He encourages readers to accept and love themselves and states that each individual is special with a unique purpose. My cynical nature generally dislikes statements along this "come as you are" line because I feel it leaves no room for "change because you love God and you love Christ" and leaves a lot of room for people in certain sins to say, "God loves me as I am, I don't need to change. There's no such thing as sin." I would have liked to see a disclaimer on these things.
But as I originally stated, there are enough hints of the Gospel, of the message of saving grace in Christ, to satisfy me. And I suppose preaching the Gospel is not Nick's purpose so much as it is to encourage people to conquer their trials and to persevere and find joy in life despite hard setbacks.
And Nick does accomplish that. I rather enjoyed the first half of his book when he spoke of "faith in action." Still, I found it difficult to relate to his many stories of people taking big steps for God. What about those of us who never feel called to become a missionary or do something hugely unselfish for God? And the great majority of Nick's book is made up of these inspiring stories. In fact, he takes a couple chapters to go off track on subjects that deserve their own books like bullying (and for that reason I did not enjoy the second half of his book as much).
Beyond those nit picking points, I really can't complain about the book. It does what it sets out to do. It's generally inspiring. And I actually did surprisingly underline quite a bit.
*Disclaimer: I received this book for free in exchange for my honest review.
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