As promised yesterday, today and tomorrow the posts will be dedicated to the book and video by Francis Chan, entitled, Forgotten God. As I read through the book again, and watched the video one more time, some overarching ideas began to surface. Today I want to focus on the challenges Francis gives us as individual believers and then tomorrow we will take a look at what these challenges mean to the church.
If you have ever listened to Francis or read Crazy Love (his first book), you know that his style is one of “telling it like it is,” and holding nothing back. Several places in the book and the video as well he asks the difficult question, “Do we really want to hear from God?” Do we really want more of God in our lives or do we just want God to bless what we are already doing so that we can feel good about ourselves? This is a question you need to ask yourself before picking up the book.
The video is set up to follow the book and offer a small group discussion series around each chapter in the book. But ingrained in the approach is the idea that knowledge for the sake of knowing is worthless. In fact, it is possible to look at our own lives and see that added knowledge often does not lead to changed lifestyle or deeper commitment. It can even be seen that increased knowledge often leads to pride that actually stifles spiritual growth. So the challenge that Francis gives to us is that if we are studying this material with no intention of doing anything with it then we should put it down and walk away.
The study is about the Holy Spirit – the “forgotten” person of the Trinity. God gives us the Spirit to empower us to be someone better – to do supernatural things. Do our lives reflect an empowerment by the Spirit? If someone can’t look at my life and say, “God is at work in his life,” then I am not living by the Holy Spirit. We don’t need the Spirit to live a good life and attend church on Sunday’s – we can do that all on our own. But loving as Jesus loved and ministering as he did to others, that will take the Spirit of God living and working in you. Do you have that? Do you do supernatural things daily? Do you really want to?
It is God’s will for you to allow the Spirit to live in and through you. But we tend to get caught up in wanting to know “God’s will” without understanding what that really means. God is not concerned about a long term plan for your life as much as God wants you to be obedient in the moment. Francis reminds us that it is safer to commit to follow Jesus someday than it is this day. I have talked about this before (you can take a look at that post here). We are concerned about “knowing” God’s will when really we should be more concerned about being obedient in the moment.
The book and video are filled with personal challenges that will “mess you up.” But that is Francis’ forte – the issue is, what will you do about it? If your plan is to read the book and watch the video and then move on to the next hot book on the market, then don’t even bother. But if your desire is to learn more about the Holy Spirit and submit to the Spirit in your daily life, then you need to work through this study for yourself.
Tomorrow we will look at what the study says to the church. Don’t forget about the book give away (details here)!
Be blessed today!
Clay in the Hands 
I read this in the fall and loved it. One of my favorite lines is on the first page- “The benchmark of success in church services has become more about attendance than the movement of the Holy Spirit.”
OUCH…
Then on Page 142, Chan talks about living life on a level where people know it has to be God in you. I recently read about a young basketball player out of Arkansas, Rotnei Clarke. He isn’t that tall, but he is really making a name for himself. He was spiritually “coached” by a Chip Brim (his ministry is called Champions for Christ)…
Anyway,
He has GGG on his shoes (Give God the Glory) and he hit 150+ 3 pointers his last year in High School. You can read about him here http://www.arkansasrazorbacks.com/ViewArticle.dbml?DB_OEM_ID=6100&ATCLID=1592834
When he was interviewed he told people/media that after reading Hebrews 13:21 (the Amp has a good translation), he believes God has annointed him to play basketball at a level the world is not familiar. Chip Brim talks about the annointing, which is Christ’s spirit living on the inside of us, equipping/enabling us to be moms, teachers, constuction workers, etc on a level the world is not familiar with.
Kinda cool.
Thanks for sharing Dawn. One of my favorite illustrations Francis uses (I wrote about in an earlier post) is whether or not a person who was stranded on an island for years with nothing but a Bible would recognize our church as being what a church should be if he or she walked through our doors. Challenged me to think! Thanks for reading!