![]() Also, it's a touch too cynical in places for me. He's not Calvinistic, as far as I can tell. There is a pastor's sense of how to phrase a point, which means there are a lot of good sound bites. That's his M.O.Ĭhapter 6: Faith Demands Mystery - We can know God, but God is bigger than our grasp of him.Ĭhapter 7: Faith Demands Desperation -Faith requires a sense of our deep need of Christ.Ĭhapter 8: Faith Demands Surrender - Faith means letting some of our dreams be crushed to live by God's dreamsĬhapter 9: Waking Up - Remembering God's work everywhere.Ĭhapter 10: Pointing Out -Showing God's presence and work in the world to others.Ĭhapter 11: On Trust and Fear - Overcoming fearĬhapter 12: Joy, Sorrow, and the Lost Art of Lament - The place of grief and lament in the Christian life.Ĭhapter 13: Rethinking Strength and Weakness When we cultivate an awareness of how God works 'outside the lines' it can surprise us and stir us.Ĭhapter 5: The God at the End of Our Rope -God works in and through our weakness. How do we fix that?Ĭhapter 1: Dust And Bones: The Difficulty of Human Life - Consumer versions of Jesus leave us with a less interesting one than who uses the disappointments of life to calls us to himself.Ĭhapter 2: The God Who Hides - Why does God withdraw the sense of his presence from a believer? That he does this is part of the mystery of how he deepens faith in us.Ĭhapter 3: Why We Don’t See Him -We don't notice God at work all around us in a million different settingsĬhapter 4: The Unpredictable God -God is reliable, but not predictable. Introduction: The God Who Gets Bigger - God should get bigger in our hearts and lives as we get older, yet many find the opposite to be true. Essentially his argument is that God is more complicated and wild than we tend to realize. The book is about gaining a deeper and more expansive view of God and what it means to follow Christ. I received a copy from Net Galley and David C Cook in return for an honest review. This book's intent seemed to be to help us find out more about God, and as a bonus, it helps us find out more surprising things about ourselves, including dodgy motives and counterproductive ways to trying to probe the mystery. ![]() God's mysterious and surprising ways of working are part of His character. And if we want to present Him as something He never presented Himself, that's our problem.Īre all of the questions answered completely? No, but if there was any way they could be, the title of this book couldn't be called "Astonished". If people wanted to pursue other options, He simply let them. ![]() He was content with obscurity, and felt no pressure to polish up His message to make it more palatable for the crowds. Jesus Himself never felt the need to dazzle people into His kingdom, as modern Christians often seemed compelled to do, making them come across the same way as those annoying steak-knife salesmen. He points out possible flaws in our methods of sharing Him with others. He examines how we often choose to come to God out of self-interested motives, rather than simply wanting to know Him for His own sake. His observations about our end of the communication were interesting, indicating that some of our problems may be to do with assumptions we've made, which originated with vocal Christians and not with God. Mike Erre understands why it may be easy to wonder if there is, in fact, something wrong with us, and our receivers. It was refreshing to come across a book which is so direct in asking such things. Why are desert times said to be 'necessary' in our relationship with God, when we don't have them with significant fellow humans? Why does He keep Himself hidden like a kid playing hide and seek? And one I've often grappled with at different times, why should we even want to be friends with Him, if He behaves so coy and perverse? After all, human parents don't hang back, and stay silent and aloof when their children ask them questions. This book prompts us to look at the deep and honest questions we have about God, particularly those frustrating ones we tend to poke into the background, because there seems no point in wondering.
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