Forgotten God: Reversing Our Tragic Neglect of the Holy Spirit Author: Visit Amazon's Francis Chan Page | Language: English | ISBN:
1434767957 | Format: PDF
Forgotten God: Reversing Our Tragic Neglect of the Holy Spirit Description
From Publishers Weekly
The author of the bestselling
Crazy Love pleads passionately for the church to live by the power of the forgotten God: the Holy Spirit. Calling Christians to more than just a better life, Chan says he wants to live a life unexplainable without the Holy Spirit, so dependent on the Spirit that, he says, if he doesn't come through, I'm screwed. He offers vivid personal stories and illustrations about how the church ought to help Christians discern the powerful gifts of the Spirit, rather than toning down radicals. Biographies of people keeping in step with the Spirit conclude each chapter. Not a comprehensive study but intended for application, it consequently lacks depth of context in most Bible references. Ultimately, though, this serves Chan's aim to end ceaseless talk and follow God's lead to assist the poor, the abused and anyone without hope. Chan himself has given all royalties from
Crazy Love to a ministry to children trapped in sex trafficking, explaining that God said to him, I want you to love them as your own children. Chan's voice is fresh, earthy and fiery.
(Sept.)Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
About the Author
A pastor and church planter based in San Franciso,
Francis Chan speaks to tens of thousands of people around the world every year. Known for his passionate, biblical style, Chan is on the board of World Impace and is the author of
Forgotten God,
Erasing Hell, and
Crazy Love, which has sold nearly two million copies.
- Paperback: 186 pages
- Publisher: David C. Cook (September 1, 2009)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 1434767957
- ISBN-13: 978-1434767950
- Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.5 x 0.6 inches
- Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
Picking up a book that's subtitle is "Reversing our Tragic Neglect of the Holy Spirit" made me feel that I was heading for a tongue lashing. Instead I found Francis Chan's new book, "Forgotten God," to be a very calm and thoughtful response to the Christian community.
There have been many books written over the years about what to believe about the Holy Spirit. Battle lines have been drawn between churches and denominations about when the Holy Spirit shows up, how He does it, and what is supposed to happen next. Chan has no axe to grind with theological debates and steers away from these often bloodstained battlegrounds. Instead he writes how Christians in western culture, regardless of what they say they believe about the third member of the Trinity, live as though the Holy Spirit had long since retired.
In seven easy to read chapters Chan covers the following topics:
* The role of the Holy Spirit as Jesus' promised gift.
* Fears and concerns about the Holy Spirit
* How theology about the Holy Spirit has more to do with how a person lives than what they say they believe.
* Motivations around the Holy Spirit and his power.
* What a relationship with the Holy Spirit can really be like.
* Letting go of manipulation and control by trusting the Holy Spirit.
* Living in true community with the Holy Spirit and with others.
For a book to be as hard hitting on these themes as it is, this tone Chan takes hardly comes across as a harsh reprimand. There is a gentleness and humility that flow through these chapters, possibly because the author often uses his shortcomings as examples. It is balanced with his unbridled passion for something better. It is a contagious proposition.
"Another book on the Holy Spirit? You have got to be kidding me!" Those were the initial thoughts that crept into my mind when I first saw the subtitle of Francis Chan's new book Forgotten God. It is subtitled "Reversing Our Tragic Neglect of the Holy Spirit." But then again, after reading Francis' other book, Crazy Love, blogging about it and then offering a small group study of it, I was not about to write this new book off as just a dusty old rehash of "Holy Spirit talk." Man, am I glad I didn't! I will have to confess something right up front: I was stoked because of the author...so much so that I had trouble putting this book down. I took it everywhere with me just in case I had little snippets of time to read and highlight it. Oftentimes authors writing about the Holy Spirit take one of two approaches: they sensationalize everything and make it overly emotional, almost confrontational. You know...if you don't have this or do this then there must be something wrong with your spirituality. The other approach is one that brings yawns to people like me who just want something practical, something that translates into preaching and teaching and the everyday life of people I pastor. Unequivocally, Francis did not disappoint! He laid down the gauntlet on the very first page of his introduction: "the benchmark of success in church services has become more about attendance than the movement of the Holy Spirit. The `entertainment' model of church was largely adopted in the 1980s and '90s, and while it alleviated some of our boredom for a couple of hours a week, it filled our churches with self-focused consumers rather than self-sacrificing servants attuned to the Holy Spirit." (p.
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