The Life You Were Born to Give: Why It's Better to Live than to Receive

Everything we have we've been given. Even our very lives are a gift from God, given so we can live to give, not live to get. Yet it is our tendency in life to absorb, to take in without distribution resulting in a "souring" of all that is good and a separation from all that is intended.

In The Life You Were Born to Give, David McKinley helps readers shift their focus from getting all they can out of life to giving their lives away, for Christ. Guiding them through the book of Romans, the transformational message includes:

• A Life Delivered (Romans 1-11)
• A Life Devoted (Romans 12: 1-2)
• A Life Distributed (Romans 12-16)

"Recommended for readers looking for a basic approach to spiritual growth." -Don Morgan, Aspiring Retail

In this study of the biblical book of Romans, McKinley urges us to shift our focus away from getting whatever we can out of life to giving our lives away. "God intends for us to become catalysts for distribution, not containers for consolidation," he explains. He divides his study into three sections: our need for God, our need to extend God's grace to others and practical ways to live the life we "were born to give." McKinley liberally quotes others and uses historic and current events and positive personal stories to make his points. However, his chapters feel like a series of sermonettes ("Are you discouraged today?"), with all the predictable sound bites. The advice that McKinley, a Southern Baptist pastor, offers is what you'd expect: he calls for placing God in the center of our lives, practicing baptism by immersion, putting aside homosexuality, paying a full tithe, living in love, finding our gifts and using those gifts for others. Some Christians may find his short discussion on alcohol overly conservative, and the long list of people he is grateful to belongs in the acknowledgments. Still, many Christian readers will find his key point compelling: "When you learn to give, you learn to live." (Feb. 6)
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