A Review of Awakening - A New Approach to Faith, Fasting, and Spiritual Freedom by Stovall Weems

One of the subjects I am interested in as a Follower of Christ is fasting.  Fasting is something that I do not do very often, so when I saw I had a chance to read and review Stovall Weems' book Awakening - A New Approach to Faith, Fasting, and Spiritual Freedom, I decided to opt for this book and see what I might be missing.

What I was missing was the feeling that I was reading the script for a 30 minute infomercial on Mr. Weems' approach to being closer to God. 

After reading through this book, and in some cases, re-reading parts of it, I am still not sure what Mr. Weems is trying to convey here.  I do not doubt Mr. Weems' faith, nor his beliefs, but there are many places I disagree with him.  I do not know if he believes in the so called "prosperity gospel" that is preached by people such as Kenneth Copeland or Creflo Dollar, but one section in particular of his book, on providing more room for God to fill in areas of your life dealt with tithing , and the prosperity message seemed to come out loud and clear.

Another aspect seemed to be weight loss.  Even though Mr. Weems stated in his book that fasting is not about weight loss, he wrote more than once about how much weight was lost after fasting.  I am not sure I can equivocate  getting closer to God with losing weight, but this is part of what I received from reading the book.

Mr. Weems does attempt to back up his writing by quoting scripture, however, anyone who actually does study the Bible will tell you that anyone can take a single scripture and make it fit their need.  It is when you read the scripture in context to the ones around it that you derive the real meaning of the quoted scripture.  I believe that Mr. Weems has taken some, not all but some scripture out of context for his book.  I am not saying that there is not any meat in this book, indeed there are some very good morsels to find, but they are few and far in between. 

I am giving this book two out of five stars, and sadly, this is one book that I am not recommending to my friends and colleagues.

Please note that this book was presented to me by Waterbrook Press for the purpose of reviewing the book.  I did not promise, nor in any way indicate a positive or negative review to the publisher.  The review as presented is mine and mine alone.