First Sunday of Lent (Cycle A)

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The Temptation of Jesus Lectionary:  22 Reading 1 -  Genesis 2:7-9; 3:1-7 Responsorial Psalm -  Psalm 51:3-4, 5-6, 12-13, 17 Reading 2 -  Romans 5:12-19 Verse - Matthew 4:4b Gospel -  Matthew 4:1-11 One does not live on bread alone. Every year, we begin our Lenten journey in the same place: the desert.   The Gospel for this Sunday places Jesus in the wilderness, fasting and praying, confronted by temptation. In that stark setting we find the pattern of our own Lenten journey: a movement away from distraction toward the heart of God, a testing that reveals what truly sustains us, and a call to conversion that reshapes our lives.  Throughout our lives, we are frequently confronted with tests … and these tests generally reveal something about ourselves: In school, we demonstrate that we have mastered an academic subject with a test  in sports, we demonstrate our level of a particular skill with a contest  In life, we demonstrate the integri...
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Review: The Power of Unlimited Faith: Living in the Miraculous Everyday

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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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