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With: Reimagining The Way You Relate To God (2011)

by Skye Jethani(Favorite Author)

4.24 of 5 Votes: 5

ISBN

1595553797 (ISBN13: 9781595553799)

languge

English

genre

Nonfiction

publisher

Thomas Nelson Publishers

review 1: I read this book while I was on a flight and I simply devoured it. Simply a phenomenal book. It made me uncomfortable many times as I recognized some of the unhealthy spiritual attitudes that Jethani describes in myself. But what I truly appreciated is the fact that Jethani included appendices that explained how a Christian can move toward living with God, practical advaice that I intend to put into practice. Good, good stuff!
review 2: I think a big reason that I've had such a bleak view of God at times was that I failed to realize that he wants to be in community *with* us (as shown in the beginning of Genesis and the end of Revelation). This book goes through four "postures" of how we view and serve God which are pretty skewed when taken too far (which is SO... more easy). For most of my life I've thought of God as a sweet master and I his faithful lap-dog. I mean, what's wrong with wanting to serve him? I'm honored to be his puppy! But when serving and doing become more important than loving him, that's a problem. We can also get caught up in treating him like a mean dictator who just wants us to obey or else he'll punish us. Sometimes we treat the Bible as merely a self-help book with instructions on how to just live life in the best way. Some of us get caught up in how God can bless our lives and what we can get from him. What's mind-blowing is that all of these can start out as completely innocent (I mean God does want to bless us and following the Bible's teachings is a good idea), but it's easy for each of them to go to terrible places. I've been guilty of reducing God to one or two personality traits, which is dangerous.The only two issues I had with the book are super-small. One is that each chapter starts with stories and fluffy stuff (I'm so not into the mushy squishy) when I just wanted to read about exactly what each posture was, how to avoid it, and what to do well... but I'm guilty of loving guidelines so that's definitely more my issue than the book's. Also, I think the author left a little too much up to the reader on the "so what do we do about it" front. While I understand that guidelines, rules, and formulas are what he's speaking against (and that's SO what I need), the four chapters and appendix were just a little too fluffy and didn't contain enough ideas. Again, maybe that was his point, but I really felt like I'd been informed about a serious problem, finally decided I wanted to be better, but was left hanging on what to do. Maybe I'll just pray and read my Bible for two hours every morning starting at 5:00 AM. ;) less

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