I have a confession. Until now, I haven’t read a Max Lucado book. According to his website, an astonishing sixty-five million other people have. Apparently, I was a holdout. Not anymore. His most recent release, Fearless, got my attention and I’m glad it did.

Fearless is as wonderfully written as you might expect from a New York Time’s best selling author who’s cranked out more than 50 books in 25 years (do the math!). It’s easy enough to digest in a sitting (just 180 pages), yet packed with enough nuggets of insight to make you stop and think. The subtitle, “Imagine your life without fear,” is aptly chosen, for Lucado stirs the imagination by presenting a potpourri of fears (e.g. dying, poverty, violence, insignificance, etc.) vanquishing amid God’s unceasing love for His creation. Lucado reminds us that Jesus’ most common command was to “fear not,” and each chapter puts that command in context of a fear that Jesus confronted in His disciples then and today. The disciple Lucado, himself, writes of his own fears with an honesty borne of the very freedom his book title promises.

I highly recommend reading this book as an important diagnostic—asking, “Where can I be more fearless today? Now that I’ve read it, it’s going back on my reading list, to be read aloud with my sons.