THE BOOK
_______________________________________________________________________
Reviews:
"I cannot recommend Jim Robbins' book Recover Your Good Heart highly enough...A great work!"
Dwight Edwards, advisor to Larry Crabb
and author of Revolution Within
www.kindlingforthefire.com
"Still the best book on the theme out there."
Alice F., Arizona
What do you mean by "religious" guilt: By "religious," I do not mean Christianity. Rather, I mean the false, performance and guilt-ridden substitute that has crept in to take its place.
More reviews:
- "I am also a Biblical counselor and train other counselors, so the book will become one of my ‘I urge you to read this’ books. It really is a ‘must read if you want to change’ book.”
"Hi again Jim,
This is Jenny Lowen from England, to say I'm still recommending your life-saving book to all I can, and they're selling well from the Christian bookshop I help in. Every single person says it's an 'amazing' book... so please, if you have another one brewing, know that you have an audience over here. My counsellees are benefiting from the book as well, as I not only quote you but get them to read the whole book as there is so much revelation to be got from its pages."
Jenny Lowen
Bookstore Mngr., YWAM
Harpenden, United Kingdom
- "Recover Your Good Heart is a healing, freeing, and empowering must read for every Christ follower.”
Kim West, M.Div.; biblical counselor
Phoenix, Arizona
www.make-my-Christian-life-work.com
www.solutions-Christian-counseling.com
- "The conceptual centerpiece [of Recover Your Good Heart] is that once Christ has renewed our hearts through salvation, we have hearts that are good at their very core. We can trust ourselves, because Christ resides in us. We can expect ourselves to be pleasing to God in the things we say, think, and do. Gone are the days of berating ourselves for being prodigal wanderers, because we have traded the sinful nature with the beautiful nature of Christ."
Mariah Secrest
Arts & Culture Editor, Wrecked for the Ordinary
- "I must say that if you haven't read Jim's book on this subject [the real nature of the believer's heart] you should. Everyone who was raised Christian in America needs to read it!"
Darin Hufford,
The Free Believers Network
- It was when I read this book, that the Holy Spirit so beautifully showed me that upon salvation, Papa gave me his heart which is totally and completely good.
Amy Chiaramonte
http://amyiswalkinginthespirit.blogspot.com/
- "This book is life-giving.”
Fran Means
Portland, Oregon
- "If you have ever been to church and left feeling empty, condemned, tired, or not good enough; this is an essential read...Recover Your Good Heart will reveal Biblical truths to you and encourage you to live from your heart. I cannot recommend it more.”
Meredith Martin
Tampa, Florida
- "I would recommend this book to anyone who would like to begin to experience the reality of spiritual life lived out of the reality of a renewed heart. I also would highly recommend it as a basic discipleship book for new believers so that they can perhaps avoid the treadmill of religious performance that too many Christians find themselves on."
Grace
Kingdom Grace
- "I highly recommend this book for anyone who tends to live in guilt and shame, or for anyone who simply wants to grow in understanding their true identity in Christ so they can freely live the life they were always meant to live."
Joel Brueseke,
Waterloo, IA
www.graceroots.org
What do you believe about your heart?
Many Christians feel guilty that they're not enough -- not enough for others, not enough for the Church, not enough for God. They've been told they're not committed enough, loving enough, spiritual enough. Shame and guilt are the painful results.
What does God really think about your heart? What if you believed your heart was already good, already holy? This book offers a way out of the shame and guilt of never good-enough.
Includes stories of Christians whose church experiences left them feeling ashamed and believing they weren't good-enough.
*How is this book different?
Though this book is grace-based, it is different than the majority of books out there that attempt to set people free from the trappings of religious, performance-based Christianity. Recover Your Good Heart goes a step further and suggests that grace-- reduced to 'Jesus love me, even though I'm a sinful mess' -- won't result in the transformation we seek. Grace must give a person a new, radiant, and supernaturally-good heart; so that the person now wants what God wants at the deepest level of their being. Only then can they be free of the 'shoulds' and 'oughts' of religious performance.
FULL REVIEWS BELOW:
"I cannot recommend Jim Robbins’ book Recover Your Good Heart highly enough. With profound insight, compassion, and solid biblical support, he resurrects one of the most forgotten and overlooked truths in our day—We are not the same people coming out of conversion that we were going in! Our sin nature and old heart are not eradicated but they are offset with a glorious, unalterable, supernatural reality. We have new hearts, new inclinations, and a new identity. We are far more than forgiven sinners. We are renovated saints with new hearts, good hearts; which come wholly through the Holy Spirit. Thank you Jim for reminding us that our hope for godliness is not gritting our teeth and trying harder. It is falling back on the resources and power of our good heart, the "heart of flesh", birthed at conversion and appropriated throughout our lifetime. A great work!"
Dwight Edwards, advisor to Larry Crabb,
and author of Revolution Within
www.kindlingforthefire.com
----------------------
“I live in the UK and would love to get further copies here to give to friends and others. I loved the book! … It’s refreshingly true, telling me that I’m actually ‘more than ok’, and the way the Father truly sees and relates to me. It builds up self-esteem by renewing the mind with what is actually fact, not just platitudes. I underlined most of it, and have lent it to a friend who I warned about the underlining… I’ve gone back over and over to my underlinings, and to contemplate the context of the underlinings, and every time it seems that the truth penetrates even deeper - truly Scriptural, as my life changes a little more each time. How can I find the words to affirm you for the words you’ve put to paper?
I am also a Biblical counselor and train other counselors, so the book will become one of my ‘I urge you to read this’ books. It really is a ‘must read if you want to change’ book.”
Jenny Lowen
Harpenden, United Kingdom
-------------------
“‘Amazing Grace how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me.’ In my practice as a Christian Counselor, I often hear that my clients still think of themselves as a wretch; shameful and dirty. They tell me that they are “sinners saved by grace” and that their “heart is deceitful above all things.” But that is who they were, not who they are now. Christians today live in bondage because they still think of themselves as they were before salvation and don’t understand their new identity in Christ. Jim Robbins has written a much needed book that in great Biblical detail and with tender and powerful truth helps the reader to embrace the fact that God has given them a new heart to replace the old, deceitful one and a new identity as holy and forgiven rather than sinner. Recover Your Good Heart is a healing, freeing, and empowering must read for every Christ follower.”
Kim West, M.Div.
Phoenix, Arizona
www.make-my-Christian-life-work.com
www.solutions-Christian-counseling.com
-------------------
"The human spirit is often muddy, clouded over by misguidance and false beliefs and self-distortion. And it all-too-quickly atrophies into a hardened mold, through which we channel all our thought patterns, behaviors, and hopes. Too many Christians have been living for years in the lifeless mental rut of guilt. Guilt leads to more guilt, because it assumes the worst in ourselves. We come to expect failure, and because we expect it we find ourselves failing again and again.
This is the cycle that Jim Robbins wants to reconstruct in his book Recover Your Good Heart: Living free from religious guilt and the shame of not-good-enough. Through this fairly short read, Jim counters some pretty deeply-entrenched theological assumptions that may be holding us back from living abundant, grace-filled lives.
The conceptual centerpiece is that once Christ has renewed our hearts through salvation, we have hearts that are good at their very core. We can trust ourselves, because Christ resides in us. We can expect ourselves to be pleasing to God in the things we say, think, and do. Gone are the days of berating ourselves for being prodigal wanderers, because we have traded the sinful nature with the beautiful nature of Christ.
But what about that which we like to somberly and religiously refer to as “the old nature”? Surely we know our own weaknesses; we are far from perfect. Robbins answers all the questions of the skeptics with a careful distinction of where we find our identity. We may act imperfectly out of tarnished habits, but once we have Christ present in our lives then those habits no longer make up our identity. Our true nature is good, and the sooner we believe that the sooner our thoughts and actions will follow suit.
Robbins contends that this is a necessary overhaul to our present religious system, which he explains in the following quote:
'Futility is the nagging ache of religion, for religion requires goodness, yet refuses God’s gift of goodness already present in the new heart.' (p. 37)
The implications of this paradigm shift are psychologically and materially immense. Though much of what Robbins says seems like simple rhetoric, a closer look reveals how little we actually we live out the idea of Christ in us. Somehow we seem to think we are adopting humility when we underestimate our spiritual capacity. According to Robbins, nothing could be further from the truth. We are part of God’s glory, and much of that glory is in the power of a transformed life.
For a few months now I have been considering the notion of the cues we take in charting out our behavior. When we hear those first few familiar chords of a worship song in church, our “worship” cue is triggered and we slide into the ensuing twenty minutes of elevated reverence. As we are dismissed from service an hour later, perhaps that’s our cue to stop thinking about God and start thinking about football or that Sunday afternoon nap. We live most of our lives according to these established mental cues, actualizing the expectations that those cues suggest. Are we living according to the right cues? Are we expecting the best from ourselves? If we allow God to press the re-set button on our hearts, we may discover that new life-giving cues direct our way of living and believing into the abundant life Christ has promised and made available. This is what Robbins hopes for in Recover Your Good Heart."
Mariah Secrest
Arts & Culture Editor, Wrecked for the Ordinary
-------------------
“Ah, yes … thanks for referencing my recommendation of Recover Your Good Heart. Yes! I suggest it for everyone! Growing up in the modern church, I was taught (repeatedly) that my heart was so foul, evil and awful. Thus, if one is told that, one eventually believes that and thus, lives like that. It was when I read this book, that the Holy Spirit so beautifully showed me that upon salvation, Papa gave me his heart which is totally and completely good. After all, God is only love. And God gives only that which is good. And because upon salvation I received a totally new heart, it was a heart filled with the Spirit of Jesus Christ. Thus, knowing this and believing this absolute truth, I realized, was so incredibly important for me to realize who I am and that I have a good heart. Once I got this, it completely blew my mind—for the good.”
Amy Chiaramonte
Surprise, Arizona
http://amyiswalkinginthespirit.blogspot.com/
-------------------
“‘Restoration,’ ‘recovery,’ ‘revival’ are buzzwords in church circles these days but most of what is being preached from pulpits is just recycled versions of the phrase “God is good, you are bad, try harder”. Jim Robbins adds his thoughts to the growing number of believers who are finding out that our life in Jesus is not about more effort and busyness but about the discovery that we are loved by our Father who is ready to share His life with us without restraint. It reminds me of the scene from the Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe in which the stone statues in the courtyard of the witch’s castle are breathed upon by Aslan and brought back to life. This book is life-giving.”
Fran Means
Portland, Oregon
-------------------
"If you have ever been to church and left feeling empty, condemned, tired, or not good enough; this is an essential read. As Christians we sometimes forget God’s promises of forgiveness and feel as though we have to do things to earn God’s love. Well, we don’t! Neither do we have to work to “be better”. God gave us a good heart. This book is an up-lifting read that uses scripture and Biblical truth to show us the goodness of our hearts accomplished by God’s work and that we are fully approved and accepted by him. Recover Your Good Heart will reveal Biblical truths to you and encourage you to live from your heart. I cannot recommend it more.”
Meredith Martin
Tampa, Florida
------------------
[Recover Your Good Heart] is "About fully understanding the new heart and its new nature with the desire and ability to do God’s will, and discipleship and spiritual growth as a process of internal transformation rather than external behavior modification.
At times I felt that book oversimplified the journey of restoration, yet that was probably in order to keep the emphasis on the truth of a radically new heart. The author clearly intended to overcome the message of sinfulness of the heart and communicate that the heart of a believer is supernaturally changed at their new birth and by nature enlivened with the nature of God.
In a way, the book is very basic, yet the truths are profound enough to be life-changing for anyone who lives under the shame and condemnation of feeling that they continually fall short in their Christian walk. Sadly there are many Christians who do feel that way because it is the predominant message taught in most churches.
I would recommend this book to anyone who would like to begin to experience the reality of spiritual life lived out of the reality of a renewed heart. I also would highly recommend it as a basic discipleship book for new believers so that they can perhaps avoid the treadmill of religious performance that too many Christians find themselves on.
I believe strongly in the message of this book - that transformation in the life of the believer must be an outflow of the work of the Spirit within their reborn heart. In order for that to occur one must first have a clear understanding of the supernatural renewal of their nature and identity in Christ. That message is clearly spelled out in this book."
Grace
Kingdom Grace
-------------------
"A few months ago I was having a conversation with a very close family member. He responded to something I said with, "The heart is desperately wicked." That comment never sat well with me, but I didn't know why. [Recover Your Good Heart] has put words to that discomfort and has taught me where it came from— from a new, good heart placed in me by a loving, good God so He and I can relate in a new way. As a result, I am free, and you can be too! Thank you, Jim Robbins!"
Chris Pack
Woodland Park, Colorado
http://1freebeliever.blogspot.com/
-------------------
"In the midst of a church culture that tends to put a huge emphasis on outward behavior change and religious activity, Jim Robbins’ book Recover Your Good Heart is a refreshing and much needed look into the true life that we have in Christ that is lived freely and abundantly from within — through the new heart that God gave us when we were raised to life with Christ.
How many Christians are still living with the mentality of something that was true at one time -– that our hearts were deceitful and desperately wicked -– when the scriptures tell us that in Christ God has taken away the old, unredeemed, sinful heart and placed in us a brand new heart that is holy, righteous and good!
It’s in our new God-given heart that we find real life and our true identity. Robbins examines the scriptures to show us what this new heart is and how we live from our good heart rather than trying harder to become something better. I highly recommend this book for anyone who tends to live in guilt and shame, or for anyone who simply wants to grow in understanding their true identity in Christ so they can freely live the life they were always meant to live."
Joel Brueseke,
Waterloo, IA
www.graceroots.org