Book Review

I've been absent from the blogging world for a while. My wife had a student who qualified for the National Forensics Tournament in Las Vegas this past week so my youngest son and I accompanied them for a week of vacation. I didn't even access a computer for the entire week, other than to purchase passes to some of the sights in the area. We enjoyed the time away very much.

While on vacation, I read a book by Kyle Lake, the 33-year old pastor of University Baptist Church in Waco, TX, who died tragically in 2005 when he was electrocuted in the church’s baptistry. The book is entitled, Understanding God's Will: How To Hack The Equation Without Formulas. Lake makes the case that we’ve reduced the quest for knowing God’s will to a series of formulas rather than focusing on living life in a fresh, daily encounter with Jesus. He also states that far too often we have equated the will of God with favorable circumstances, safety, and our own well-being. Jesus’ call to His disciples was an invitation to a lifestyle of radical obedience to Him—not a promise that everything in life would always go well for us. The trials and troubles we experience in life shouldn’t be interpreted as signs that we’ve somehow missed out on God’s “perfect will,” a phrase that Lake suggests can be misleading. Our calling is not to know all the answers to what lies ahead in our future, but to walk daily with the One who call us His friends and invites us to know Him more fully. Kyle Lake concluded each of his sermons with this charge to his congregation, “Love God, embrace beauty, and live life to the fullest.” Those are wise words to live by as we seek to walk daily with the One who said, “I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.”