Wednesday, August 10, 2011

Enemies of the Heart – Breaking Free from the Four Emotions That Control You by Andy Stanley


 The book Enemies of the Heart by Andy Stanley was a very good book.  He talks about the emotions that control you being; Guilt: I Owe You, Anger: You Owe Me, Greed: I Owe Me, and Jealousy: God Owes Me.  I found the chapters very easy to read and filled with humor.  Andy told stories from his own life as well as hypothetical ones.   There are so many highlights from the book that it was hard to choose the ones I found carried the biggest impact.  Here are just 3 of them.

Page 23: What’s in your heart comes out at home, where you’ve turned off the “safety” and let down your defenses.  That’s when the heart exposes itself in the most negative ways to the people you love the most.

Page 31: After all, if we knew how to monitor our hearts, if we knew how to deal with the trouble at its source, then perhaps we would see a marked improvement in our behavior.

Andy goes on to talk about how “unpleasant realities become lodged in our hearts.”

Page 71: Greed isn’t a financial issue; it’s a heart issue. Financial gain doesn’t make greedy people less greedy.  Financial gain or lose doesn’t change anything, because greed emanates from the heart.

I could go on and on quoting lines and paragraphs from the book.  But I know I can’t.  I loved this book and will be soon passing it on to others.

At the end of the book is a 6-week study guide intended for small group discussion.  I’ve always liked books with a study guide that cause you to dig a little deeper into ones self.  However, I don’t like the way this study guide is set up.  It groups the weekly questions by topic causing you to have to read certain chapters first before answering all the questions.  For example: Week 1 covers the first 5 chapters, but Week 2 covers chapters 6, 11 and 12, Week 3 covers chapters 7,13 and 14 and so on and so on.

I happily give this book 5 out of 5 stars.
“I received this book for free from WaterBrook Multnomah Publishing Group for this review”.

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