Do you feel weighed down by sin? Is there one area where you keep tripping up? Or perhaps although you know you are a Christian, your spiritual life seems mediocre. You’d like to be living joyfully, but you just don’t know how.
In this sequel to How to Be Free from Bitterness, Jim Wilson returns to talk about how to get rid of those persistent “besetting sins.” Many Christians believe they are enslaved to particular sins. But this is not true. The truth is that Christ has freed us from the penalty of sin and the power of sin. If you are a Christian, you are already free. Anger, envy, worry, depression—whatever your problem is, it can be put to death today. “And you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free” (John 8:32).
Jim Wilson has worked as a pastor and director of Community Christian Ministries (Moscow, Idaho) for over forty years. Before that, he served in the Navy as an officer for nine years and then with Officer's Christian Fellowship for another twelve years. Jim has authored a number of books, including How to Be Free from Bitterness, and is well-known for his practical Bible teaching on relationships and evangelism. He was married to his wife, Bessie, from 1952 until her death in 2010, and is the father of four, grandfather of fifteen (one of whom is in heaven), and great-grandfather of twenty-five and counting.
I proofed this a couple of years ago, so I can't say I remember all that much about it, but I wanted to get it marked as read since it's finally found its way out into the world!
If you liked Wilson’s work on How to Be Free From Bitterness, you will find much of the same here - but applied to different topics like anger, anxiety, lust, greed, and so on. I found Wilson’s work in bitterness to be more helpful to me than this one, but that may have been due to the fact that Jim was able to spend essentially a whole book on the topic and unpack it further than he could in these short essays. Or maybe it was because I was a very bitter person before reading that work.
The book itself is wonderful. Jim pulls no punches with his plain truths and constant flow of Scripture. There is almost a childlike innocence to the simplicity of the faith on display throughout the book. Well worth returning to several times over.
The Wilsons share so much practical biblical wisdom in this book. I have already recommended it to a few people. I think I'll try to read it again next year. I may want to read it with my kids or in a small group. It covers an amazing variety of sins and issues.