The Return

Review: Worship Changes Everything: Experiencing God’s Presence in Every Moment of Life Darlene Zschech Bethany House Publishers 2015 That’s quite a claim for an author to make for her book.   Changes everything, in every moment of life. Worship can really do that?     Zschech asks her readers, “When is the last time you looked at God and marveled at His Beauty and kindness and power and goodness and said ‘Wow!’?” (16). Like the wonder of the little boy she had just described. That’s her starting point.   And the reader’s. The author divides her book into two parts.   In the first she writes about what I’ll call the Who and why of worship.   Don’t skip those few pages.   The second part covers more than a dozen different areas that worship undergirds.   Just a few of them are service, suffering, children, wilderness times, and eternity where worship never ceases.   As I read through this book I found ...

Review: Nonsense: The Power of Not Knowing Jamie Holmes Crown Publishers 2015 I’ll admit it now.   I pick this book for its title and especially its subtitle.   For whoever makes the decisions related to titles, you picked a winner.   The author was unknown to me, but from the rear flap should be better known among the millennial generation.   Don’t let that be the deciding factor for this book though. Holmes has assembled nine chapters plus some extra stuff, and a set of annotated end notes that are worth reading themselves.   Yeah, that’s weird, but I figure if it’s included why not give it a glance.   I’d suggest reading them as you go along through the text.    Each of the chapters looks at different facets of knowing, and how people come to the point of believing they know what’s going on in a particular situation. The chapters were well written discussions that could be standalone articles.   That’s a good thing an...

Review: The Ragamuffin Gospel Brennan Manning Multnomah Books 2015 This is a 25 th anniversary issue of this Brennan Manning book.   John Blase mentions in his preface to this edition that the book has already sold nearly a million copies over its 25 year run. (ix)   What I found interesting is that with just a few exceptions this book is as current now as it was when it was written.      This is my first time reading this book.   I had read a couple Manning’s other works and decided it was time to read this one as well.   I was not disappointed in the least with it and found it to be encouraging.   It reinforced a line from one of his other books that had stuck with me for years now---God loves you and there’s nothing you do about it.   That’s probably a paraphrase but close and I cannot remember which book it’s from.   Sorry. There’s not a lot that hasn’t already been said about this book already since its 25 yea...