Don't Give the Enemy a Seat at Your Table Bible Study Guide

March 22, 2021
In this impassioned but limited testament, pastor Giglio (Not Forsaken) closely reads Psalm 23, especially the verse “he prepares a table for me,” to suggest ways to find freedom from suffering by focusing on Jesus. While stressful situations can tempt people away from faith, he writes, God promises peace in the midst of strife. For Giglio, thoughts and feelings of envy, despair, or inadequacy are signs of evil intruding on God’s grace. Giglio suggests that by recognizing false thoughts, praying, and replacing negative thoughts with scripture, readers can gain peace. Unfortunately, there is a striking lack of consideration of mental illnesses, such as depression, that can cause or exacerbate such feelings. His evocations of the suffering he’s dealt with, meanwhile, tend toward the perfunctory, as when he depicts envy as the feeling of someone being angry that others have nice vehicles while he’s “struggling to buy teenager a decent car.” Giglio writes glowingly about his vision of God’s plan for each person, but his encouraging words fail to rise above simple platitudes.