Enemies of the Heart is a good read with interesting, sometimes amusing, personal stories, and practical suggestions for how to overcome these four enemies of the heart which all of us struggle with at times. How is your heart? That’s not a question we hear often except when it comes to our physical cardiac health. Stanley encourages readers to dig a little deeper into our emotions.
He provides concrete solutions to overcome the four main “enemies of the heart” which he states are: guilt, anger, greed, and jealousy. Each of these adversaries and the thought pattern that accompanies them is explored.
The author’s explanation of what each enemy means in terms of our thinking is one of the things that really put these principles into perspective for me. Stanley says that:
Guilt produces the feeling that “I owe you.” Anger stems from the assumption that you owe me. Greed is the belief that I owe me. And jealousy is the one that threw me, but he defines it as thinking that God owes me. I could see the other explanations, but the idea that God owes me as the belief underneath jealousy wasn’t one I’d really thought about before.
I highly recommend reading Enemies of the Heart and using the discussion questions at the end, which are a perfect fit for a six-week session small group or for individual study and journaling.
I received a copy of Enemies of the Heart for free from WaterBrook Multnomah Publishing Group for this review. To order your copy, click here. If you have a blog and would like to receive free books in exchange for book reviews, check out the Blogging for Books program.
