Fearless by Max Lucado

“Envision the day when you can trust more and fear less.”

That’s the hope that Max Lucado is trying to inspire in each of us with his very timely new release “Fearless”.  Throughout the book, Lucado talks us through some of our most gripping fears and challenges us to get to this critical conclusion: “when Christ is great, our fears are not.”

The best parts of this book for me were the first and last chapters.  As I dove into the first chapter, I was high-lighting like crazy the fear phrases that I really connected with.  I was hopeful that this book could help me tackle what is proving to be a big issue in my life right now.  But I’ll be honest, after I got into a few of the next chapters I became pretty bored.  Perhaps that’s because Lucado’s style is more storytelling and I just wanted to get to some tough stuff that would get me thinking. –  No fluffy stuff.  Let’s get down to business! –  I was beginning to feel like I was getting the pat answer of “don’t fear” to an issue that’s much more complicated and deeply rooted.

However, I pushed through to the end (mostly because I was committed to doing this review) and honestly I was very pleasantly surprised by the ending chapter “The One Healthy Terror – Fear of God Getting Out of My Box”.  This chapter saved this book for me.  It brought me back to the foundational issue of my fear – the need for God to be great in my life.  “When Christ is great, our fears are not.”

PS – One of the things that is really well done is the 38 page discussion guide at the end.  This book would be a GREAT resource for small groups!  In fact, I think these chapters would have the potential to come to life for me in a greater way in the context of group discussion!