Many people come to Christ, but still are locked in the same sins, bad habits and circumstance. They have not experienced real freedom. Joey LeTourneau’s Revolutionary Freedom (Destiny Image, 2011) describes how our turning away from our self absorption, our fears and shame allows us to experience more fully the freedom Christ brings. I found myself agreeing wiht Letourneau’s overall message, but I didn’t resonate with his prose.
Letourneau takes us on a journey from imprisonment to freedom. The jail he finds himself in at the start of the book, has many different prisoners, each uniquely bound in different ways. LeTourneau (or the narrative voice in the book) discovers that the ‘prison guard’ looks exactly like himself and it strikes him, ‘what if the only one keeping me here is me.’ As he is able to trust God and surrender to him, he experiences freedom and the walls of the prison disappear.
But he is back in prison after visiting Satan’s garage sale. Yep. It turns out that Satan has garage sales and that he is the worst garage salesperson ever. I mean, really bad. He sells sins with million dollar price stickers on them (not exactly unloading his junk) and leaves ‘Fear’s journal’ around for LeTourneau to read and discover Satan’s plans to derail his spiritual life (can you say plot device?). For the rest of the book, LeTourneau grows in his trust of Jesus and talks with other Bible characters.
The purpose of this book is to get us to stop self-sabotaging our spiritual lives and to trust Christ more fully. When we do, we will experience real freedom. This is a great message. But I found the allegorical format a little tedious, and too all over the place. One minute we are in a prison, then a garage sale, then inside a human heart doing glowing jigsaw puzzles. It was jarring trying to keep up with the mixed metaphors. It was fairly heavy-handed with its allegory, which also made it feel preachy.
But like I said, good message, if a little individualistic. I give it two stars.
Thank you to Speakeasy for providing me a copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.
thoughts, prayers & songs: 