“For nine-tenths of us, believing in God is not the problem. The real issue is belonging. We have lost track of how to be in relationship with God.” – Pg 11
Dave and Jon Ferguson, founders of Community Christian Church in Chicago, have put out a REMARKABLE book this week. It is called Finding Your Way Back To God and it is designed for seeking people that long for connection with God but don’t know how to make that happen.
[Buy one get one free until the end of March]
From page 7:
“Perhaps right now it feels to you as if God has forgotten about you. Something has gone terribly wrong in your life. You have prayed and prayed and prayed – and nothing has changed.
Or you have objectives to doctrines, intellectual doubts you have no answers for, or disappointments about religious people that put you off. Maybe these are obstacles you can never get over.
What ever the reason for feeling distant from God, it’s possible for you to start the journey back to him.”
I am so excited for this book! As someone who has “found my way back to God” in college and loves helping people do the same, I have felt for years that I needed a clear resource that I could hand seeking people to let them read and discuss with me later.
An Evangelists Dream
In Christianity we call the effort to help people connect to Jesus evangelism. As an evangelist, I desperately want the best tools in my hands to help seeking people find answers to their questions and pathways to connection with God. I have personally been pondering writing a book my self that could do what Jon and Dave have done here. This kind of resource has been missing.
I truly feel that I have a book that I can give any person who is seeking God and I truly believe this book can spark a person onto a Jesus journey or add fuel to the fire that is already brewing inside them.
I truly love helping people connect to God and now I have a book I can eagerly recommend to my alcoholic neighbor, the regretful mom down the street, and the depressed buddhist man on the corner. These are three people in my life and I really can’t wait to give them a copy.
This book has given me a new boldness to share my faith. I want to give it away.
I have not finished the book but it reads very easily and personally. I am very sensitive to what a seeker is feeling and the last thing I want to do is spook them or turn them off. I am always finding the perfect balance between boldness and patience and I think this book has it. It feels bold and urgent, but sensitive and caring. Tell me a book that has that combo well done?
The Layout
The book is laid out very well as it goes through the Luke 15 story of the prodigal son and taps into five awakenings we all have.
Awakening to Longing: “There’s got to be more.”
Awakening to Regret: “I wish I could start over.”
Awakening to Help: “I can’t do this on my own.”
Awakening to Love: “God loves me deeply after all.”
Awakening to Life: “Now this is living!”
The book is packed full of stories of people finding their way back to God through these different awakenings and I know the people around us will be able to relate to these. Again, this is a powerful book to hand anyone as it will connect with them on an emotional level, not just a cognitive level.
I believe most people today are asking in their hearts if Jesus is real more than they are asking if he is true.
So much of our evangelism and apologetic for Jesus has been truth claims when many people are needing an argument from life story and transformation. I believe this book shows people how Jesus is working in others lives and it does an amazing job of wooing people back to Jesus while clearly showing them that Jesus is passionately looking for them too!
30 Day Wager
The back of the book has thirty days of reflection and exercises to walk the reader through a “30 day wager”. It is designed to help them ask God every day to “show up if you are real” – to put God to the test. The exercises are another great touch to help the reader process and discuss, if they so choose, how God is awakening them and helping them connect to him.
Buy One Get One Free
Until the end of March if you buy a book (up to 25 copies) you can save your receipt and turn it into the publisher at this site. The publisher will then send you, for free, the amount of copies you bought. The idea is to be able to hand this out to as many people as possible that are searching. So again, to be clear, if you buy 25 copies of this book the publisher will send you 25 copies of this book for free and you will have 50. You can buy one and the publisher will send you one. Take advantage of this generous offer!
It’s Already Working
Dave heard a story of how the book has already helped someone find their way back to God and he shared it with me and others today:
“An old friend of ours moved to Chicago and because she was hanging out with us she began to get involved at COMMUNITY. We didn’t know anything about where she was spiritually, but noticed that she was posting comments on Facebook wondering if it was right to be involved in a church when she wasn’t sure about what she believed. We invited her over for dinner and decided to ask her about her doubts. The conversation lasted several hours and in the process we discovered there was a lot of pain from her past. The pain from her past caused her to doubt that there could ever be a good God. Since Dave had given us an advanced copy of Finding Your Way Back to God, we gave it to her and encouraged her to read it.
She came back a week later and had read the whole book told us it had helped so much! She joined us at our last Leadership Community where we talked about finding your way back to God and she loved it! The next day she told us that all of these things had led her to the decision to follow Jesus and she felt that getting baptized was her next step in finding her way back to God. She will be baptized at our service on March 22!!!”
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