2017 Reading Quest 31

Book:  Reduce Me to Love.

Author:  Joyce Meyer

Info:  Copyright 2000: New York:  Warner Faith

Rating (on a scale of 1-4 stars):  ✮✮✮✮

Where Acquired:  Borrowed from a friend.

What it's about:  Love:  many people say they know what it is.  However, many others, including some Christians, really don’t know what God’s love is or how to live in it.  Using I Corinthians 13 as the foundation, Meyer shares the meaning and practice of Bible-based love.  She also gives many personal examples of how walking in the true love of God has enhanced her life and ministry.

Favorite Quotes:

Love is tangible; it is not just an emotional feeling, a spiritual thing that cannot be seen or touched.  It is evident to everyone who comes in contact with it.  p. 12

Love has a beginning and a completion.  First, God loves us, and by faith, we receive His love.  We then love ourselves in a balanced way, we give love back to God and we learn to love other people.  Love must follow this course or it is not complete.  p. 18

As believers in Jesus Christ, the love we are to manifest to the world is the unconditional love of God flowing through us to them.  We don’t receive God’s love and then try to give them ours.  Our love has conditions and limits; His does not. p. 94

Unconditional love does not allow people to remain the same; instead, it loves them while they are changing…. Unconditional love will overcome sin and transform lives.  p. 103

In the current church age, we need more teaching on obedience and holiness (moral goodness).  There is a great deal of teaching on faith, prosperity, and success, all of which are very important.  I am very thankful that someone taught me I could prosper.  But God is not going to give a bunch of spiritual babies radical prosperity that would only serve to make them more carnal. – p. 136.

Love offers people both roots and wings.  It proves a sense of belonging (roots) and a sense of freedom (wings).  p. 161.

Love is actually a form of spiritual warfare.  We must never lose our burning desire to practice it every day because by waling in love, we become overcomers in life.  - p. 169.

What I liked:

There was nothing flowery or shallow about Meyer’s approach to this book.  It’s not, as my friend Suzanne B. would say, “God is love. Love is God. Let’s color a picture about it.”  This isn’t a book full of mealy-mouthed platitudes about love.

While the author does mention marriage principles on love, the book is not written only from the marriage vantage point.  It does not alienate those who are in various stages of life.

This is one of the few—if not the only—book on Christian love that has tackled the need to love oneself in order to fully love God and others.

Meyer’s use of honest personal stories is a plus.  I’m not fond of authors who tell people what to do, but never do it themselves, or are sketchy about how they apply what they write to themselves.

What I didn’t like:

I honestly couldn’t find anything unlikable in this volume. 

Takeaway:

For me, this book reminded of concepts I’d learned early in my Christian walk while instructing me in new ways to walk in and share the love of Christ.  I definitely want to purchase this book for my collection to refer to again.