Top Ten Books of 2013--#10 Not a Fan--Becoming a Completely Committed Follower of Jesus - Kyle Idleman
I am continuing with the best books that I read in
2013. This book comes in at number ten
although it is a book that is a couple of years old. I ran across it when I had a District Board
meeting I had to attend in April 2013. I
am a sucker for books and I am a sucker for Christian book stores. One of the chain stores which is not in Dothan
has a branch in Montgomery and so generally when I go there I find a good
excuse to go to the Family Christian Store there. I have found that the availability of
Pentecostal~Spirit-Filled books are much higher than our local Lifeway. On the day that I walked in they had a table
full of about thirty books that were only $5.
This book was one of them.
The old Charlie “Tremendous” Jones quote about you will
be who you are five years from now except for the books you read and the people
you meet has been around for a long time.
But you can bank on this, no matter how many times you hear it or how
long it has been around, it is true.
What I take into my mind through the words and writings of others has a
huge impact on me whether I am willing to admit it or not. Reading is like eating food. What we eat has a great impact on our health
and how that we feel and reading is as to our mind as food is to our body. This book falls into the category of David
Platt’s book Radical.
Author: Kyle Idleman
Publisher: Zondervan, 2011
The book is divided up into three sections: Fan or Follower? An Honest Diagnosis; An
Invitation to Follow; and Following Jesus—Wherever, Whenever, and
Whatever. The previous books that I
mentioned are generally going to be much deeper theologically (Preaching the Psalms & The Preaching of Jonathon Edwards) and historically (Killing Jesus) whereas Idleman writes in a very conversational tone. However this does not mean that it lessens
the wallop this book has. On a side-bar, generally the vast majority of my
reading is done with the intention of mining something to preach/teach to our
church. I do read books on the
bestseller lists merely to engage the societal and cultural trends that we face
in our world today. Furthermore I even
read books that I don’t remotely agree with (i.e. Richard Dawkins, Christopher
Hitchens, and others who are opposite of me politically and religiously) because
I believe that the truth of God’s Word can prevail against the most basic or
complicated of the humanistic towers of Babel that are being erected in our
society. If I know what they are
writing/saying I can much more effectively engage it than just some superficial
reaction that may come because I am getting second-hand information.
I wrote in the margins of this book, I underlined
multiple sentences on multiple pages, and there were areas I agreed with KI on
and there areas I thought he was in left-field.
If you are given to thinking in series of lessons/sermons this book will
have be a treasure trove of seed thoughts for you to dig out. I found the material on Nicodemus and Jesus
in John 3 to be motivating especially when he writes about a man leaving the
church KI pastors. I don’t want to spoil
the reason and KI’s response but it will inspire any man who is regularly preaching
week-in and week-out. Another place that
I found to be very rich in inspiration was the quick treatment that he did on
Luke 14. While KI only spends one chapter
on it, I believe that there are several messages in this one chapter.
·
Luke 14:1-14—The Battle with Religion
·
Luke 14:15-23—Excuses that will keep you out of
Heaven
·
Luke 14:25-27—The cost of discipleship
·
Luke 14:28-32—Building and battling
·
Luke 14:33-35—You must give up everything
The key to developing this series will mean there will be
some holy sweat involved in cross-referencing, working with the Greek words (I
suggest you might pick up A. T. Robertson’s Word Pictures of the New Testament.
. . Thanks to Tony McCall for prompting my memory of this wonderful work that I
had forgotten!), and looking at this chapter from the angle of the other Gospel
writers.
Another area of this book that will help with religious
hypocrisy and those who have a tendency to lean on their heritage or “pedigree”
is KI’s treatment of Matthew 23.
Although he covers it in one chapter, I believe that you can do much
with the Seven Woes the Lord dropped on the scribes and Pharisees.
Section 2—An Invitation to Follow is basically KI working
with Luke 9 where Jesus encourages those who will be followers to take up their
cross and follow. There are some very
thought-provoking illustrations that are there.
I would also recommend that you take John MacArthur’s book Hard to Believe and use the two in
tandem.
Admittedly I never would have purchased this book if it
had not been on the $5 table at Family Christian. However, I have gotten much more mileage out
of this book than I did on the 2 fer $20 deal from Chili’s last week. This book made me pause and think numerous
times throughout the book. This is always
a very powerful experience of mind and soul engagement that rarely if ever
takes place if you are watching television or some mindless drivel that is
non-stop “entertainment.”
Quotes from the book:
I think Jesus has a
lot of fans these days. Fans who cheer
for him when things are going well, but who walk away when it’s a difficult
season.
My concern is that
many of our churches in America have gone from being sanctuaries to becoming
stadiums. And every week all the fans
come to the stadium where they cheer for Jesus but have no interest in truly
following him.
Many fans
mistakenly identify themselves as followers by using cultural comparisons. They
look at the commitment level of others around them and feel like their
relationship with Jesus is solid.
Essentially they grade their relationship with Jesus on the curve, and
as long as they are more spiritual than the next guy, they figure everything is
fine.
There is no way to
follow Jesus without him interfering with your life. Following Jesus will cost you something. Following Jesus always costs something.
Most of us don’t
mind Jesus making some minor change in our lives but Jesus wants to turn our
lives upside down.
What you spend your
time and money on often reveals the true desire of your heart and shows who or
what you are truly following.
One man spoke to KI at a conference about his daughter
who had walked away from Christianity.
KI said he had heard this gut-wrenching story far too often and most
parents always said, “We can’t understand what we did wrong.” KI said he was waiting for this man to say
this but instead he said the reason his daughter walked away. . . We raised her in Church, but we didn’t raise
her in Christ.
This book is worth it whether you read ¼ or ½ or ¾ ‘s of
it.
Thanks for reading. . .
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