Title: Love or Die: Christ’s Wake-Up Call to the Church
Author: Alexander Strauch
Publisher: Lewis & Roth, 2008; 99 pp. $9.99
Recommendation (4-star scale): 
A few weeks ago I preached a message on Revelation 2:1-7 — the Ephesian church’s loss of love for Christ. A couple days after the message, a friend said to me, “OK — I was convicted. Now what do I do about it? How can I cultivate a love for Christ?”
This is part of the question that Alexander Strauch seeks to address in his book, Love or Die. [Though he spends as much or more time considering how to cultivate love for other believers as he does Christ.]
The structure of this brief book is very simple. Part one consists of a brief exposition of Revelation 2, while part two is a consideration of “how to cultivate love.” In that section, he offers six principles:
- study love
- pray for love
- teach love
- model love
- guard love
- practice love
I appreciated the outline and directives he gave in how to cultivate love, but found his expansion of the outline to be somewhat weak. In places that was because it seemed that his principles were driven more by illustrations than Biblical directives; in other places, it seemed that he was drawing unwarranted application from a Biblical text. And most of all, he failed to address the primary question — how does one cultivate a love for Jesus Christ? How does one return to an initial love for Him? (The same question as my friend.)
Overall, the idea of the book is excellent, and there are a few things about it that are beneficial, I just wish the book was more fully developed.
Words of Grace 