Anne LeGare

I said “Amen” with Max Lucado, and closed his newest book, Fearless. The hairs on my arms and legs were standing on end, and I had tears in my eyes. That’s a first for me – and I read a lot of books!

In Fearless, Max Lucado somehow allows his readers to crawl into his lap and admit all the things that go “bump in the night” of our spiritual, emotional and physical lives. He addresses and dismantles those fears one-by-one, with the heart of a pastor, and with wonderfully picked scripture.

I started highlighting all the pithy quotations I wanted to use in my review, and found myself highlighting every page instead. In this 15-chapter page turner, Lucado exposes 13 of our fears, (as well as a few of his own) and puts them into beautiful context.

I loved an acrostic he used to help us stop worry in its tracks:

P ray first

E asy now

A ct on it

C ompile a worry list

E valuate your worry categories

F ocus on today

U nleash a worry army (of prayer warriors)

L et God be enough

Thanks to Lucado’s honesty, I don’t feel like a heretic when I sit in church teetering on the edge of fear and doubt. Apparently pastors go through that too. But the answer to our fears isn’t unbelief or total reclusiveness. Lucado says: “The worship of safety emasculates greatness. No wonder Jesus wages such a war against fear. His most common command emerges from the ‘fear not’ genre.” According to Lucado, of the 125 imperatives Christ issued, 21 of them urge us to take hold of our fears through courage, heart, and cheer.

This is an exceptional book. I’m sending one to each of my loved ones and keeping this one on my bookshelf for the next time I need an infusion of courage.