This is a book that I read as part of my church leadership council’s spiritual development. As a group, we’re to read a book together over the course of the year. This book is by popular current Christian author Bob Goff. I actually finished this book months ago, as it was our 2020 group read. The last 15 months have been pretty rough on my motivation to put forth the effort for this project, but now is the time to soldier through and get things back in line.
Since there was no prefatory post for this book, a quick description: Live In Grace, Walk In Love is a sort of daily devotional book. There are 365 one- or two-page ‘chapters’ for lack of a better word. Each month is sectioned off, almost like individual units. The point is to read and reflect on each day’s entry. What do the author’s reflections on faith, God, and scripture call to your mind? Do Goff’s words and message resonate with you? Can you find wider application of his thoughts, opinions, and calls to action?
Here is my brutally honest assessment:
Toolbox Level 1 (Structure): C
This is the harshest I have scored a book in this category to date and I believe it is warranted. For a renowned author who praises his editor once or twice during the course of this book, there are too many mistakes to score any higher. One or two mistakes can be overlooked without too much damage to the book’s score, but several spelling, grammar, and punctuation errors slipped past Mr. Goff’s editor and that will not be tolerated.
My copy of the book looks to be an early printing, though perhaps not a first edition. It is not uncommon for first editions to contain some errors, but I was surprised by just how many errors I came across. Considering that this is a one-a-day sort of format, each entry should be small enough for an editor to scrutinize and clean up. I don’t know if Goff’s editor was left overwhelmed by the number of small entries or if his editor got lazy and put too much trust in his client’s skills with two bestsellers to his name.
Another ticky-tack deal-breaker for me is that both Goff and his editor somehow miscounted their days. Rather than list the date for each entry, Goff begins the year at #1 and doesn’t reset each month. By chance, I happened to try to keep count for some reason and I discovered that this book only has 29 entries for April and 32 for May. Once again, this seems like a considerable mistake considering the format the author commits to. For it to slip past an editor is twice as surprising.
Toolbox Level 2 (Style): B
Each of the first three months of this book have a clear overarching theme (be bold and take chances; love boldly and openly; connect with people in positive ways), but April struggled to find a cohesive theme beyond its obligatory Easter highlights. Later months return to a thematic arc, but not always in the clearest sense. After a pretty tight start, it felt to me as though Goff lost track of his thematic intents.
Mr. Goff writes in a very everyman kind of voice. For someone who spent decades practicing law, he avoids getting bogged down in fancy words and jargon. His approach to each daily subject is simple and direct. While this makes Goff approachable to the masses, it also prevents him from writing in a voice that stands out in my mind. This is my first Bob Goff book, however, so perhaps his style and voice would stand out more in the daily snippets had I taken in one of his full books first.
Fulfillment of Purpose: B-
This section and the next both suffer because I don’t think the day-by-day format is really my thing. Having never read a day-by-day devotional book before, I don’t think that my brain was ready for the format. As a nerdy person, I like to chew on a lot of meat and I am known to overanalyze and overthink things- especially when the topic is religion and philosophy. Because of this, I was left wanting more.
From my perspective, two strengths of Goff’s format are the use of both a title for each entry (usually drawn from one of his main-point sentences) and the verse(s) of scripture that follow. These help ground you at the beginning of each entry, and they oftentimes set a tone that slows you down before the author heads into his next anecdote. I found myself making a list of his most thought-provoking titles.
For me personally, I rarely felt that entries go as deep as I would like them to. I have to recognize that this is friction between me and the format more so than friction between me and the author. How deep can you really get in one or two pages? Goff provides many anecdotes and ideas that gave me things to think about over breakfast or before bed (whenever I happened to read the daily entry), but not much that I contemplated for an extended period of time.
One thing that is clear to me is Goff’s excitement for living out the Gospel. You can sense an energy behind his words when he pivots out of his anecdotes and into his message or call to action that cannot be faked. If this same energy is present in his previous books, then I suspect that this may be a big part of why he has become a popular Christian author. This energy and his easy-to-digest entries certainly have potential to appeal to general audiences, even though the book didn’t grab and hold my attention.
Reading Experience: C
Once again, the bulk of this score boils down to me not really meshing with the day-by-day format. When I set out to read, I want to dive deep and devote serious blocks of time to consuming and absorbing the material. Reading entries that are a page and a half long at the most left me feeling like a stone skipping across the water. The in-and-out nature inherent to the brevity of format just wasn’t enough for me.
There are two specific criticisms that I can attribute to the author. First is that some of the content of his anecdotes betrays his everyman approach. Goff states several times how treating people with love doesn’t have to be overthought or bogged down with weighty theological concepts, which is appealing to a lot of people. I find hard to believe, however, that he is the ‘simple guy’ he says he is when he’s regularly and so casually mentioning conferences he’s been to, how frequently he travels the globe, his career as a lawyer, or his private lodge in the Canadian wilderness. Sure, his approach to living out and sharing his faith may be simple, but his lifestyle seems to be anything but.
A more direct quibble that I have is the repetitiveness of the author’s entries. It’s less subtle when you are reading just one entry a day, but I found myself catching up several times throughout the year. Repetition of points and ideas over multiple days is a proven method of helping your message sink in. When those points are repeated multiple times in one sitting, however, it sounds more like an author who has a lot of similar little things to say about just a handful of things. Some of his entry titles are very similar, and he either reused several verses or used enough similar verses that it felt redundant to me at times.
Overall Score: 2.42 out of 4 (C+)
While Bob Goff chose the format for this book, I feel the need to give him the benefit of the doubt. His words sizzle with energy at times, so I assume that this was not the best book to serve as my introduction to him. The format itself is limiting to any author, and the format does not seem to be one that suits me as a reader who happens to enjoy taking religious and philosophical content to Nerd Factor 5. There’s nothing that anyone can do about either of those truths.
There are some clear editorial flaws in this book that were hopefully corrected in later printings. Beyond that, I have to be honest and acknowledge that this book, and more specifically this book format, just isn’t for me. Perhaps the fact that this book was selected by someone else for me to read plays a role as well. If you are someone who has read day-by-day books before or you enjoy daily devotional content, don’t let this review scare you away. This book might be enjoyable for you.
