The Resurrection In Your Life: How the Living Christ Changes you World by Mike McKinley

This Book about the resurrection is work that will show you the importance of the resurrection of Jesus Christ and work out many practical applications of the historical fact for Christian living. The book substance is a number of edited sermons that are expositions of a passage in Luke and a passage in Acts. This book is not an apologetic for the historicity of the resurrection or a general apologetic for the Christian faith, rather the truth of the resurrection is assumed and the importance of it in the believers life is the point of the book. Understanding that it is more of a devotional book and what not to expect you will enjoy this read in getting an idea of how to answer “now that I believe in the resurrection why is it important to me.

STRENGTHS
One of the best things about this book is that it helps you to think through the importance of the resurrection in your life. What does the resurrection have to do with how I live my life day by day is something this book will help answer. Many times Christians spend a lot of effort on showing that the resurrection of Jesus Christ took place that they forget to dwell on what spiritual significance it has, this work helps remedy that.
The book is not a long book and is very readable. This makes this book helpful as an intro level book on the doctrine of the resurrection. Because the book is based on sermons it has a very pastoral tone to it and as you read you can imagine it being preached and it makes it easy to follow along with each point especially since these are faithful expositions of the passages, not technical commentary on the passages.

The book also has questions for reflection and a hymn at the end of each chapter which I imagine could be used for private study or also in a group setting. I found this a nice feature of the book.
On a side note the book cover is really sleek and I loved the design. I just want to know what the two green circles are representing.

WEAKNESSES
I don’t know that I can pinpoint exactly why or maybe it is just me but while I thought the book was good and found much of It helpful I didn’t feel like it was a great book. I didn’t finish this book thinking man I need to pass this one on to a friend and I hope it gets a wide reading. This is not to say it isn’t worth picking up because it definitely fills a void of a good intro into the meaning and importance of the resurrection.

Another weakness is because of the fact that it is based on sermons where Pastor Mike rightly exposits the text and not just doing a topical study on resurrection some parts of the book may feel disconnected from the theme of resurrection. Also while not a critique of the substance of the book, because of length and sermon style you don’t get a systematic study of the doctrine of the resurrection. I would of like to see something on what it means that Christ was raised for our justification. Also would love to have seen something on 1 Corinthians 15 but I completely understand why this was not given but none the less the book provides a solid footing in the doctrine.

SUMMARRY
If you want to better understand what the scriptures teach about the resurrection of Jesus Christ and why it is important to you then this is a great book to pick up. I wish more books would be published dealing with the importance of doctrine versus just the defense of a certain doctrine. Pastor Mike has done a fine job with this and I imagine those who sat under these sermons where helped mightily.

Year: 2015
Publisher: The Good Book Company
Boards: Paperback
Binding: Glue
Pages:143
Footnotes or Endnotes: NA
Indexes: none
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