Approval Addiction: Overcoming Your Need to Please Everyone / Joyce Meyer (Time Warner AudioBooks, 2005) Abridged on 5 compact discs, read by Pat Lentz. ISBN 9781594830235

Approval Addiction looks at a common personal and social problem from an explicitly Christian perspective: No one can ever please everyone else, and no one can ever please anyone else all the time. Too many people devote considerable energy toward achieving this impossible outcome. It becomes easy to depend on receiving approval from others as a requirement for wellbeing.

Gaining approval becomes an addiction for many people. As a result any criticism they receive seems like a judgment that they have failed, which, after a while, leads to frustration at being misunderstood, and finally anger and another strained relationship. Joyce Meyer, one of the most outstanding Bible teachers of our time, points out in Approval Addiction that receiving and accepting the unconditional love of God brings us all the approval any of us ever need.

It is easy to look at bad circumstances in life and doubt the love of God. According to the Bible, we are each God's masterpiece, but fallen into sin. God aims to purge us of sin and looks at us as the finished product he intends, not just the work in progress we are now. That is, in fact, he looks at us in love, unconditional love. Because he intends to produce righteousness in each one of us, and approves of us as if he has already succeeded, his approval, like his love, has no preconditions. Approval Addiction aims to prove that we need no other approval.

Meyer explains to her audience how to discover this truth by experience. After all, she, too, once suffered from the same insecurities that she teaches about. Secure in the love of God, we can stand to see how our own behavior contributes to our problems. And then, with God's loving help, we can change what need to change and not give up what we need to hold on to just in hope of winning human approval. All-Purpose Guru Alert offers carefully chosen bargain books and audiobooks like Approval Addiction. We feature one title every day and keep past offers active while supplies last.

For carefully selected bargain books or audiobooks, one title featured every day, visit All-Purpose Guru Alert. David M. Guion, the All-Purpose Guru also maintains a family of blogs and Internet writings.