With: Reimagining the Way You Relate to God Kindle Edition
Author: Visit ‘s Skye Jethani Page ID: B005EH36QE
Done.
File Size: 870 KBPrint Length: 222 pagesPublisher: Thomas Nelson (August 22, 2011)Publication Date: August 22, 2011 Sold by: HarperCollins Christian Publishing Language: EnglishID: B005EH36QEText-to-Speech: Enabled X-Ray: Not Enabled Word Wise: Not EnabledLending: Not Enabled Enhanced Typesetting: Enabled Best Sellers Rank: #65,027 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store) #323 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Religion & Spirituality > Christian Books & Bibles > Christian Living > Spiritual Growth #1180 in Books > Christian Books & Bibles > Christian Living > Spiritual Growth #15332 in Books > Religion & Spirituality
"Christianity isn’t a religion. It’s a relationship."
If you’ve spent any time at all in the evangelical world, you’ve probably heard some version of those words. In his book With: Reimagining the way you relate to God (Nelson, 2011) Pastor and author Skye Jethani explains that most of us settle for an erzatz version of this relationship:
* Life FROM God: People in this category are focused on what God will do for them, rather than being interested in God himself. Word-of-faith believers and those who search for God’s blessing on their success both capture the essence of this posture.
* Life OVER God: "Proven formulas and controllable outcomes" define this category, best typlifed by people like the jaded agnostic and the pastor who relies on formulas and organizational principles to build a church.
* Life FOR God: Those in this camp are known for their drive to do great things in God’s service and being a world-changer. "Full time Christian service" is the penultimate expression of faith.
* Life UNDER God: Our role is to learn what God commands, and toil with great intensity to remain within those boundaries. Legalists personify this category.
Jethani noted that he has spent time living in each one of these categories. (Me too.) But he makes a compelling case for learning to live life WITH God – which, he says, is the only sort of relationship God has ever intended to have with us:
The Life With God posture is predicated on the view that relationship is at the core of the cosmos: God the Father with God the Son with God the Holy Spirit. And so we should not be surprised to discover that when God desired to restore his broken relationship with people, he sent his Son to dwell with us.
I just finished reading Skye Jethani’s latest book entitled With: Reimagining the Way You Relate to God. I am trying not resort to hyperbole, but this book was really life changing. In the book Jethani examines five ways most people relate to God. There is life under God, over God, from God and for God. With the possible exception of over God, all of these sound great and they are to some degree, however they can each represent a very unhealthy relationship. And all of them are to one degree or another about fear and control.
People living life under God live in Live to appease God through "strict obedience to moral and ritual commands." This sounds good except at its core is an attempt to control God and our conditions through our obedience.
People living life over God see themselves as managers, and "autonomous beings who have been given a divine manual for operating my life and world and whose fate will ultimately rest upon how well I implement God’s principles and instructions." Again this is an effort to control. We don’t have to pray, we don’t have to depend on God we can just do the right thing and ensure that God will always make things go well.
People living from God fall into consumer Christianity, seeing God as a celestial Santa Claus who we use to get what we want. This is the shortest way to center of the universe syndrome where everything including God revolves around me.
People who live life for God see themselves as servants, "workers created to fulfill a great mission. Their "sense of value is inexorable linked to what (they are) able to accomplish and the magnitude of (their) impact on the world.
I was initially disappointed with With. At first glance it was another one of those one-word titled manuscripts that are a fluff of common facts and anecdotal yarns spun in a way to tickle the minds of those blind to the emperor’s new clothes and designed to land on the bestseller’s list. Malcolm Gladwell did it with Outliers and Blink. And now Skye Jethani, is doing it with With, taking one-word titles to a new low by using a preposition, one of the English language’s lowliest parts of speech containing only a singular meaning. If it seems as though I’m tired of one-word book titles, you have it right. However, my initial reservations were blown to pieces by the time I reached the halfway point in the book. Despite his overuse of prepositions, Jethani has crafted an expose worth reading. Jethani confronts the comfortable mindsets of believers and non-believers in Jesus, exposing those mindsets as deficient to satisfy our deepest longings and relieve our deepest fears. Drawn from his experiences as a pastor and his research into current events, Jethani points to four attitudes that deprive us of intimacy with God and fail to relieve our fears.
Jethani’s four approaches to life are named, defined, and expounded in the first five chapters using personal anecdotes, observations from his life and ministry, and quotes from contemporary literature. Life Over God, the easiest to of the concepts to understand, is life lived apart from God; God is not part of the picture of daily living. Life Under God, is the second least difficult to understand. Commonly termed "legalism", it is the belief that adhering strictly to a set of rules will provide blessing from God.
The next two approaches hit closer to home.
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