Book Review: Enemies of the Heart- A. Stanley

I love reading and decided to do a book review for my blog on a book I read from Pastor Andey Stanley.

The book is all about the emotions that control our hearts that are un healthy. This normally happens when people look for happiness outside of themselves.

The 4 Emotions are:

1. Guilt (also interpreted by me as shame or regret)

2. Anger (Bitterness)

3. Greed (Fear of not having enough)

4. Jealousy (normally stems from insecurity and fear of rejection or not being good enough)

There is an internal dialogue connected to each emotion, they are:

1. I owe you

2. You owe me

3. I owe me

4. God owes me

Now I went through a few hard ships and even during grief I still had feelings like God owes me. But the fact is God gave His only son for us, so technically we owe Him.

Here are the things Happy people do to change these emotions:

1. They confess their mistake and change accordingly.

2. They forgive people who wrong them, they decide to let pain go.

3. They are generous and humble, they decide to let things go.

4. They celebrate others victory’s and they remain grateful for what they do have.

Andy also discusses Lust, I have never heard this said so profoundly. So basically, God created Lust and called it good, so what about Lust is bad? Unfocused Lust. Unfocused Lust is normally Lust mixed with one of the 4 negative emotions above. Andy also said in his book that we cannot profess to love God, if we hurt people or don’t love and forgive people.

I also love his Tips in the book about how to ask the right kind of questions to your children that will help your children learn how to keep their hearts healthy. This to me is the true way to guard your heart.

Thank you, Andy, for the amazing book. I thoroughly enjoyed learning about these emotions.

Now as a DISC personality fanatic, obviously, I can tell you which personality type is more prone to struggle with which negative emotion…

1. Guilt- Would be S-Types because they are loyal by nature and natural people pleasers.

2. Anger- Would be D- Types, they want to win and its easy for them to believe winning is owed to them.

3. Greed (C-Types, they love details and beautiful things, things that are valuable, they often get stuck on allowing themselves to believe they are owed something, especially if they wanted it in the right way)

4. Jealousy (I-types, they are all about image & public recognition. They easily compare their success with others success making them prone to jealousy)

This is just my guideline interpretation and could be subjected to different internal motivation aspects of each personality type. E.g. I am a high I type, which are known for being tardy, but I am never late which is a C type behavior, but my motivation for never being late is also an I type motivation (I care too much about my public image)

As Always, Keep Improving

The Ameliorate Team

#healthyHeart, #GuardYourHeart; #SelfDevelopment;