In So Many Words

Title: Fearless
Author: Max Lucado
Length: 240 pages
Genre: Nonfiction
Publisher/Date: Thomas Nelson, 2009
Source: Review copy from Booksneeze

About the Book

From the publisher:

Each sunrise seems to bring fresh reasons for fear.

They’re talking layoffs at work, slowdowns in the economy, flare-ups in the Middle East, turnovers at headquarters, downturns in the housing market, upswings in global warming. The plague of our day, terrorism, begins with the word terror. Fear, it seems, has taken up a hundred-year lease on the building next door and set up shop. Oversized and rude, fear herds us into a prison of unlocked doors. Wouldn’t it be great to walk out?

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.

Can you imagine your life without fear?

My Thoughts

Although I haven’t read many of Max Lucado’s books, I remember being touched by some of his writings a number of years ago, and I have enjoyed several of his children’s books immensely. The subtitle of this book, Image Your Life Without Fear, intrigued me when I saw it on Booksneeze, so I requested a review copy on the basis of that.

Unfortunately, while I appreciated the overall message and even highlighted a few things in the first couple of chapters, I found this book to be a bit lacking in depth with regard to the complexity of the issue of fear. The later chapters seemed to simply take the basic message and apply it to examples in different arenas of life rather than to delve more deeply into the topic itself.

I am not saying that Fearless is completely without merit. I think it would make a good Sunday sermon. And as I mentioned, there were a few sentences that struck me as interesting. Here are some examples, along with my reactions:

“Imagine your life wholly untouched by angst. What if faith, not fear, was your default reaction to threats?” — I’m not sure how realistic this is, but it would be wonderful. The idea of visualization (imagining things to be a certain way) has been recommended by many people as a tool to shape future behavior, so perhaps it is possible to get closer to this type of reaction via that method.

“Fear unleashes a swarm of doubts, anger-stirring doubts. And it turns us into control freaks. . . . Fear, at its center, is a perceived loss of control.” — A good reminder of the fact that anger is a secondary emotion and that we need to look behind it to see if the anger is masking fear or some other emotion.

“Wise are the parents who regularly give their children back to God. . . . We can be loyal advocates, stubborn intercessors. We can take our parenting fears to Christ.” — I can relate to being an advocate for my son but oftentimes forget that the ultimate source of direction and inspiration is God Himself. I need to seek His guidance first as I make decisions about my son.

So, while I might recommend the first couple of chapters of Fearless, I wouldn’t suggest spending the money to buy the book. I was much more impressed and personally helped by reading Plan B by Pete Wilson, which I read shortly after I had received Lucado’s book.

It was recently suggested to me that I make a lot of my decisions out of fear, so this quote from Norman Vincent Peale caught my eye when I saw it the other day:

Fear can infect us early in life until eventually it cuts a deep groove of apprehension in all of our thinking. To counteract it, let faith, hope, and courage enter your thinking. Fear is strong, but faith is stronger yet.

One of my biggest motivators has probably been the fear of looking stupid. Ironic, because I am actually fairly intelligent. I remember my mother telling me, “For someone so smart, you sure are dumb!” when I couldn’t find something she sent me to look for in her bedroom. I think a lot of my unrealistic expectations for myself and others come out of the lack of guidance in my childhood.

For instance, if something doesn’t come easily to me, I can get very embarrassed or upset and will often avoid that activity. This come partly from the fear of looking dumb, but also from believing that I *should* be able to catch onto things quickly. That feeling of “it shouldn’t be this difficult” also leaves me wide open for getting easily frustrated with others when they aren’t able to do something or don’t respond the way I think they should.

I am learning that it is best to be straightforward about what you know and don’t know, what you can do and can’t do (yet), and that to just view that as looking at the facts, rather than as being a shameful thing. Even as I write this, I am thinking to myself, “Why even bother saying this? I’m sure everyone else already knows this and you are the only one who doesn’t get it.” But I’m saying it anyway because then I can hopefully move on from here to a better place in my thinking.