Review: How to Keep Your Inner Mess From Trashing Your Outer World by Bill Giovannetti

Title: How to Keep Your Inner Mess From Trashing Your Outer World: Creating Peace from Your Inner Chaos
Author: Bill Giovannetti
Released: January 4, 2009
Publisher: Monarch Books
Pages/format: 256 (Trade Paperback)
Source: It was a gift.

Quick Synopsis: Author/pastor Bill Giovannetti teaches how to effectively respond to and deal with what the Bible refers to as ‘the flesh’.

From the publisher’s website:

Our various spiritual malfunctions are manifestations of a single force: what used to be called ‘the flesh’. The flesh–or, as this book terms it, the Inner Mess–is the biggest splat on the windshield of following Jesus. It turns Christianity into a gigantic hamster wheel of frustration. You run fast, but go nowhere. Your Inner Felon, Inner Control Freak, and Inner Brat wrap their tentacles around even your most sincere intentions. If you try to fight against your lower nature you will fail, because you’re picking the wrong fight. The correct fight is the fight of faith, the fight to keep on believing in God and his power. This book will help believers at any stage encounter the real power of grace afresh.

Quick Review: How to Keep Your Inner Mess From Trashing Your Outer World is a practical, biblical, and sometimes humorous guide to understanding the different aspects of “the flesh” and dealing with them effectively.

Long Review:

How to Keep Your Inner Mess From Trashing Your Outer World (which I will from now on refer to simply as Inner Mess) is eighteen chapters long and divided into two parts. Part one (chapters 1-8) introduces readers to some of the characters that make up the Inner Mess including the Inner Dummy, Inner Thug, and Inner CIA Agent. Part two (chapters 9-18) outlines methods for effectively dealing with the Inner Mess. Chapters are divided into titled sections and each chapter concludes with a set of questions that readers can use for further study and personal reflection.

While there have been scores of books written to help Christians deal with “the flesh” as it is referred to in the Bible (many of which are listed under “Recommended Readings” at the back of the book), I thought that Inner Mess was thoroughly original in its approach. The whole premise of the book is the concept that we humans have many aspects or characters that make up our personage that are “dedicated to doing what Jesus wouldn’t do.” These shady characters collectively make up the Inner Mess. Giovannetti’s goal in part one is to help readers recognize each Inner Mess character and understand the emotions, traumas, fears, etc. that give that character the gumption to “trash your outer world.” I found this method of distinguishing each fleshly personality as separate but related to the others to be much more practically helpful than the conventional view that typically globs all aspects of the flesh into one giant vat of Ugly and expects believers to clean up the entire mess in one fell swoop.

I also appreciated the author’s grace-saturated Part Two presentation on how to deal with the Inner Mess. It provides a clear, practical strategy that leaves no room for self-induced legalism and guilt or abdicating responsibility for sinful thoughts and actions.

Giovannetti’s writing is well organized and highly readable. He interjects a lot of humor, which is especially welcome in a book on such a weighty topic. The author also uses storytelling liberally to illustrate concepts. In fact, at the beginning of each chapter he tells a segment of a story featuring Scott, a bus driver who has to deal with a rowdy bunch of riders and the chaos they create. I’m usually pretty disciplined about peeking ahead in a story, but I have to admit I was tempted to skip ahead when Scott knocked out the felon and the punk pulled out a gun and… Well, you’ll just have to read it for yourself.

Overall, this was an excellent book which I would recommend to anyone who has ever shared the sentiment of the Apostle Paul when he said, “I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.”

About Bill Giovannetti:

Pastor of a large church in Northern California, Dr. Giovannetti has a doctorate from Fuller Seminary. He contributes to publications from Walk Thru the Bible and Focus on the Family and is an experienced retreat and conference speaker.