What do I think of Glenn Stewart’s book published by Life Equip? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.
I was sent a free copy of this on my Kindle and asked to review it. When I heard about it, I was sadly skeptical. After all, we have a book by a pastor about how to deal with personal stress in your life. I’m thinking I’m going to open it up and find a whole lot of platitudes about how you need to let go and let God and how you need to listen to the voice of the Holy Spirit and just have faith. I wish it wasn’t that way, but that’s the way it normally is.
What a shock when I open it up and before too long I find talk about discipline and discipleship and the need to get back to Scripture. This is not what I was expecting. Much of the exegesis is quite good, aside from this look at Isaiah 55 and “My thoughts are not your thoughts.”
In fact, at times, Stewart takes on bad platitudes, such as the idea of where there is no vision, the people will perish. Stewart regularly points us back to Scripture in his work and urges us to follow its dictates. If anything showed up about any other way of knowing what God requires of us, then it was certainly minimal and overshadowed by the abundance of Scripture.
From there, Stewart gives us principles largely based on time management. The reason we are so stressed is just that we are rushing to and fro. We are doing so much and we don’t take time to really think about time and how to manage it properly.
Stewart then lays out for us to follow a plan on how to prioritize our time. Included in this is time for things like Scripture and prayer and such. We are to spend time with our family and we are to work. This is something incredibly important I think for many in our day and age who are workaholics. It also helps with those who want to say you should always be doing something in the area of ministry.
I would have liked to have seen more spelled out in this area still. There are many Christians I meet who wrestle with the question of where their leisure time fits into this. I am remembering how even Aquinas, the great thinker that he was, said that we need to take time for play so that our minds can be renewed for the time when it comes again for serious topics.
Self-help books are nowadays becoming a dime-a-dozen. Much of what Stewart says is not new to him, but it is put in a way that is consistent with Scripture and regularly points the reader back to Scripture. You will not find cliches and platitudes in here but simple advice. Following it is one thing, but the advice is there and in a way that is much better than much of what is said in the church today.
In Christ,
Nick Peters