Perilous Pursuits: Overcoming Our Obsession with Significance - Softcover

Stowell, Joseph M.

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9780802478122: Perilous Pursuits: Overcoming Our Obsession with Significance

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0802478123 ISBN 13: 9780802478122

Publisher: Moody Publishers, 2004

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Ever since birth we've been told, "we're nobody unless we're number one." But now that we've so dutifully mastered the ability to defend our self-worth, this book shows why we must learn to forget it and redirect search for significance to the one true source of value: Jesus Christ.

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About the Author:

JOSEPH M. STOWELL currently serves as the president of Cornerstone University in Grand Rapids, Michigan. He is a graduate of Cedarville University and Dallas Theological Seminary and was honored with a doctor of divinity degree from The Master's College in 1987. From 1987 to 2005, Joe served as the president of Chicago�s Moody Bible Institute, joining the staff of the suburban Chicago Harvest Bible Chapel in 2005. An internationally recognized conference speaker, Joe has written numerous books including the award winning The Trouble with Jesus, Strength for the Journey, and The Weight of Your Words. Joe and his wife, Martie, are the parents of three adult children and have ten grandchildren. They currently live in Ada, Michigan.

All of us are driven by the compelling need to believe that we are significant. I have yet to meet the person who says, "Significance? I couldn't care less. All I want to do is fill space on this planet." Everyone wants to count for something. As author and theologian R. C. Sproul says, "We yearn to believe that in some way we are important. This inner drive is as intense as our need for water and oxygen.'' In fact, because our need for significance is so primary, it can easily become an obsession. Modern counseling and psychology have focused a lot of attention on obsessive behaviors, whether it's an obsession with food, tobacco, alcohol, pornography, drugs, power, work or even an obsession with being abused! But I don't know that I've ever seen a list of obsessive behaviors that includes an addiction to the maintenance, advancement, enlargement, and protection of our significance. Yet for many of us, that is our less-than-magnificent obsession. Just as obsession with food leads to gluttony and an obsession with safety leads to anxiety and even neuroses, an obsession with our significance leads to a life of selfishness.

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