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Secondhand Jesus: Trading Rumors Of God For A Firsthand Faith (2009)

by Glenn Packiam(Favorite Author)

4.08 of 5 Votes: 2

ISBN

143476639X (ISBN13: 9781434766397)

languge

English

genre

Nonfiction

publisher

David C. Cook

review 1: A great book!! The author takes the Old Testament story of the Ark of the Covenant and its history and relates it to our lives. He explains how many of us Christians get Jesus "second-hand"; through conferences, books, other ppl... which are all good things, but not when that is our only way of going to Jesus. Instead the author encourages us to take those unexpected, tragic, out of control events that happen in life and use them to choose to wrestle with God- to get to know Jesus "first-hand" in a more personal way. Sure, there is nothing wrong with conferences, books or other Godly ppl, but the encouragement is to be sure that we are not simply accepting the "crumbs" from the tables of others, when we have been invited to sit and feast with Jesus and know the joy of ... morethat personally. An excellent book, and a real encouragement to my faith!
review 2: I will admit to only reading this because it was free and my mom liked it :) Having said that, it took me a LONG time to read and it was not "fun reading" for me. I enjoyed and agreed with most of what the author said though. I think my main problem with this book was it seemed to be all over the place. Although he had a big umbrella he was working under, I felt like he got REALLY side-tracked over small things. At the beginning of the book I had a hard time overcoming his negativism and it felt like the book was going to be more of a complaint and rant about his church issues. I was glad that tone filtered out eventually but I still kept asking myself, "is he writing this for readers or just for himself?" many times. As I said, I got what he was saying and do agree with it, but I felt his approach wouldn't reach many non-Christians, not that that was his point, as it wasn't, but I guess I was hoping it would be more of an evangelical book and it just wasn't in my opinion. All in all, it was packed full of ideas and the best thing I got out of it was his tidbit on forgiving and that every act of forgiving comes at a cost. I REALLY liked that point and as a former non-Christian have always struggled with "why did Jesus have to die at the cross?" and it helped explain that point to me in a way I had never thought of before. less

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