The idea for the book I’m writing (Discover God’s Ways), and the reason this website and blog exist at all, are tied to a huge desire in my heart to see people I know; friends, students, acquaintances, (and people I don’t know yet!) discover the Treasure hidden in a field and grow into the thirty, sixty and hundredfold harvest of the Kingdom. There is a whole LIFE in Jesus that is there for anyone wanting to really follow Him. So many, especially, and sadly, believers, live in the dark shadows of very different metaphors that effectively attenuate the full hope-filled power that could otherwise empower their lives. I am not claiming to be a full citizen in this LIFE. But I am on my way into this country. I’m on my way. I know the LIFE in Jesus is there and I want it. So, what am I getting at with the phrase a LIFE in Jesus?

I have spent so much of my life as a follower of Jesus trying to get him into my life to energize and guide me but all along the Treasure was for me to enter into His LIFE. Imagine Jesus and the Kingdom of God as a vast new universe that is slowly intersecting with ours and that you can enter into Him and His Kingdom and live there. Think of Neo in the Matrix Trilogy or the recent film Tomorrowland starring George Clooney (The Wizard of Oz could count in this number too as would all of CS Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia). In all of these is a central conceit that allows the story to unfold: the discovery and then the exploration of a heretofore hidden world, the adventures therein and the transformation of the protagonist(s) through the adventures. That is something like what Jesus offered and still offers except that to enter into His LIFE is not to escape from this life but to finally LIVE within it NOW as it is someday going to be. Jesus called this “on earth as it is in heaven.”

What I’m attempting to do in my book is describe, in as simple (but not easy-to-do) fashion as I can, what it looks like from the inside to LIVE in Jesus’ LIFE, to enter into and explore with Him a way of life that, from the outside looks to be, and without Him is, impossible. Living in Jesus is entering a whole new universe (the Kingdom) without leaving this one. Each of the Ways of God that I describe are aspects of this LIFE into which we are invited; Pain and Poverty are the results of living outside LIFE and suffering the consequences of that alienation. Presence, Purity, Power and finally Partnership all describe aspects of what it is like to live in LIFE and how to cooperate with that LIFE so as to live even more into it because it has no end.

I’m not interested in making money. I’m giving the book away as I write it and I’ll make it available at the lowest price possible when it is “officially” published (cover the costs).

I’m having trouble believing that this is actually happening. But it is!

It is with a certain “fear and trembling” that I set this small offering out for others (than my students, many of whom have heard early versions of this work-in-progress) to read, evaluate, and respond to. Although I am not crowd-sourcing the book’s content I do invite a lively exchange about the ideas, metaphors and practices I describe herein. Your input, dear reader, will have an impact. Let me know what you think by using the response means on this page.

I feel a little like I did when Joan, my wife, and I allowed our then three year old daughter bundled in her pink parka wearing her mini-backpack to go down four flights of stairs unaccompanied (we had descended those stairs many times before with her) into the student apartment’s “Kita” (a German version of pre-pre-school). I was so proud and also felt so vulnerable wondering how it would be for her to be “out there” in the wider world. So it is with this website, blog and book.