Review: Spiritual Warfare for Your Family: What You Need to Know to Protect Your Children

Spiritual Warfare for Your Family: What You Need to Know to Protect Your Children by Leighann McCoy
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

From what I understand, McCoy's principal thesis seems to be that we have to fight back against the devil through spiritual warfare. She writes from the personal pain of praying for her "perfect" daughter to break up with cohabiting with a man only to see her bearing a child out of wedlock. She writes in a mostly conversational style with short comments on bible passages that she would draw analogies from to support her statements. Interestingly, she quotes from reformed theologians such as John Piper and David Platt, but still retains an eisegetical approach to Scripture. This book would therefore appeal to readers who are looking for bible verses and instructions to deal with what they perceive to the spiritual warfare in their families.

A few areas for improvement though: I wished that she had cut short the storytelling of her personal life, because unless she is a famous theologian or preacher, I'm guessing the average reader would not appreciate so much detail. I felt that the book would have been much better if it stood at 200 pages (towards the end I was honestly struggled to hold my interest and would not have finished it if I did not have to write a review). I also did not feel the same sense of assuredness and confidence in the Lord and one's resulting delegated authority, as compared to for example, when I had read a Randy Clark book on healing breakthroughs.

For the application of spiritual warfare about specific issues (in Part 6 of the book) - many of which were spot-on relevant, I however wished that she had elaborated more on each point by going more in depth instead of just skimming the surface. The prayers at the end of these sections were immensely helpful though - relating as one struggling in a specific area, the template prayer helps convey what we would want to but yet perhaps be unable to utter.

A few pet peeves though, some more serious than others. As a perfectionist, the blurry low-resolution black and white photographs made me feel so very dissatisfied (I'd rather they had not included them). For her to quote Dr. Worthington's account of his mother's murder and brother's suicide, spending multiple pages talking about his REACH model of forgiveness, I felt that it was almost criminal for her not to provide a proper reference. Having recently concluded a 20 page academic paper on healthy church growth, which included a lengthy segment on church discipline, I cringed at the use of Matt 18:18 in the final pages (the context was church discipline, not spiritual warfare).

I received this book from the Baker Publishing Group's Bethany House Blogger Program for the purposes of providing an unbiased review. All views are my own.

View all my reviews