My Favorite Books

The Walking Drum
Ender's Game
Dune
Jhereg
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
The Curse of Chalion
The Name of the Wind
Chronicles of the Black Company
The Faded Sun Trilogy
The Tar-Aiym Krang

Sunday, October 1, 2023

Review: The Power of Unlimited Faith: Living in the Miraculous Everyday

The Power of Unlimited Faith: Living in the Miraculous Everyday The Power of Unlimited Faith: Living in the Miraculous Everyday by Kynan Bridges
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Book: *
Performance: ***

Get Your Miracles Now?

What is Faith? The author contends that faith is an act or response to God’s Will as known through His Word … and Faith is the currency of God’s Kingdom that allows you to “demand” God act on His promises. In other words … if you don’t get what you want from God, it is because of your poverty of faith. So the whole point of this book appears to be how to increase your faith so you can get stuff. This is a dangerous parallel to the so called “Prosperity Gospel” that frequently morphs into a we all get what we deserve and if you pull the short straw it is because of something you did or did not do attitude. There is soooo much wrong here I struggle to begin an appropriate critique. The problem is that there is also a lot that is actually pretty good before it jumps into heterodox theology using incomplete proof-texting and anecdotal miracle stories (some of which should have easily been medically confirmed … such as turning metal into bone). While I absolutely believe such miracles are possible, many of the miracles described should have in fact caused a significant stir in the secular communities and withstand their scrutiny … and so are likely to be very hard for many to accept. And then the explanation on why everybody doesn’t get the miracles they ask for is because we live in time and God lives outside of time? Yeah … weird. However, Bridges does a reasonable job of extracting context from the original Koine Greek terms found in the NT; however, there are also several research missteps … such as blaming primitive embalming techniques for the reason Lazarus’ body would smell days after death (unaware perhaps that Judaism actually prohibits embalming the dead). Such a lax approach to details undermines the over all message that ultimately comes from opinion in search of supporting facts.

The narration was decent for this genre.

The chapters and sections in this work are:
Chapter 1/0 - Endorsements (7m)
Chapter 2/0 - Preface (2m)
Chapter 3/1 - In The Beginning (22m)
Chapter 4/2 - Faith Foundations (24m)
Chapter 5/3 - Seeing the Invisible (19m)
Chapter 6/4 - How Faith Comes (20m)
Chapter 7/5 - The Law of Confession (23m)
Chapter 8/6 - Faith for Miracles (25m)
Chapter 9/7 - Ever Increasing Faith (19m)
Chapter 10/8 - Demand and Supply (15m)
Chapter 11/9 - Kingdom Currency (17m)
Chapter 12/10 - Faith and Love (19m)
Chapter 13/11 - Enduring Faith (28m)
Chapter 14/12 - The Law of Expectation (25m)
Chapter 15/13 - Speak the Word Only (26m)
Chapter 16/14 - Just Believe (16m)
Chapter 17/15 - Unlimited Faith (22m)
Chapter 18/16 - About The Author (4m)

I was given this free advance review/listener copy (ARC) audiobook at my request and have voluntarily left this review.

#ThePowerOfUnlimitedFaith #FreeAudiobookCodes

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My Ratings Explained ...

  • [ ***** ] Amazing Read - Perfect story, exciting, engrossing, well developed complex characters, solid plot with few to no holes, descriptive environments and place settings, great mystery elements, realistic dialogue, believable reactions and behaviors; a favorite that I can re-read many times.
  • [ **** ] Great Read - Highly entertaining and enjoyable, exciting storyline, well developed characters and settings, a few discrepancies but nothing that can’t be overlooked. Some aspect of the story was new/refreshing to me and/or intriguing. Recommended for everyone.
  • [ *** ] Good Read - Solid story with a 'good' ending, or has some other redeeming feature. Limited character development and/or over reliance on tropes. Noticeable discrepancies in world building and/or dialog/behavior that were distracting. I connected enough with the characters/world to read the entire series. Most of the books I read for fun are here. Recommended for fans of the genre.
  • [ ** ] Okay Read - Suitable for a brief, afternoon escape … flat or shallow characters with little to no development. Over the top character dialog and/or behavior. Poor world building with significant issues and/or mistakes indicating poor research. Excessive use of trivial detail, info dumps and/or pontification. Any issues with the story/characters are offset by some other aspect that I enjoyed. Not very memorable. May only appeal to a niche group of readers. Recommended for some (YMMV).
  • [ * ] Bad Read - Awkward and/or confusing writing style. Poor world building and/or unbelievable (or unlikeable) characters. Victimization, gaslighting, blatant abuse, unnecessary violence, child endangerment, or any other highly objectionable behaviors by Main characters. I didn't connect with the story at all; significant aspects of this story irritated me enough that I struggled to finished it. Series was abandoned. Not recommended.