When Being Good Isn't Good Enough

This is a great book to read if you're thinking of backsliding due to criticism by the "spirit-filled" members of your church. I read this book in Spanish and it is just as powerful. The book deals with many aspects of daily christian life and how we get caught up with trying to meet with other's expectations. It brings you back to the basics of being a child of God, that feeling you had when you first believed. If you're struggling, like I was because of other people's opinion as to what you should be, then this is the book for you. The first chapter alone will convince you to keep God, and not man, in the right place.

This book does a great job of helping us keep our perspective where it should be. It helps us understand how God sees us. It also helps us understand our flawed, culturally influenced view, of ourselves. I thought the Piano Teacher story was an awesome glimpse at how a loving God desires to relate to us.

This is one of those rare books that is able to touch people where they are really hurting, heal their wounds, and restore to them a vision of God's grace in their lives. It is designed for Christians who are particularly weary of all the burdensome rule-keeping they encounter in so many churches, and who have been spiritually injured by other Christians. My wife and I read it during a period when we were trying to recover from severe spiritual abuse in a small, cult-like group of Bible-believing Christians. Soon afterward we were priviledged to meet the author, and to share our sad experience with him. Steve Brown is a delightful writer -- but he is even more delightful in person! Now, as my wife and I go back to this book every once in a while for spiritual refreshment, we can hear the voice of the author (it doesn't hurt that we also listen to his "Key Life" radio program), and we know it's the voice of experience, sincerity, and grace. Steve Brown is a thoroughly orthodox, committed Christian who doesn't let that stop him from being gracious and loving, as so many these days seem to do.