Fearless: a review

I have to start by saying I haven’t read a Max Lucado book in about a decade.  I always enjoyed the ones I read, but I have to say they started sound a lot of like.  I felt like I was reading mostly the same thing over and over.  I think this had to do more with the writer’s style than content.  With Fearless, I began reading and instantly could hear Lucado’s voice behind.  That’s a good thing, but not necessarily a great thing.

Having said that, this is a book that is full of great Biblical wisdom for growing fearless in our life.  I love the title because it is something I aspire to be.  The subtitle of the book gives the point of the book: “Imagine your life without fear.”  Specifically Lucado looks at the fear of:

• Not mattering;
• Disappointing God;
• Running out;
• Not protecting my kids;
• Overwhelming challenges;
• Worst-case scenarios;
• Violence;
• the coming Winter;
• Life’s Final moments;
• What’s next;
• That God’s not real;
• Global calamity
• God getting out of my box.

With practical application and insightful wisdom Lucado tackles each of these fears.  Essentially you could say there is something int he book for everyone.  I don’t know anyone who doesn’t or hasn’t wrestled with one of these fears.

Here’s some quotes to chew on:

It’s not the absence of storms that sets us apart. It’s whom we discover in the storm: an unstirred Christ (8).

Fear corrodes our confidence in God’s goodnes (9).

Fear may fill our world, but it doesn’t haven’t fill our hearts. It will always knock on the door. Just don’t invite it in for dinner, and for heaven’s sake don’t offer it a bed for the night (13).

Jesus loves us too much to leave us in doubt about his grace (37).

Putting your worries into words disrobes them (85).

A healthy church is where fear goes to die (87).

God owns it all. God shares it all (109).

With trademark Lucado style, you get a shotgun blast of wisdom that is poignant, timely, quotable, but not necessarily in depth.  If you are looking to explore any one fear in depth you will be frustrated, but if you are looking for a primer on a wide range of fears we face and how to face them with faith-filled courage then you have found the right source.

For me the book was a good reminder of the promises we have in Christ to face “all things through Christ who gives me strength.”

 

Christianish: a review

When I started Mark Steele’s newest book Christianish: What if we’re not really following Jesus at all? my first thought was that I had read it all before.  I love the Steelehouse Podcast (Mark’s podcast with co-host Jeff Huston on finding God in pop culture) and loved Half-Life/Die Already so I was expecting great things.  And great things did I find, just a little later than I expected.

With trade mark humor Mark shares about his experiences that tend to always have a “messy ending” and then shares insight from those experiences on how often what we call “following Jesus” is really more akin to following ourselves.  The first third of the book may have sounded familiar from other stuff I have read, but the final two-thirds was worth the price of the book.

Here are some quotes that capture the essence of the book:

We say we live in pursuit of holiness, but we only pursue it in the areas of our lives that our circle of community frowns upon (57).

In speaking of Jesus when he was tempted by Satan: He didn’t just weigh the options Satan presented Him. He weighed the optiosn tha tSatan did not present Him (61).

If we identify sin in someone else, we feel an urge to lead teh conversation with that. We attack wrongness first as if that is the measure of Christlikeness when in actuality we aren’t giving a lot of thought as to how Jesus would respond (105).

If something moves us, we want to be a part of it – and we want to be noticed as a part of it – and we want to be an important part of it immediately without process, training, or rehearsal. To this end we continue to stick people in places where they either fail or flail (129).

As a Christian culture we have grown morbidly obese: craving little pleasures, paybacks, and accolades to our heroic emotional efforts. Wanting recompense or fame and wanting it now in the way that we define. When we do not receive this desired prize, we usually buy, borrow, or take it anyway – because we decided a long time ago that we deserve it. In so doing, we take what does not belong to us, and then blame God that it didn’t make us feel any better (172).

For all of us the action of following Christ must eventually leave the world of “what am I going to get out of this” and permanently transition into the world of “how am I going to give through this (175).”

We are dodging the lengthier routes that welcome others into our healing. But that should become our new path (274).

Christianish came at the perfect time in my life with much needed laughter AND a kick in the pants.  Without abandoning the idea of “church” and without harsh unwarranted judgement, Mark delivers a dose of wit and wisdom to Christ-followers intent on actually following Jesus, not their personal version of Him.

 

The 3 questions of Dave Gibbons

I recently read The Monkey and the Fish by Dave Gibbons. In it he talked about 3 questions that have been a filter for deciding direction for him personally and for the church he leads. They are:

1.  Who is my neighbor?

2. What’s my pain?

3. What is in my hand?

Who is my neighbor? is a question related to Luke 10:25-37.  Through this parable Jesus teaches that our “neighbor” are those who are around us but very different than us.

What’s my pain? is a question about personal brokenness and passion.  What are you most passionate about?  What pain in your past has been a catalyst for passion?

What is in my hand? is a question about the gifts, skill and interests God has given you.  It’s about using what God has given you to work towards His mission.

These may be 3 of the most powerful questions I’ve ever considered.

What do you think?

 

The Tangible Kingdom by Hugh Halter and Matt Smay

There’s a conversation in the church world surrounding the issue of being attractional and/or incarnational.  Attractional is by far the most dominant way of doing church.  This is where Sunday morning is the main event.  This method mostly works from the philosophy that “if you build it, they will come.” It’s not the only thing, but it is the main thing that is offered to attract non-believers.

The other approach that is being purported as the truly Biblical way of church is the incarnational approach.  This approach is harder to define in general because there are a wide variety of examples and philosphies.  The Tangible Kingdom is an effort to describe how faith communities can be birthed out of simply “doing life with people.”

Disclaimer:  Those descriptions are oversimplifications, but for the sake of brevity they’ll have to work at this point.

Here’s some quotes from the book with some thoughts to come tomorrow:

“Lost” in ancient times meant something to be treasured, worth looking for, but just missing.  “Very different from our moern-day meaning of being clueless, spiritually stupid, or arrogantly anti-God (40).”

“In the name of ‘getting someone saved,’ we have primarily focused on communicating a message of truth to the world.  There’s nothing wrong with that, except that we’ve prioritized the verbals over the nonverbals, the message over the method, that is to say, the proclamation over the posture (41).”

“If people aren’t asking about their lives, then we haven’t postured oru faith well enought or long enough (42).”

The missionary as an advocate:
“To be an advocate means that when people are in need, they know that we’ll be on their team, and that we’ll be there whenever they need us, for just about anything (43).”

“The friend who can be silent with us ina moment of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not-knowing, not-curing, not-healing and face with us the reality of our powerlessness, that is the friend who cares (44).”

“We must remember that people will always be interested in good news if it is observable (66).”

“The best and most natural way to win someone’s heart is to model a way of life that’s attractive to them (78).”

“What you give your leadership to will always grow (104).”

“Since we know that most Sojourners don’t wake up Sunday morning looking for a good sermon, we’ve decided to put our enrgy, efforts, and focus into the incarnational aspects of our church instead of the presentational aspects (105).”

“We simply want to show that this structure of attractional church makes it very hard to communicate, show, or create a place of belonging where the whole gospel can be discovered.  It’s not a matter of the heart; it’s simply that the structure limits missionality and the ability to be incarnational as a community (105).”

“Pastors should provide only what the followers of Christ can’t get on their own (111).”

“Today, if we met someone who loved Jesus but didn’t know he was God, I doubt we would call that person a Christian, let alone use them in ministry. Yet Jesus did.  I submit that for the entire time the disciples were with Jesus, they were what we would now call ‘Sojourners’: spiritually disoriented God seekers (119).”

“In order for us to change the incorrect assumptions that people have about God and his followers, we’ve got to get to the point where they consider us one of them (125).”

“It’s about replacing personal or Christian activities with time spent building relationships with people in the surrounding culture (127).”

Quoting Henri Nouwen:
“I wonder more and more if the first thing shouldn’t be to know people by name, to eat and drink with them, to listen to their stories and tell your own and let them know with words, handshakes and hugs that you do not simply like them – but truly love them (145).”