Skip to main content

Review: Empty Promises by Pete Wilson

Empty promises. The things that don’t live up to expectations. We’ve all experienced that disappointment and in this book Pete Wilson works through the most common varieties of empty promises. He not only draws from his own life, but also from the lives he has seen lived around him for his examples. Biblical examples abound as backdrops to show us that this is not a new thing. What is new, for me anyway, is calling the problem broken promises rather than idolatry. While the latter is at the root of the problem, the symptom most of us experience is that emptiness when we expected fullness.

It is an easy read, but not trite. It is a familiar read, and sadly one that we just don’t seem to heed. It seems every time we try the next gimmick dangled in front of us first and have to relearn this lesson. This is true not only in our religious life, but the secular as well. Keeps the presses turning on either side of that great divide.

Happily, Wilson does add some helpful ideas at the end of his book, and if even one of the suggestions is practiced, we’d all experience more fulfilled promises instead of the empty sort.

Overall, I recommend this book for the reminder it brings and for the review of our own inventories. If you are looking for yet another quick fix, don’t bother. This isn’t it, even if one actually existed.

This book was provided for review by Thomas Nelson via the BookSneeze blog.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Review: Sex, Jesus, and the Conversations the Church Forgot by Mo Isom

Review: Sex, Jesus, and the Conversations the Church Forgot Mo Isom Baker Books 2018 I picked this one up after I’d seen a video promo by the author, http://moisom.com/sexandjesus#.   Sounded like she had something to say.   She does.   And even if you don’t think it applies to you it does in ways that aren’t necessarily related to sex, but just as a human being with desires.    Isom subscribed to many of the conversations that govern relationships in general, and those with men, for her generation, the millennials.   This book is not her life story, but it does describe some moments that were important to her journey then and now.   Her openness to share those times surprised me.   Her point without spoiling the book is that she had not understood what linked sexual intimacy to ordinary life, the why’s, if you will.   Was it not taught, discussed?   Or was she not interested in hearing might be a valid...

Review: Anatomy of the Soul

Anatomy of the Soul Curt Thompson. M.D. Salt River, an imprint of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc. 2010 This is the most helpful,insightful book I’ve read in a long time. There’s advice, guidance, explanations and examples to illustrate discussion offered by the author. Best of all, for me anyway, it explains some of what I had suspected about how things work all along. Dr. Thompson links human anatomy and physiology to the spiritual part of our being throughout the text. We are fearfully and wonderfully made. And God uses His creation of the physical body in amazing ways. The author does a great job showing God’s wisdom found in research and the discoveries that science has made recently in neuroscience. Whether science wants to or not, it is describing the wonders of creation. Read this book. The text will require thought, evaluation, and time to go through. The author’s writing style is quite readable and he covers the material well. While this isn’t a how to or self help boo...

Review: When God’s Ways Make No Sense by Dr. Larry Crabb

Review: When God’s Ways Make No Sense Dr. Larry Crabb Baker Books 2018 I chose this book because the title intrigued me.   When God’s Ways Make No Sense.    There have been plenty of times when that seemed truer than I’d like to admit.   Are we even allowed to say something like that?   Even if we think it.   So, an author willing to take on that topic had my attention. And mostly because I wanted his take on what to do about it? As it turns out Crabb pretty much gave away his case very early on in his book with a single scripture quote.   The basic idea is God is GOD and we are not.   His motives and actions are incomprehensible to mankind and He owes no explanation for them either.   Crabb admits near the end of his book that he is not a theologian which I knew going into this book, but his arguments are theology.   Or at least I think so.   I found his repeated circling the topic a bit frustrating. ...