Book Review: You Were Born for This by Bruce Wilkinson

You Were Born for This by Bruce Wilkinson is a book about how to ready yourself to do the Everyday Miracle work of God. In some ways, this is a phenomenal book. If someone really wanted to focus their life toward delivering miracles from God to those who need them, but had never been brave enough to step out in faith, this would be the book for them. If someone is a newbie Christian and craves to see God move, this is for them. This book makes delivering miracles seem as feasible as driving to work or making dinner.

There were a few big things that bothered me about the book, though. For one, the author constantly referenced material to come. If he would have just cut those parts from the book, he would probably have saved 20+ pages. Then, the way he structured his components of miracle delivery caused him to be redundant. During the second half of the book, I felt like I was rereading a lot of the first half.

Lastly, the two biggest problems for me were near death blows. The first, I think the text would have been much stronger if he reinforced the whole point of miracles, which is God performs miracles to bring greater glory to Him. He mentions this offhandedly, but just as often he makes it seem like the point of miracles is to meet a need or to make the deliverer feel good. Those things may happen through a miracle, but the book as a whole would have been stronger had he made a greater point of saying that miracles are for God's glory. The second was he based his whole premise off of personal experience and not biblical example. For a book about miracles, there were surprisingly few scripture references, and the few included were weak. More comparisons with biblical miracles would have left few doubts in my mind as to whether miracles really work like this.

Bottom line, I recommend this book with caution. In some ways it is a phenomenal book that I would recommend every Christian read. I just get nervous any time someone takes a supernatural idea and because they think they know the ins and outs of how it works, attempts to put that supernatural occurrence in a box. As helpful as his steps may be for one to recognize a miracle potential, I would hate for someone to miss a movement of God because it didn't fit Wilkinson's "keys".

I received this book for free from WaterBrook Multnomah Publishing Group for this review.