Book Review: Jesus is Better Than You Imagined (He really, really is though...)

     What you are about to read is essentially the first book report I have ever written that is not a result of a school assignment, but rather the result of a self-motivated desire to write on something about which I find the workings of my mind turning in thoughts of awakening, new life and new wonder towards the One I call my Savior and my God. The book I will be reviewing today is called Jesus is Better Than You Imagined and it was authored by Jonathan Merritt about whom I wrote a few lines of applause for two blog posts before this one. I have been following Jonathan on twitter for about two years now (or maybe even a little longer than that). I began reading Jonathan’s news articles, which he writes for Religion News Service as the result of a friend sending one of his my way. I was attracted to Jonathan’s writings for his moderate and reasonable, but still distinctively Christian perspective on news/current cultural issues (how refreshing and unique!).

    
      When he started tweeting about an upcoming book on faith he was writing, I was so excited to read it. For reasons none other than laziness, business and financial tightness at the time of its release, I sort of let my feet drag on actually purchasing the book, but still kept it on my ever growing “to read” list until I finally asked for it for Christmas. On Christmas day, I was so excited to receive the book that I immediately opened it up and consequently found myself loving it from the first page. This book is one for those who want their faith to reach beyond the weekend church routine, beyond the rigidness of man-made religion and straight into a very real life journey with a very real God with a very real purpose for every breath breathed on earth and into eternity.

     

      As I had previously suspected, Jonathan and I lived very similar childhoods in regards to religious experience. We are both from strong Christian families who struggled through the 1980/90s conservative movements that have left many an individual burnt to the crisp by legalism and less-than-grace-filled judgment inside the very churches who claimed to be sharing the love of Jesus with the world. Jonathan’s personality shines through here in a way that makes his accusations feel somewhat lighthearted and more as calls to reasonableness for the average Protestant church, and less as strong condemning thoughts towards the Church, but while still certainly retaining enough of a sting to point out the true and uncomfortable obviousness of the multiple centuries-old problem of Pharisaical behavior amongst Christians. After reading only a few pages, I had to send Jonathan a message quickly telling him that he had me from “burgundy carpet” (and when you read the book, you’ll surely be laughing too). While Jonathan absolutely makes some excellent points on the issue of legalism that many the every-Sunday church goer and indeed many church leaders should examine within their own hearts, this is actually not at all a book about tearing down nor insulting organized traditional religion, but rather it is an invitation to encounter a God who wants to breathe new life straight through the walls of the world, the individual heart and yea, the walls of your local church too. If you have been a Christian for a long time (or if you are very familiar with Christian teachings), then while reading this book, Jonathan will have your thoughts spinning on what is Truth from Scripture versus what very well may be made up tradition.

     

      Even with all the overdue and well worded points on the gross misconduct of modern day American churches, Jonathan still asserts that this spiritual gathering community is what we as Christians are called to participate in and grow in even amidst all the failures and shortcomings. The Bible has made it clear that the Church is the Bride of Christ and is definitely a vital part of the Christian journey, so I would fully agree that we must stay faithful and trust God to sort out the problems and misinterpretations. He is Sovereign and He will grow His true Church even when there's much wrong mixed in with the right.     

     

     A large portion of the book Jesus is Better Than You Imagined is dedicated to encouraging and reminding the reader that there exists a God worth discovering outside the limits of religious tradition, legalism and even systematic theology. Why do we think the miraculous God of the Bible stopped being miraculous the second the authors laid down their pens? The God who created the universe is not done creating new life and revealing truth in the midst of a sin-scarred world. Jonathan shares even from his own personal sufferings as a child and how the journey of healing has enabled him to pour out God's grace upon an equally suffering world. Reading his story inspired me to think of how I can share parts of my own story in the future in order to love others with the love of Jesus and point them to His arms- the ultimate and only place of true healing. Jonathan also speaks of those dark periods in a sincere spiritual pursuit where God seems to fall silent or back away out the door. The times where we can't see Him or hear Him and circumstances seem bleak and miserable. I won't give away Jonathan's words for those times, but I will say that I read them on exactly a dark night as such when I needed them. God never leaves us, but if it is a true relationship we pursue with the Almighty, He will lead in higher and wiser ways than what our souls may hope for or enjoy. He is still good. He is still there and He will break through the darkness on His time table, not ours.

    

     Jesus is Better Than You Imagined directly echoed my own personal journey of going deeper into faith that God has been leading me on for about ten years now. My own journey began during my teenage and college years when I started to question widespread “Christian” rules with which I could never fully bring myself to sign on the dotted line of agreement. For example, I never really understood the concept of being forced to dress up for Sunday morning. If God accepts me as I am, why does it matter if I have fancy clothes on or not? If He accepts the vagabonds and outcasts, why do I have to measure up to some arbitrary rule not actually found in Scripture? Don't we dress up for work and school and life in the world because man looks on the outside instead of looking inside us at the heart like God does? These blaring contradictions made no sense to me and left me frustrated and not able to embrace church fully or ever feel fully myself. I wasn’t able to just breathe in God’s truth and love and be transformed by grace. Nowadays, I don't think God cares if I wear stockings and a skirt or jeans and a sweatshirt on Sunday. I now know God loves me the same amount when all I accomplish on a Sunday morning is just getting out of bed and showing up on time to church because He knows how difficult this task alone can be for me. Nevertheless, back in my childhood and early teenage years all this rule-culture did was imbed in me a deep pathway of constantly having to ensure my own self-righteousness while strictly judging all others according to man-made standards.

     

      Around this same time I began to suffer from strong anxiety for which there was no evident physical cause. A few doctor visits into it, my very secular pediatrician very determinedly told me that because I was a Christian, I needed to begin each day by handing the day over to God and telling Him of my dependence upon Him (talk about God showing up in surprising places). Also around the same time, or perhaps shortly after this, I began discovering  the books of Narnia and other writings by C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien and slowly found the door of faith swinging open to a much bigger Deity fully of love and reasonable sense and never ending, far reaching grace. God suddenly moved from Someone I knew from a distance to Someone I walked with daily as my faith became my own. I learned not to care about the disapproving voices of legalism scorched into my brain. I discovered that true life is right here and right now. During this period of new growth, I read one book after another with pages spilling over with the truth of the Grace story- of God's true love for humanity.

    

      A couple years after this time of newness of life, God showed up even stronger and broke me to pieces so many times through family issues and personal heartbreak in painful, but sovereignly ordained ways so that I would learn to find Him the only One capable of picking up the pieces and putting me back together anew for an adventure of learning to let Him take over and lead. Over the past ten years, God has consistently revealed to me His eternity-sized love for those who accept His grace offered at the cross of Jesus and follow Him with their hearts. Even today, God is still leading my life in the very real way of causing me to wait on Him to fulfill certain spiritual and life desires He has placed inside me. I am not naturally one to sit still and I am not afraid of causing drastic change (nor do I regret for one second any of my life experiences because they have all so clearly been filled with God’s guidance); but now I am beginning to learn to still myself and wait on God to take the lead wholly as I attempt to faithfully follow Jesus Christ each day.

     Many of the truths I have learned over the past ten years were so closely related with the lessons Jonathan has written about in Jesus is Better Than You Imagined. It seems he has also discovered that Christianity has far more to do with the heart-fruits of the Spirit and far less to do with external rules. If the inside is being made new daily by a holy God, surely, He'll teach the outside how to love Him and serve others as well with real truths from the Scriptures and not legalistic nonsense. The Bible calls not for do’s and don'ts, but actually for much, much more- your whole life laid down and dead. It's a resurrection to a new life on a journey you couldn't have imagined with a God whose grace is bigger, deeper and longer-lasting than you ever could have dreamed. The one true God is a God who doesn't expect you to reform yourself while being filled with constant anxiety over getting things just right, but a God that says "I've already paid the price for your sin, your shortcomings and even your very life. Now follow Me and I will do the work as My Holy Spirit changes your heart and My love breathes into you right out of your body into the world around you. It will cost you everything, but you can't earn it on your own because it is a gift. Even the freedom to surrender and have a relationship with Me is a part of the gift."

     

      Jesus does not call us to be perfect before we can approach Him, but rather He has already traveled right to our broken selves and offered His own blood to heal our mess. If those He used in the Bible were met in their mess and then served God in miraculous ways, even in the midst of their own brokenness and during their spiritual transformations, then we must believe that God is still in the work of healing the broken and using the imperfect to point to His perfect love for the world. Jesus is Better Than You Imagined will teach you that God really is love and He really is chasing us down with a burning passion because He wants each of us, every part and all of us. I want the God of the Bible for all my days. "He calls us not to a destination but to a lifelong posture whereby we live aware, peering around every corner knowing that God may be waiting there." (pg. 180 of Jesus is Better Than You Imagined). Jonathan’s writing invites us to the true journey of faith where God takes over, turns our thoughts (and quite often all of our life plans) upside down and builds us anew as we are continuously overwhelmed by His awesome grace and work both in our hearts and in the world around us. I encourage you in this midwinter to get your own copy of Jesus is Better Than You Imagined and take a page from the life of Jonathan Merritt who has simply, but bravely, asked God to show up in a brand new and very real way in life. Actually, I challenge you to begin the journey on which you’ll discover that Jesus really, really is more than you imagined.

Chasing After Permanence (or Why is Life in Your Twenties Constantly Shifting?)

          We are well into that time of year where most Americans living in the Northeast have developed a steady habit of complaining about this freezing weather and counting down the days to summer. It’s an annual tradition passed down through the generations and as everyone knows, it begins just after New Year’s Day because for some reason, if it isn’t the holiday season, most people do not see the point in it being cold outside. As with many other cultural traditions in this American life, I do not quite understand all this misery over the cold. I actually rather love these specific few weeks that come to New Jersey almost every year where the weather descends into a “deep freeze” and the air, sky and trees all take on a very arctic look and feel. It’s absolutely wonderful, refreshing and invigorating…at least in my opinion (which has not usually been shared in most conversations I’ve had recently).

       Last evening, I went out for walk through town for some much needed weekend fresh air and exploration. Admittedly, it was freezing, but is it not magical when something so extreme and so uncontrollable lifts your thoughts outside of your own introspection and into a totally different field of reality? Maybe I am sounding a bit too weird, but for a constantly over-analyzing introvert who is often trapped in the cyclical thoughts inside my head, these moments where the sub-freezing air arrests the attention of all my senses are so very refreshing and renewing for my spirit. It’s something else. It’s something more. It’s something beautiful and sacred.

     It's been about two weeks now since I have moved to this town and while I have been attempting to settle in, life (or maybe God’s plan)has been attempting to unsettle me one eventful day after another. I cannot even count the amount of times circumstances have changed in the past two weeks and frankly, I don’t want to try because I have worn quite thin from it all. During my time in Warsaw this year, I learnt to become so incredibly trusting of God and His provision. It would seem now that He is using those lessons to send me even deeper into faith in Him at the same time that this winter freeze has been going deeper and deeper. I’ve had some very dark days, but I have been clinging onto a couple truths and my faith in the Savior to see me through this, even though it can be hard to hear His voice amidst all the noise of life. One of the truths I have anchored into is that God has brought me to this place for this time. I have such a strong peace and excitement for this chapter and I am so thankful to be in a place where I am falling in love with both town and community. In this, I am feeling settled, even as some externals remain unsettled.

     The second truth I have been holding onto with all my (very weary) might is the promises and sure hope I have grown to love this past year in the Biblical book of Ephesians. God, through Paul’s writing to the Gentile believers in Ephesus, tells of how His children are chosen in Him to be lavished on with His great and eternal grace and love. We are born again in Christ for a purpose: to glorify God and be ever poured into with the wonder of His love. When life’s immediate goals and needs are a constant shifting target and physical security and accomplishments feel ever just an inch out of reach, the children of God can anchor their hearts right into this never changing, never ceasing, always dependable and unfathomably strong love God has chosen to lavish on us.

Ephesians 1:3-23 “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love he predestined us for adoption as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace, with which he has blessed us in the Beloved. In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace, which he lavished upon us, in all wisdom and insight making known to us the mystery of his will, according to his purpose, which he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth. In him we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of his will, so that we who were the first to hope in Christ might be to the praise of his glory. In him you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it, to the praise of his glory. For this reason, because I have heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love toward all the saints, I do not cease to give thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers, that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of him, having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe, according to the working of his great might that he worked in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the one to come. And he put all things under his feet and gave him as head over all things to the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all.” (ESV)-You can read more from Ephesians  here.