Books

Glory Days: Living Your Promised Land Life Now

by Max Lucado (Thomas Nelson, 2015)

True to form, Max Lucado has penned another fine devotional, this time with the book of Joshua as his springboard.

The idea behind Glory Days subtitle, Living Your Promised Land Life Now, is that God has purpose for our lives as Christians that many of us are missing. We have an inheritance we have failed to receive.

Lucado takes incidents from Joshua’s book and applies the principles to Christians today. “Each land represents a different condition of life,” he writes. “Geography represents theology.” In short:

  • Egypt represents slavery.
  • The wilderness represents fear.
  • Canaan represents victory.

Just as Canaan represents the victorious Christian life, the wilderness represents the defeated Christian life.

Each chapter takes a story from Joshua, lifts its timeless principle from the text, and applies it to our lives with skill, practicality, and of course, stories—the hallmark of every Lucado volume. Penned with his own inimitable style of writing.

I enjoyed the book on the practical level, but at times I felt we readers had to leave the context of Joshua too quickly to rush to application. The book of Hebrews paints a different picture of Joshua’s victories in Canaan: “For if Joshua had given them rest, He would not have spoken of another day after that” (Hebrews 4:8). The anticipation of true rest would be realized only after the Messiah came. More specifically, the physical kingdom of God was every Jew’s hope—not simply living in Canaan with God’s blessing. Even the subtitle, Living Your Promised Land Life Now< is an example of how the literal fulfillment of the Hebrew hope often seemed too spiritualized in its application.

All in all, Glory Days was an encouraging read that many Lucado fans will enjoy.