Activate Your Faith, Achieve Your Dreams
Increase Your Favor By Joel Osteen

Review By: Lois Ann Clark

Like millions of others, I watch televangelist Joel Osteen weekly ...

I find his messages uplifting and encouraging, and his brand of positive, practical Christianity a breath of fresh air. In times like these—with daily reports of banks closing, investment houses failing, retirement accounts shrinking, foreclosures and bankruptcies increasing, and unemployment at record high levels—we don’t, in the words of the song from the Broadway musical The Wiz want “nobody to bring us no bad news!”.

Joel Osteen’s book, true to his positive and motivating style, gives us strategies to use to overcome these difficulties and “not just survive,” as he says, “but thrive.”  In the introduction to the book, Osteen shares his desire to “speak faith into the lives of others, encouraging them when they are discouraged, calling forth seeds of greatness God planted within them, assuring them that their best days are ahead.” Essentially, what this book transmits is the message in the lyrics from an old song by Curtis Mayfield and The Impressions: “Keep on Pushing! Don’t stop now! Move up a little higher… some way, somehow.”

The book consists of five sections:

• “It’s Time to Believe”
• “It’s Time for Favor”
• “It’s Time for Resolutions”
• “It’s Time to Trust”
• “It’s Time to Stretch”

Each section is filled with anecdotal references about people who have overcome adversities to achieve their goals. Some overcame environmental challenges; others overcame abuse or physical challenges. But in each case, their circumstances were changed by believing that nothing was impossible for God, working hard, and keeping the faith (or as Jesse Jackson might say, “keeping hope alive”), Osteen also provides references to Scripture to support his assertions that God is a “very present help” in times of trouble, and that He wants us to call on Him in our times of need.

For the naysayers who would say this is just more of the prosperity gospel school of Christianity, my response would be “don’t hate!” Many of us are enduring very difficult times. People need to feel that there is light at the end of the tunnel. Osteen’s book gives the reader strategies to employ while they are in that tunnel.

In a matter that is quite apropos for this time of year, Osteen challenges the reader to “Believe for a Supernatural Year!”

I enjoyed this book. My copy is full of highlighting, notes in the margins, and folded-back pages; a sure sign that I will be referring to it throughout the year. I encourage readers to follow the suggestions throughout the book and “believe for a supernatural year…”

I know I will.