The Preacher's Bookshelf: One.Life

March 02, 2011 by Preachers Portal Team

Continued from Page 1

What she wanted was a religion that wasn't about church attendance but was about being totally sold out to the work of God in this world. She didn't want the same-old, same-old. She wanted the real and tangible and demanding. She was ready for Christ's call to follow me, but she wasn't hearing it.

When young adults say they are "spiritual" but not "religious" sometimes this is precisely what they mean: they want a spirituality that is embodied and challenging and all-consuming. There is no doubt that Jesus wanted that too, and I've done my best to sketch that vision in One.Life: Jesus Calls, We Follow.

What did God do to you in the process of writing this book? What did the book mean to you personally?

I want to rephrase that question: What has God done to me in 25-plus years of teaching this message? The substance of this book was formed in me in college when I read Dietrich Bonhoeffer's Cost of Discipleship; it was re-formed in me in seminary when I studied the Synoptic Gospels in a class; it was more deeply formed in me when, one summer during seminary, I devoted the entire summer to studying the Sermon on the Mount; it was then deepened even more when as a young professor I taught a course on discipleship and the ethic of Jesus; and it has been forming in me in the last fifteen years as I teach college students a course called "Jesus of Nazareth."

What God has done to me and in me as I wrote this book is seal the vision of Jesus deeper into my heart so that more and more I see myself as a follower, as a disciple, and as someone who is summoned every day to hear the words of Jesus: Follow me.

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