Nice: Why We Love to Be Liked and How God Calls Us to More

by Sharon Hodde Miller

Overview

God never called us to be nice.

What happens when we replace courage with compromise?
What happens when we replace honesty with likability?
What happens when we replace conviction with clichés?
What happens when we replace discipleship to Christ with a devotion to nice?

We live in a culture that prizes niceness as one of its highest virtues. Niceness keeps the peace, wins friends, gains influence, and serves our reputations well, but it also takes the teeth out of our witness and the power out of our faith. When we choose to be nice instead of faithful, we bear fruits that are bland, bitter, empty, and rotten to the core.

In this life-changing book, Sharon Hodde Miller explores the seemingly innocent idol that has crept into our faith and quietly corrupted it, producing the bad fruits of cowardice, inauthenticity, shallowness, and more. Then she challenges readers to cultivate a better tree, providing practical steps to reclaim our credibility as followers of Christ, and bear better, richer, more life-giving fruits.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780801075247
Publisher:	Baker Publishing Group
Publication date:	08/20/2019
Pages:	224
Sales rank:	367,683
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.40(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

Sharon Hodde Miller is a pastor's wife, a mother to two small boys, and the author of Free of Me. In addition to earning her PhD, Sharon has blogged at SheWorships.com for nearly ten years, making God's Word accessible to women everywhere. She has been a regular contributor to Propel and Her.meneutics, and has written for Relevant, Christianity Today, (in)courage, She Reads Truth, and many other publications and blogs. She speaks regularly on topics ranging from leadership to body image to Scripture. She lives with her family in the Raleigh/Durham area.

Table of Contents

Introduction 11

1 The Fruit of Niceness 19

2 Fake: The Fruit of Inauthenticity 33

3 Rotten: The Fruit of Corruption 47

4 Bland: The Fruit of Cowardice 63

5 Bitter: The Fruit of Cynicism 79

6 Hard: The Fruit of Self-Righteousness 93

7 Processed: The Fruit of Sentimentality 107

8 Cultivating a Better Tree 121

9 Grow Original: Embracing Your Design 131

10 Grow Deep: Rooting Your Soul 149

11 Grow Less: Pruning Your Produce 165

12 Grow Wild: Flourishing in the Wilderness 181

13 The Fruit That Lasts 195

Acknowledgments 203

Notes 207

About the Author 213