"This may well be the most important book you read this year!" ~Lee Strobel

Strobel's endorsement is no exaggeration regarding the new book, Confident Faith: Building a Firm Foundation for Your Beliefs, by Mark Mittelberg. Originally released in 2008 under the title, Choosing Your Faith (the title of which I actually like better), this edition is a major revision and definitely worth reading.

Confident Faith is an excellent resource that offers insight to people who are Christians and people who are not. I love Mittelberg's methodology. He starts by establishing what faith really is and how each one of us actually exercises faith in something every day.

The book then offers a brilliant "Faith Path Questionnaire" with 42 questions to help readers discover which of the six most common "Faith Paths" currently characterize their approach to faith.

The next six chapters are dedicated to addressing each of the Six Faith Paths:

1. The Relativistic Faith Path: "Truth is Whatever Works for You"

2. The Traditional Faith Path: "Truth is What You've Always Been Taught"

3. The Authoritarian Faith Path: "Truth Is What You've Been Told You Must Believe"

4. The Intuitive Faith Path: "Truth is What You Feel in Your Heart"

5. The Mystical Faith Path: "Truth is What You Think God Told You"

6. The Evidential Faith Path: "Truth is What Logic and Evidence Point To"

The next section of the book helps readers assess the pros and cons of each Faith Path, and then focuses in on the Evidential Faith Path. It does this by examining the "Twenty Arrows of Truth" which show reasons from science, logic, history, archaeology, and experience that can strengthen our trust in the claims of Christianity.

Finally, in the last section of the book, Mittelberg lays outs the "Ten Barriers to Belief." These are the most common obstacles that tend to hold people back in their quest for a confident faith:

Barrier 1: Lack of Information

Barrier 2: Lack of Openness

Barrier 3: Intellectual Doubt or Disagreement

Barrier 4: Lack of Experience

Barrier 5: Lifestyle Issues

Barrier 6: Personal Hurts

Barrier 7: Control Issues

Barrier 8: Apathy

Barrier 9: Fear

Barrier 10: Oversimplicity

All in all, I give this book a five-star rating. It's so good I just want to give a copy to everyone I meet! In fact, when I lent my copy to an agnostic college student, she decided to become a follower of Christ after reading the book twice in one week!

Confidential Faith — This book is written to discern which faith someone believes in. Apparently, according to the authors, there are different kinds of faith, but it is wise to put all our faith in One Being, God and He can direct our lives so we don't make any more bad decisions, but since we are humans, we are not perfect and so will continue to make mistakes. Therefore, as the author's states, we will still go by our instincts. But the evidential faith is the right faith to have, because we can test everything against the Bible.

Mark Mittelberg has penned an interesting book about building a strong foundation for your faith. The book is broken into the following three sections: Six Faith Paths, Twenty Arrows of Truth and Ten Barriers to Belief. The first section explains what faith is and provides a questionnaire which will help in determining which of the six Faith Paths people use to base their beliefs. The Faith Paths are as follows: Relativistic, Traditional, Authoritarian, Intuitive, Mystical and Evidential. A chapter is dedicated to each Faith Path to provide better insight as to why people may believe the way that they do and the pros and cons to each belief system.

The second section of the book focuses on the "Twenty Arrows of Truth." In this section the author primarily focuses on the Evidential Faith Path to explain how science and logic strongly support Christianity. The third and final section of this book focuses on what the author calls "Ten Barriers to Belief." Some of these barriers include: Lack of Information, Personal Hurts, Control Issues and Fear.

I thought this was a thought-provoking book. I really enjoyed reading it and would recommend it to my family and friends.

*I received a complimentary copy of the book for review purposes from Tyndale House.

Confident Faith: Building a Firm Foundation for Your Beliefs by Mark Mittelberg was an easy, compelling read. It does what the title says, it helped me build a more firm foundation in my faith. A Confident Faith. Another book I wouldn't hesitate to suggest to everyone.