Exposing Spiritual Abuse: How to Rediscover God’s Love When the Church Has Let You Down, Mike Fehlauer. The chapter on “Toxic Love” is about the excessive devotion of people looking for a father-figure. There are two good chapters on positive and negative characteristics to look for in a pastor. Warning Signs of an Unhealthy Church – Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 are excerpts from the book.

Note that this book is a recommended reference work on apologeticsindex.org website, see the review of Fehlauer’s work – Exposing Spiritual Abuse on spiritualabuse.org.

Exposing Spiritual Abuse by Mike Fehlauer- From a review on Amazon: “To all those who love God but who do not want to be abused in God’s name by their church leaders, you’ll love this book. If you’ve ever felt you’ve given your best and
didn’t run at the first sign of trouble in a church, but mere came a point when you had been stripped of so much inside mat you had to go, yet you were talked about from the pulpit as if you had given up on God, mis book is for you! …For those who
would try to tell you mat mis book is not from God, remember this—David had a submissive attitude to Saul, when he was in Saul’s house and afterwards. But when Saul tried to kill David because of his own emotional demons, DAVID and
GOD BACKED DAVID! So don’t let church leaders tell you that you’re wrong to leave a church in which abuse is being justified in God’s name.”

Damaged Disciples: Casualties of Authoritarian Churches and the Shepherding Movement, Ron and Vicki Burks, 1992. Ron was taught to subject himself totally to his disciplers in the shepherding movement. Vicki was taught to submit to her husband. This is their story of struggling to break free and rebuild their lives. For Vicki, it is the story of rescuing her “self” from non-being. Ron later earned his PhD. in counseling and was on staff at Wellspring. Here is his dissertation, Cognitive Impairment In Thought Reform Environments. http://oak.cats.ohiou.edu/~rb267689/

We Would See Jesus, Roy and Revel Hession,1958, re-issued by CLC in 2005. A brief read, a perennial classic that has withstood the test of time. Read the Amazon reviews.

Do you struggle with guilt or feel like God can’t accept you as you are? Tt’s easy to forget that nothing we do will make us more acceptable to God. Jesus came to set us free to serve Him in the freshness and spontaneity of the Spirit, and to receive the ABUNDANT blessing God has for us. Let your life be transformed as you learn to see Jesus, who is both the blessing and the way to that blessing – the menas and the end.