Saturday, June 19, 2010

Book Review: Unburdened


Unburdened: The Secret to Letting God Carry The Things That Weigh You Down. Chris Tiegreen. Tyndale. 240 pages.

The mood over Jerusalem was tense.

Last year, I read and reviewed Chris Tiegreen's Fixing Abraham. I also reviewed Max Lucado's Fearless. Is Unburdened about fear? Yes and no. It's about worry. It's about stress. It's about fear. It's about being weighed down with things that we shouldn't be carrying around in the first place.

He begins by discussing the things that do weigh us down.
He then discusses why God is the answer. Why giving our burdens to God is the only way to make it through. But how do we do this? Tiegreen explores that as well. One of the answers is praise and worship! Another is to make God our "one thing."
The unburdened life isn't so much about avoiding burdens as it is about carrying them with the strength of Another. The former leads to a life of purposelessness the latter builds an eternal Kingdom. The first approach is a choice to be weak; the other is a choice to be supernaturally empowered. This isn't a matter simply of living with abandonment, but of living with abandonment to God. (12)

In many ways, worship is where heaven and earth meet. And the things of earth--the concerns and worries and fears that burden us--can hardly survive the encounter. (169)

Joy is the climate of heaven, and that's where we want our hearts to live. (185)

Reading Unburdened made me think of Rich Mullin's "My One Thing."


© Becky Laney of Operation Actually Read Bible

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