In The Great Deception, a short book of deeply personal reflections and poems, Josephine Fussell examines how spiritual warfare – the combating of the devil through prayer – made a deep and lasting impact on her life. “Our battle is with the spirit behind the scenes. The enemy doesn’t care whom he uses, nor does he care where he uses them, including inside the church house…With God’s help, I was able to depend upon and trust in Him to deliver me. The enemy works through fear, but God works through faith.”
With a conversational tone, the author ponders the fruits of the Holy Spirit, examines the best way to fight (or, at times, not to fight) against the spiritual combatant of man, and stresses the importance of complete obedience to God, noting that times of disobedience have ultimately lead to negative consequences in her life. Nonetheless, God protected her and asks us to do the same for our brothers and sisters in faith: “In spite of the things I have gone through,” Fussell writes, “I must show love toward the people used by the enemy…”
Fussell is honest with her feelings, and her faith is genuine. She also seems to know how to build suspense and evokes a sense of dread when alluding to a frightening experience she had with a co-worker. The book, however, is choppy in its execution. There are typographical errors and much repetition in the short text. For example, her sections “To Fight or Not to Fight” and “Do We Fight or Not?” are similar and could have been combined or restructured to form a more cohesive unit. Moreover, the book suffers from lack of transitions linking her ideas together in an organized way.
Still, Fussell’s purpose seems to be less about writing the perfect book and more about conveying a simple message of hope to her readers: “We are divinely loved by Jesus.”
Also available as an ebook.
