Reviews for God's Heart Has No Borders: How Religious Activists Are Working for Immigrant Rights

The average rating for God's Heart Has No Borders: How Religious Activists Are Working for Immigrant Rights based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2009-08-21 00:00:00 Mark Ezell Feel is a popularized (less academic) version of Elliott's earlier work (called Faithful Feelings). The book is aimed at two significant errors that Elliott observes in American Christianity: 1) "We have made our relationship with God more about fulfilling our duty than expressing our passion. We make our spiritual lives into a list of dos and don'ts. We pursue this list more than we actually pursue Jesus. And this leads to a life that eventually becomes tired and numb, devoid of feeling, dead." 2) "We have become indoctrinated in the belief that emotions are unreliable, dangerous, and bad." From his study of Scripture, Elliott's book builds upon several key ideas: --"our emotions were given to us by God to drive us to our best" --"emotions are among the most logical and dependable things in our lives" --"emotions give us a window to see truth like nothing else" --"the true health of our spiritual lives is measured by how we feel" Overall, this book reads like a modern day Religious Affections, which was written by Jonathan Edwards in 1746. Like Edwards, Elliott is careful to ground his ideas, proposals, and conclusions in Scripture. Here are a few quotes from Feel: -- "Jesus Christ brings to each of us a new set of information about the world around us. Without him, we have reason to fear and worry. With him, our emotions have a whole new context." -- "What we feel - our loves - reveals what we really believe and becomes the motivation for how we live." -- "...emotion does what a friend does - it counsels and advises. ...As we are conformed to Christ, we can learn to rely on emotions as we might rely on a friend." -- "Our emotional response to anything is a collage of our personality, upbringing, self-image, worldview, experiences, and beliefs. What we concentrate on, what we dwell on, what we run over and over again n our heads is what we get emotional about. So we need to stop and think about what we are always telling ourselves. If it does not line up with what is true, we must cancel the download. Then we need to reboot our thought patterns with godly values and beliefs. Only then can our emotions reflect a godly perspective." -- "Whatever podcast you play in your head is what you will eventually believe about God, others, and yourself. It will determine your emotional starting point and the place out of which you will respond. You can spend most of your life at a single spot emotionally because you pitched your tent on one thing that you relive and rehash every day. Sometimes, you have to make yourself pack it up and move on to something new."

Review # 2 was written on 2012-04-28 00:00:00 Michael Sysavath This is one of the best books I've read about emotions by a Christian author. I read this book at an important time in my life when I was being told I needed to suppress my feelings, control my emotions, and basically NOT deal with it. It was coming out in bad ways and causing me to feel extreme guilt because I couldn't get it together. This book taught me it was ok to take the time to feel things, to evaluate what I felt and compare it to God's word, and to change my thoughts which were mostly based on lies and deception to truth from God's word. I still struggle with my emotions and still battle feeling like some emotions are "bad", but now I know that God gave us emotions for a reason. Like a fire alarm, God uses our emotions to show us the root of what's really going on so we can deal with it. No more stuffing, no more flying off the handle in an uncontrollable rage. I even emailed the author and he was kind enough to take the time to email me back. Great book written by someone who cares!