JourneyOnline
Free Press
RRP $34.95
Become a Better You is not only about becoming a “better you” but about helping people live the life that the author believes God has created people to live. A life where “….a progressive God….wants every generation to be increasing in happiness, success and significance.”
Become a Better You reads like a “self help” book drawing on many of the things that are presented in a range of well known secular and Christian books and most people seeking help to make their life happier, more fulfilling and more prosperous will find the book useful.
Themes within the chapters echo of concepts from books such as How to Win Friends and Influence People, Women Are From Venus and Men Are From Mars, A Purpose Driven Life, Five Love Languages, and the recent western world phenomenon, The Secret.
Osteen advocates that “there is a difference between believing and expecting” and that “we attract what we continually think about.”
This is a very readable book and Osteen writes in a very easy going and personable style.
Virtually every page is cluttered with testimony after testimony either from his own life or from the lives of parishioners of Lakewood Church in Houston, Texas – testimonies where either he or his parishioners have grasped the author’s concept that “God didn’t create any of us to be average. He didn’t make us to barely get by. We were created to excel.”
There are “action points” at the end of each chapter to challenge people to “help somebody else become successful and trust God to make me successful.”
Become a Better You has all of the ingredients to help me become a better me; a happier me; a more fulfilled me and importantly a richer me.
But as a book that seeks to portray what it is to live a Christian life and a life within the will of God, to me, it seems to miss any reality beyond the over commercialised, resource rich, bigger is better mentality of North America and the western world.
Reviewed by Rev John Ruhle
