Book Review: Outlive Your Life by Max Lucado

Max Lucado’s most recent book, Outlive Your Life, is an encouraging and challenging tome directed to believers who’re living within the bounds of mediocrity. His storytelling ability (and that of the narrator), which is both pastoral and inviting, adds emphasis and enthusiasm to some familiar Bible stories we can easily overlook.

My first concern was that it was just a rehashing of The Hole in our Gospel or some other book about poverty alleviation, but it wasn’t. Unlike Bruce Stearns’ book, Lucado clearly presents the gospel as being of first importance and sticks with it throughout the book. His admonitions in the book to the individual believer are positive and encouraging. He focuses on issues of the heart, like humility and gratitude, as well as issues of the head and hands, like prayer, serving, and engaging the social ills of our world.

The narrator really adds life to this book. His flow can sometimes make you forget you’re listening to a book instead of having a conversation with a wise mentor.  His pace was steady, and fluctuations between loud and quiet fit perfectly with the dialogue recorded in the book.

The book itself is a helpful reminder to live the Christian life, and the chapter near the end on prayer called to mind my own lack of consistency and need to repent.

If you go for this one, bear in mind that the audio had a few choppy bits. Every once in a while there would be a one or two second repetition of the same phrase in the m4b files. I’m going to download it again in the mp3 format to see if that fixes the problem.

To buy the book, visit ChristianAudio.com  (direct link).

For a sample chapter, click here.

For additional reviews of the book on Amazon, click here.

Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this book free from ChristianAudio as part of their Blogger Review Program. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: "Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising."