Book Review: "Heaven's Lessons: Ten Things I Learned About God When I Died" by Steve Sjogren

I'm not really sure what to say about this book. Sjogren talks about 10 things he learned as a result of his "near death" experience. While there were some good, Biblical principles (and some good secular principles) in the book, for me it was "wrapped" in such a way as to make it difficult to take. With a near death experience, professional dream interpreters, unresolved (in the book) leadership struggles in a church or ministry (the struggles were not clearly identified in the book), it just left much to be desired. It's not that there's anything wrong with the book, it just didn't resonate with me, except for the chapter on Quit Quitting.

Undoubtedly, Sjogren grew from his experience of near death and through the struggles he went through afterwards to regain his health, strength, and just his ability to function. His willingness to trust God through those years and not to give up are inspiring. The ten things Sjogren identifies that he learned were:

• We live in a spiritual world
• God is big
• Success works backwards
• God especially enjoys irregular people
• Don't fear death
• Quit quitting (best of the chapters — helped me)
• God heals gradually
• Get over it!
• Face your fear
• Be thankful.

Some chapters were unremarkable. I think there are likely better books that accomplish the same thing.

I read a pre-publication copy of the Kindle edition of the book. While not as distracting as some Kindle editions, there were formatting errors in TOC and a few other places like in the section on "How can I grow in thankfulness" beginning around location 1870. Hopefully, those have been cleared up in the edition that was actually published.

(Disclaimer: I received a free preview copy of this book in exchange for a review. The opinions are my own; I was not paid to give either a positive or negative review; I was encouraged to say what I actually think.)