspectives on some of the ruts we tend to fall into, yet keeps to the truth of the Word of God. It challenges us to be completely abandoned to the will of God and to fulfill his calling on our life. One of the best lines from the beginning of the book was that people don't remember you for what you don't do, they remember you for what you do. Christians we are called to action. Let this book encourage you on your journey of being used by God in the way that he created you for. See what God will do! |
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Review Summary: Oh what a beautiful fight it is, to be transformed |
Date: 2008-04-06 |
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Details: This is the greatest book I have ever read. I love all of Gary Thomas's book. I highly recommend it. |
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Review Summary: Beautiful Spirituality |
Date: 2008-04-04 |
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Details: This newest book from one of Evangelicalism's finest authors on spiritual formation, Gary Thomas, is excellent - one of the best books I've read this year. Thomas takes a fresh look at living a God-empowered life that is grounded in the doctrine of Christ's bodily ascension. Drawing on insights from Evangelical, Reformed, Orthodox, and Catholic traditions, Thomas shows how God's presence can change the way we use our eyes and ears, hands and feet, minds and hearts. The Beautiful Fight is a beautiful book about a beautiful spirituality of "full-bodied faith." I could barely put this book down and walked away freshly convicted, challenged, and encouraged. Having now read several of Thomas's books, I think this is my favorite to date. Treat yourself to a banquet of spiritual delights and get this book! |
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Review Summary: The Beautiful Fight Review |
Date: 2008-02-13 |
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Details: "Beautiful" and "fight," they're two words you don't see together often. Yet in Gary Thomas' latest book The Beautiful Fight they are strung together most excellently. Thomas, adjunct professor at Western Seminary and award winning author, is drawing his title from the Orthodox Fathers' reading of 2nd Timothy 4:7-8. This text, more commonly translated as "the good fight," is aptly illustrated by Thomas as something of furious beauty.
The Christian spiritual life is the common denominator throughout the three sections and16 chapters. Thomas does this by fusing together the genius and wisdom of biblical passages, church fathers (such as Clement of Alexandria and Athanasius), medieval mystics (Julian of Norwich), Puritan divines (John Flavel), along with contemporary voices like J.I. Packer, N.T. Wright, and John Piper. One thing, that's evident even at a glance, is that Thomas' thoughts on the Christian spiritual life aren't monochrome. He doesn't confine himself to the contemporary--a common error in American evangelicalism--neither does he stick to a particular theological tradition, nor one aspect of the Christian spiritual life. Instead Thomas, with a discerning ecumenism, shows that the essential witness of Christian spirituality is one of harmony. With this in mind, he writes, "Christian Spirituality is all about [...] our Creator and Lord taking ordinary people and making them potent instruments of God."
In Beautiful Fight Thomas answers the call which many Christians are longing for. That is, what does it mean to have an embodied and active faith. He does this by weaving in life-stories from his time at Regent College to his life as a husband and father. Because of his integration of life and thought the reader feels that the book is at least in part an invitation into a dialogue on, about and over the Christian spiritual life. And it's a conversation that is of the utmost importance; every where we turn, it seems, there is another front page article on `spirituality' or another book on the `spirituality of (fill in the blank).' In a world where everyone from Oprah to your local barista is a `spirituality' expert it is refreshing to hear a voice which articulates a Holy Spirit-uality. But if The Beautiful Fight is a cultural critique, it's also a critique of a lifeless orthodoxy; that's one thing that permeates every page--and it's one of the many things that will stick with you. |
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out of 8 Reviews
