The Good and Beautiful God: Falling in Love with the God Jesus Knows (The Apprentice Series) Review

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(More customer reviews)I was very interested in reading this book after hearing James Bryan Smith speak at the Divine Conspiracy Conference. Upon reading the first few pages, I learned that his mentors were none other than Richard Foster and Dallas Willard! I was even more interested and fortunately I was not disappointed.
If you are familiar with Dallas Willard and Richard Foster, this book has similar imprints of these writing, but Smith has his own distinct style.
His style of writing draws you in, entices you to let down defenses, and shares his life experiences with you.
The book is laden with stories about his life and others. How real people are being conformed to the image of God. He talks about trust, by comparing the trust his son has in him. He affirms the Goodness of God even while talking about how he suffered through the loss of his daughter. The book is good, not only because it content, but because it is utterly realistic.
The book has 229 pgs, which consists of 9 Chapters. Each chapter has an addition with a spiritual discipline that should be practiced that week. Furthermore the book has questions associated with each chapter at the back.Which is very useful seeing that one of the purposes of the book is to be used in a group!
How is the content of the book? Here is an excerpt below:
"God loves us so much that he longs for us to be pure and works tirelessly to make us pure. MacDonald points out how God is against sin and thus for humans: 'He is always against sin; in so far as, and while, they and sin are one, he is against them-- against their desires, their aims, their fears, and their hopes; and thus he is altogether for them.'
God is against my sin because he is for me. And if I am for sin, God stands against those desires, MacDonald is saying, because they cause my destruction. I would not have it any other way. To be sure, I am prone to excusing my sin or rationalizing my weaknesses, but God is not in that business. Though we are now reconciled through Christ, God is not indifferent to my sin. It hurts me, and therefore it hurts God--because God loves me."
There are many other ah ha moments, which gives you a new perspective on certain things such as the will, or your identity in Christ, or even the nature of God. To Smith's credit, the book was never dull or boring. At the end the book just left me longing for the next book in the series: The Good and Beautiful Life.
I recommend this book and I think it would work well with other excellent books on spiritual formation such as renovation of the heart, longing for God, the spirit of the disciplines or even celebration of discipline. Buy the book and like me, you will be awaiting the next book of the series!
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Table of Contents
Introduction
How to Get the Most Out of This Book
1. What Are You Seeking?
Soul Training: Sleep
2. God is Good
Soul Training:Silence and Awareness of Creation
3. God is Trustworthy
Soul Training: Counting Your Blessings
4. God is Generous
Soul Training: Praying Psalm 23
5. God is Love
Soul Training: Lectio Divina
6. God is Holy
Soul Training: Margin
7. God is Self-Sacrificing
Soul Training; Reading the Gospel of John
8. God Transforms
Soul Training: Solitude
9. How to Make a Pickle
Soul Training: Slowing Down
Appendix: Small Group Discussion Guide
Notes
Acknowledgments
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Reviews & Endorsements
"The Apprentice Series is the best practice I have seen in Christian spiritual formation."
--Dallas Willard, author of The Divine Conspiracy
"I know from our long relationship that Jim Smith is a fine and trustworthy man, who authentically knows 'the good and beautiful God.' I can think of no higher compliment than this: I would happily trust the care of my soul to Jim and the good and beautiful God he commends to us."
--Todd Hunter, author of Christianity Beyond Belief and pastor of Holy Trinity Anglican Church, Costa Mesa
"This first book in The Apprentice Series, The Good and Beautiful God, is a treasure. Dr. Smith has thought long and hard about the process of human transformation into the likeness of Jesus. I urge you to buy this book immediately! Read it and apply it. Then live it out in the context of a loving community. You will not regret doing so."
--Richard J. Foster, author of Celebration of Discipline and coauthor of Longing for God
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Not a Fan: Becoming a Completely Committed Follower of Jesus Review

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(More customer reviews)If you are looking for a book that preaches a comfortable, easy, complacent version of Christianity, then this isn't the book for you. This book will hit you between the eyes. Kyle Idleman pulls no punches. If you are open to it, this book is like a giant mirror. It will help you take an honest look at yourself and realize what is truly in your heart. Jesus was never interested in drawing a crowd. He was interesting in gaining followers. Not of religion or legalism, but followers of Him. Idleman goes to great lengths to help the reader understand what it means to truly follow Christ. We live in an age where the Gospel and cost of following Christ are often softened and watered down. I think there are many people in American churches who have chosen to "follow Christ" with little or no consideration of the cost. Following Christ is about much more than just a "Get Out of Hell Free" card. It involves sacrifice, dying to self, and surrendering everything to Him. He may not ask us to give up everything, but a true follower is willing to do so if He does ask.
I think we all know someone who is obsessed with a particular celebrity. For example, say someone is obsessed with Britney Spears. A true fan probably is a fan on Facebook, has every CD she has ever made, and possibly even a scrape book of every magazine article ever written about her. If something new comes out, they will go to great lengths to attain it. But Jesus has never been interesting in having a fan club. He wants all of us. If you read this book with an open heart and mind, and are willing to be honest with yourself, this book will help you know if you are really a follower of Christ or if you are merely a fan of His. It is one thing to CLAIM to be a follower, it is an altogether different thing to actually LIVE like a follower of Christ. Jesus is not interested in mere lip service.
I have to ademit, that I spent a lot of years as a fan of Jesus. I knew all the right lingo, all the rules (don't drink, don't swear, don't have sex before marriage) and I knew a lot of knowledge about Jesus and the Bible. But what I didn't realize is that Jesus is interested in the heart. It is entirely possible to look great on the outside and be rotten on the inside. After awhile, I started going through the motions of prayer, worshiping God, and reading in the Word, but my heart wasn't really in it. I cared more about looking good on the outside than the state of my heart. I claimed to love Jesus, but in reality, it was all about me. I realized I wasn't following the Jesus of Scripture, I was following a false version of my own creation. A version that didn't demand too much, expect too much out of me, or expect total, unconditional surrender. I honestly believed that I could have Christ and my own way. Looking back, I can see now how completely self-centered I was. Even when a close friend cared enough to point this out to me, I didn't listen. Instead, I got angry and defensive. I claimed that Jesus was Lord of my life, but when it came right down to it, I was Lord of my life. But no more. Now, I can honestly say "I am not a fan of Jesus."

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Are you a follower of Jesus?Don't answer too quickly. In fact, you may want to read this book before you answer at all. Consider it a 'Define the Relationship' conversation to determine exactly where you stand. You may indeed be a passionate, fully devoted follower of Jesus. Or, you may be just a fan who admires Jesus but isn't ready to let him cramp your style. Then again, maybe you're not into Jesus, period.In any case, don't take the question---Are you a follower of Jesus?---lightly. Some people don't know what they've said yes to and other people don't realize what they've said no to, says Pastor Kyle Idleman. But Jesus is ready to clearly define the relationship he wants with his followers.Not a Fan calls you to consider the demands and rewards of being a true disciple. With frankness sprinkled with humor, Idleman invites you to live the way Jesus lived, love the way he loved, pray the way he prayed, and never give up living for the One who gave his all for you.

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The Principle of the Path: How to Get from Where You Are to Where You Want to Be Review

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(More customer reviews)If you could relive your life, what would you change? More importantly, how would you change? Andy Stanley, in The Principle of the Path, gives us a blueprint for a successful life.
This book is not what I expected. When I read that Andy Stanley is a highly successful preacher and pastor in Atlanta, I thought this volume would be full of sermonizing but it is not. Instead, Stanley writes in a conversational style full of stories and humor. This is an easy, delightful narrative that is like chatting over coffee with a good friend.
The Principle of the Path is a self help book for life. Pastor Stanley shares with us his single guiding principle for success and serenity in life. He begins with a relevant story from his own life, explains the principle and then leads us toward implementing that truth in our own lives. Stanley's applications can be useful in our relationships, our finances, our career, and even our parenting.
The wisdom is subtle. When I first read the "Principle" I thought it was a bit simplistic, but the more I read the more profound it became. The Principle and its application is brilliant but practical. Although the author is a Christian minister and often refers to scripture, this book would be useful for anyone who wants to lead a better life. The wisdom is universal.
I highly recommend The Principle of the Path. This has a very valuable message. I intend to give this book to my closest friends.


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The Irresistible Revolution: Living as an Ordinary Radical Review

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(More customer reviews)Shane Claiborne has written a highly personal account of his journey as a follower of Christ and the call he feels to live radically for Christ. Much of The Irresistible Revolution is inspirational. Shane writes primarily to American evangelicals, who he calls out of their depressingly normal lives. Along the way, he levels numerous criticisms at the church, many of which seem on target.
The American evangelical church is in many ways indistinguishable from secular culture -- by its materialism, marketing, bigger-is-better mentality, and celebrity adoration. Worship services and youth ministry have almost become forms of entertainment. The church cultivates believers, but not always followers. Shane challenges his readers to take Jesus at his word when he spoke about the poor being blessed; the last being first; loving our enemies; denying ourselves; and serving Christ himself by serving the poor, lonely, sick, and imprisoned. And Shane criticizes the mixture of faith, patriotism, and conservative politics that characterizes parts of the evangelical landscape.
Shane doesn't beat up his readers. He writes with a light, often humorous touch. He teaches almost entirely through stories, mostly his own. One of his appealing qualities is his willingness to take the unconventional route, to take risks for God. He seems to have cultivated an enjoyment of risk-taking, almost like that of a prankster. There is a streak of mischievousness that runs through his stories.
I wanted to like this book. There isn't very much about my walk of faith that I would call radical. Serious and heart-felt, yes. Sacrificial, to a degree. But radical, very little. One line from the book has stayed with me: "We have insulated ourselves from miracles. We no longer live with such reckless faith that we need them. There is rarely room for the transcendent in our lives."
However, as I read deeper into the book I began to notice many problems. By the end of the book I was pretty tired of these problems, several of which I describe below. Nevertheless, The Irresistible Revolution contains many good observations and will probably inspire and stick with many readers.
Now for the problems:
- I noticed an occasional harshness, even scorn, toward Christians with whom Shane disagrees. I don't know why he thinks this attitude is okay.
- Shane criticizes the mixture of biblical faith and right wing politics that exists in much of the church today. But his own politics are clearly left wing and his own faith and vision for the church are just as tinged by those politics. Nowhere does he acknowledge the truly difficult judgments involved in rightly engaging the culture with the gospel. Nor does he acknowledge the long cultural and moral slide that the Christian right has tried to address or propose alternative ways to address it.
- Shane is anti-war and anti-death penalty. His theology on these issues is anchored in Jesus' teaching to love our enemies and appears to preclude any use of violent force under any circumstances. Does he even believe the fight against the Axis powers in World War II was wrong? One of his heroes is Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a German pastor who opposed the Nazi regime. Shane approvingly quotes Bonhoeffer and calls him a fellow resister, but nowhere mentions the problem (for a pacifist) that Bonhoeffer tried to assassinate Hitler.
- Shane condemns the Iraq war, but the war he condemns is a straw man. Based on his description, one would think the war is merely an American conquest of Iraq. In fact, it is more complicated, consisting of a war to depose Saddam Hussein, a war against the Jihadists who subsequently poured into Iraq to destabilize the new democracy, and a civil war between Sunni and Shia Muslims.
- At times Shane seems anti-capitalist, but he does not make his position completely clear, nor does he say what economic system would be an improvement over capitalism.
- Shane seems to romanticize the poor and credit to them a nobility that I don't see. He even refers to them as his teachers. The poor, at least the poor in America, are not simply victims of economic injustice. In my (limited) experience working with the homeless in San Francisco, I have mostly encountered people with a complex of problems, many being of their own making, and poverty being just one. These people are created by God and deserve practical help and love, but they are not particularly romantic or noble.
- In his anti-war and anti-poverty advocacy, Shane often expresses mushy sentiments about how we're all one big family, regardless of country, race, class, or religion. At times he seems to confuse the Body of Christ with the family of mankind. He sometimes sounds like mainline Protestantism of 50 years ago, with its de-emphasis of orthodox doctrines and its emphasis of the social gospel.
- Early in the book Shane refers to himself as a postmodern: "The things that transform us, especially us 'postmoderns,' are people and experiences. Political ideologies and religious doctrines just aren't very compelling, even if they're true." Perhaps I'm reading too much into these lines, but I found them disturbing. As a philosophical ideology, postmodernism holds that objective truth either does not exist or cannot be known; all one can know are stories, and no story is better than any other story. Reality, truth, and value are held to be arbitrary cultural and linguistic constructions. But Christianity has always claimed that objective truth exists and is knowable -- truth about God, mankind, and the world -- not exhaustive truth, but real truth. I don't know what we're left with if we abandon this philosophical foundation.
- Shane rightly asks what Jesus has to say about this life and this world, but at one point he asks a strange question: "Even if there were no heaven and there were no hell, would you still follow Jesus? Would you follow him for the life, joy, and fulfillment he gives you right now?" But Paul came very close to answering this question in 1 Corinthians 15: "If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are to be pitied more than all men." And: "If the dead are not raised, 'Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die.'" If the gospel offers anything, it offers hope -- hope that we are not accidents, that we are loved by a good God, that our lives are going somewhere, and that we don't face personal extinction at death. It is only this hope that gives sufficient impetus to follow Jesus.

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Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer Review

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(More customer reviews)This is one of those books where I found myself taking an hour to read a paragraph, which I had previously read. I just needed to ruminate on Lewis' thoughts. It's not theological in the sense of Mere Christianity or The Four Loves- he is clear here and elsewhere that he does not want to write a devotional book and indeed thinks he has little to offer on the subject, as he is untrained in these areas. So while he covers the same areas as Richard Foster's Prayer, this book has a decidedly different feel. It is personal, as if it were a collection of real letters.
And thus these are just letters. Often Lewis doesn't fully explain his ideas in an understandable way, to make it appear as if he is not writing to the general public, but only to Malcolm- a friend with whom he has a lot in common, with that secret language that all friends have. I appreciated too how personal asides were imagined, like "Your son is very welcome. We do *not* dress for dinner normally." and "Please tell Betty I do not need a bed downstairs, I am feeling much better." and, contrary to what Walter Hooper would have us believe, references to his conjugal life with his former wife.

Lewis' musings have the advantage of coming at the end of his life, with the full wisdom available. I especially liked his thoughts on getting whatever we ask for in faith vs. Jesus prayer in Gethsemane, difficulties in prayer focus, and the effectatiousness of our prayers. In the end, we want to be heard, even more than having our prayers answered. Lewis is simultaneously so deep and so clear. As he said, he wrote for the common man. So as I read him, I find myself constantly thinking, "Yes, I didn't believe that before, but I see that now."

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In the form of warm, relaxed letters to a close friend, Lewis meditates on many puzzling questions concerning the intimate dialogue between man and God. Lewis also considers practical and metaphysical aspects of private prayer, petitionary prayer, the Lord's Prayer, and other forms of prayer. "A beautifully executed and deeply moving book" (Saturday Review).

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