Bold Love

Many Brilliant Points and benefited greatly from them! Grateful for the insights! However, as a true Believer in The Word and follower of Christ, there are too many areas that do not match up with The Word so thus I Caution the Believer reading this. ALLENDER and his methods are NOT Jesus! Only Jesus heals!Paul teaches per Jesus, take all thoughts captive to the Lord and let His light shine on them to see if they are indeed truth.It only takes a little leavin to mess up your alignment in the Lord. Therapy is great but the main source, your main Therapist is The Holy Spirit.

Here’s my synopsis of the sections of the book that had the most profound influence on me [in brackets]:[Three Godly Strategies For Loving Your Enemy1. Frontal Attack: How to love a “simple sinner” (this applies to most of us daily.)Explain the best course of behavior, explain the wrong behavior, and explain how to fix it.Oversimplified example: “Johnny, don’t touch a hot stove or you may burn yourself”; later, after attending to Johnny’s injury and comforting him: “Johnny, you burned yourself because you touched the hot stove”; finally: “Johnny, I love you, so I’m reminding you: remember not to touch the hot stove or you may burn yourself again.”The Bible refers to this as doctrine, reproof, and correction.2. Guerilla Warfare: How to love a fool (a person so entrenched in their wrong thinking and action that they become unable to see the error; this applies to most of us from time to time as well.)The boomerang effect: mirror back to a fool their own folly in a manner that causes them to expose their own folly to themselves.Example: Privately (or publicly when necessary) leading a person to condemn an attitude or behavior that they then are shown to have held or committed themselves.Warning: the fool may become angry and seek revenge for their foolishness being exposed. Use with wisdom and discernment.3. Siege Warfare: How to love a wicked person (psychopathic evil)Expose and continue to expose (often clandestinely) the wicked person’s lies and evil in a manner that causes the least amount of damage to yourself and others. When sufficiently exposed, the wicked person will either repent (rare), destroy themselves, or succumb to the judgment of others.Warning: psychopathic evil will seek to hide itself while plotting to harm others. Use with wisdom and extreme caution.]Okay, those are the highlights for me. Truly profound insights — but it took a great deal of work to cull those insights from prolix rabbitholes, cul de sacs, and (in my humble opinion) sometimes just plain wrongheaded thinking.The “good parts” of the book are SO good that I REALLY want to give it unqualified praise. But I actually feel bad (and more than a little guilty) to confess that for me, much of the book was quite frustrating to read. A sentence or two of breathtaking beauty and insight was often mixed in with sometimes more, sometimes fewer moments where I suddenly thought, “Wait — I don’t think that’s right at all!” Maybe it’s a blindness or lack of understanding on my part (certainly a viable possibility), but I often found myself slogging through the frustrating parts to find the absolute gems that I knew still awaited me.This book definitely gets five stars from me — TEN stars for the moments of absolute brilliance and one star for the frustration it took to get to them and ferret them out. If you can read with patience and godly DISCERNMENT, however, this book is capable of positively changing your life forever.Enjoy the brilliant moments — they truly are.

It’s about time I reviewed this book; I’ve depended upon it ever since it was first published in 1992. I’m on my third or fourth copy because I’ve given away each in turn, over the years. I just recommended it again today. My problem in trying to review it, is to single out why I keep buying it to re-read and how it could help you and people you know that you care about even though they have caused harm to you in the past. You may say - “Wait I’m not sure I still care about such people - I’ve shut them out of my life - it’s how I survive.” I would still offer this book to you to take up and read and ponder what it offers - especially if on occasion you must interact with those who have hurt you in the past. If you are already relying on your identity in Christ and the freedom you have found, then this book could empower you to seek that same reconciliation and restorative grace for others in your life who need it too. It may be that you are like me - I was to be a kind of New Testament “Abraham” for my family - stepping out in unfamiliar territory and pursuing them for Christ with God’s leading and the godly wisdom is this book. It happened - a miracle of bold love:I was the first person in my chaotic family of origin to accept Jesus as my Savior. I had suffered abuse as did my siblings. We all tried ways to escape. All three of us attempted suicide when we each reached the age of twenty. My younger brother succeeded. My younger sister drove her car off a cliff, was rescued by “the jaws of life” and lived. Our parents were still living lives that affected this younger sister when I picked up my first copy as the only believer in my family of origin. These three did not know for themselves the freedom and forgiveness and grace and transformative restoration they could have through reconciliation with God. All three were still causing harm to themselves and others. I learned how to set boundaries, show up without expectations for myself and love them with a kind of restorative bold love. This was not easy. Yet, over the years, by faith and showing up as was needed for ongoing family crises, my father was the first reconciled to God and transformed by his faith in Jesus, next my younger sister and lastly my mother. I attribute their transformations to the power of God, the truths in pursuing a restorative bold love and my willingness to be used by God just by showing up. My parents and my sister are all with the Lord now. I’m writing their story, my brother’s and mine and to tell it correctly I needed my copy of Bold Love and found I needed to buy another. It’s not an easy book and you can’t have a time table in mind in pursuit. One needs to be open-handed and patient - but if their souls still matter to you- and you are experiencing Christ’s redemptive love for yourself - this book is an important resource.

I have read the helpful section which helps you realise whether the person you are dealing with is just a normal sinner, a fool by the Bible's definition, or a wicked person. It also explains the way to respond to these categories of people.

Excellent. I still use it as a resource. I highly recommend it

Came late but the book meets my need