[alert variation=”alert-info”]Publisher: Chosen Books
Formats: Papberback, Kindle, eBook
Purchase: Powell’s | Amazon | IndieBound | Barnes & Noble | iBooks[/alert]

R. T. Kendall’s Finding Your Heart’s Desire is a biblical analysis of ambition: Is it Godly? Is it worldly? Is there a way to combine the two? Kendall’s book is a response to a Christian mentality that ambition is sinful and invariably leads to selfishness and pride, which is – as Kendall argues – an unfortunate and erroneous presumption. Kendall’s book presents an astute and biblical consideration of what should be lauded as a positive personal characteristic. “If ambition is the desire to achieve, often in the eyes of others, motivation is the fuel that drives a person to achieve that ambition,” Kendall writes. “Ambition is the dream; motivation gets things done.”

“It is the thesis of this book that God often uses ambition to motivate us to do what we need to do — and what He calls us to do. … Ambition is not a virtue; it can be a good thing and also a bad thing. But ambition as a potential for good is one of the main aspects of the human personality that God often taps to motivate us to do His will.”

The Apostle Paul, who wrote nearly 50 percent of the New Testament, was a highly ambitious person, Kendall writes. Rather than pursuing his ambition for purely selfish purposes, Paul strove to make a different in the world “on the way to heaven,” Kendall argues. Misdirected, unsanctified ambition can wreak havoc both in the church setting and in the world in general, Kendall writes, which is why our greatest task as Christians is to tap into God’s path for our life, tuning our ambition to the whispers of the Holy Spirit. For those grappling to better balance the wiles of worldly ambition with the drive to pursue God-given passions, Kendall offers a helpful discussion that is both biblical and affirming.

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