Book Review: Outlive your life

Max Lucado is a story teller.  It comes naturally to him - using language to evoke feeling and emphasise his point.  Here, in Outlive Your Life: you were made to make a difference,  he uses this story telling once more.

The book is loosely based around the book of Acts.  I say loosely, because although intially it promises to immerse the reader in the story of the life of the new church, in reality each chapter takes a text as its theme.  The idea behind the book is that we can outlive our lives by making a difference to others.

I very much appreciate this premise, because I myself have a passion for making a difference - in whatever way we can.  So I was keen to read this, although these days I tend to find Lucado books not  as challenging as I would like.

I have to confess to being a little disappointed.  Although I appreciate what he is trying to do, the chapters seem almost like a collection stand alone sermons (complete with illustrations) than they do as part of a whole.  A book, in my opinion, needs to lead you on and draw you deeper.  For me, this was simply too bitesized.  And although I too like playing with language to make a point, Lucado can be a bit repetitive and in the case of retelling biblical stories, rather too keen on embellishment of detail.  I like to be drawn into a story and to use my imagination, but occasionally I felt he took this a bit too far in his descriptions.  Once you start mentally disagreeing with descriptions or finding them too detailed, your attention to the main point is lost.

And that, I think is the problem.  The book is too cluttered and does not hone itself, does not weave itself around a central point.  The introduction promises but does not deliver.

There are genuinely moving and interesting points that are made, but they were too disparate for me in my overall appreciation of the book.  This is a shame, because there are good things to be found here.  It just doesn't hold together and keep my attention.

In some ways, it felt like I should literally be listening to it - as if indeed it was a sermon series.  Perhaps there are those who will respond well to this, but for me, wanting to go deeper and to be drawn in, it felt rather frustrating.  I would put it down and keep forgetting to pick it up again, which didn't help with the cohesive (or non cohesive) element.  Of course, it may have just been me being inattentive!

I know that there will be those who disagree with me and for this I am glad: the idea of making a difference in our world because by loving others we are loving Jesus - which was a beautiful way to end the book - is a wonderful one.  I hope that there are those who read in a different way from me and therefore get more out of it.







 I received this book free from the publisher through the BookSneeze®.com  book review bloggers program. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own.

Fearless, by Max Lucado

“Fear, it seems, has taken a hundred year lease on the building next door and set up shop. Oversize and rude, fear is unwilling to share the heart with happiness. Happiness complies and leaves.”

These words are from the first chapter of Max Lucado’s new release, Fearless.

In this book, Lucado tackles the topic of fear – by covering 13 different kinds of fears we may have, sandwiched between the first and last chapters. These include fear of not mattering, fear of global calamity, fear that God is not real. He uses these chapters to engage with reader and to outline a scriptural response, using analogy, contemporary thought and situations as well as retelling biblical stories.

Initially I found it hard to focus on this book. I think this is partly because a lot of the language and analogies used are very Americanised, and as I am British it is harder to sink into the natural flow. This is not a criticism, more an observation. The book addresses the culture it inhabits, and although I too live in Western society, there are subtle differences in mindset and cultural emphases.

Nevertheless, once I had overcome this obstacle, it was a very accessible read. Lucado is a natural story teller, skilfully using evocative language and metaphors to get his point across. This can make you consider something in a different light, or even make you smile, as I did at various points.

In a culture obsessed with worry, this book is very relevant. Lucado addresses each kind of fear with sympathy, even solidarity, ensuring there is no great divide between writer and reader – we are all in the same boat.

I found this book very easy to read - for me perhaps a little too easy, as I prefer something a little more ‘meaty’ these days – looking for something deeper, you might say! Nevertheless in order to cover what he does it would be difficult for Lucado to do so in a more thorough way without making this a huge tome. In a sense, there is a book’s worth in each topic he covers.

Fearless is accessible and should appeal to a wide audience within its cultural (developed Western world) background, although it may have some difficulty crossing into other cultures. It is a good overview of our preoccupation with fear, making some sensitive yet pointed observations of our 21st Century mindset, and offsetting this with the values and attitudes of the bible.