Book for Thought

My pastor, Keith Evans, handed me a book last month to consider reading. It's called Your God is too Safe by Mark Buchanan. I've picked it up and started reading through it. For me, it's not one of those you pick up, read, then check off your reading list. No, this one challenges me on many levels. It challenges my thinking, my motivations, and my soul.



Here's something to think about. . .something to wrestle with:

Do you live in the "borderland" or the "holy wild?" That's the ongoing question Mark continues to challenge me with. The borderland is that safe place where everyone knows everyone and we know how things operate and the rules with which they operate. The holy wild is the place, or journey, that is not always safe, but beneficial. It's the place in our relationship with God that calls for complete trust in Him, not the rules, not other people, not in safety.

My struggle, and as Mark shares it's his struggle as well, is the fact that I want to live in the holy wild, but I like the "security" and the routine of the borderland. So I'm working through this one. I'm to the part in the book that Mark shows me how to step into the holy wild and wrestle against the struggle of running back to the borderland. It's not like I don't know this, and to be honest, it's not something I haven't read in another form. In some instances it's much like Erwin McManus' book The Barbarian Way. Maybe just reading it from another perspective or, like reading a verse for another time, I'm thinking about this differently. I don't know. I just know it's different.

Check it out and let me know what you think.

Mike