With: A Review

My latest BookSneeze title is "With" by Skye Jethani.  In this book Jethani seeks to call attention to how we as Christians view the role of God in our lives.  At first glance this sounds like it could lead to a fruitless outcome, but I believe that Jethani does a pretty good job of laying out the major ways that Christians view the role of God in their lives.  He offers different ways that are as follows:

• Life Under God: which holds to the belief that as we follow God faithfully, God will in turn reward us with the blessings we need or desire in our lives.  
• Life Over God: seeks to figure out how the world works with God and implement those principles in their lives. 
• Life From God: God exists to give me my heart's desire.
• Life For God: Any worthwhile life has to be lived in a predetermined "ministry" paradigm, in others words we are wasting our life if not working full time in the church or on the mission field.  
• Life With God: Life is spent in relationship with God because God's eternal nature is relationship which is found in our understanding of the Trinity.  

As you can probably tell by the title of this book, Jethani is making the claim that the last view is the one we should be striving to embody.  I appreciated his connecting point within the life of the Trinity and the understanding that we were created to exist within that relationship.  The author does press on and talk about issues such as letting go of the fear that drove the other four scenarios to action and in turn to learn what it means to live by faith.  In addition the author makes the claim that our full understanding of living life with God is found in how our lives are formed by prayer.

I found this to be a very well written and easy to understand book that has challenged me to think about which role I try to allow God to do in my own life.  I would highly recommend this work to any and everyone with no hesitation.  May we carefully consider the material being presented and be open to being honest about the place that we allow God to have in our lives.