"Forgotten God" by Francis Chan

I was a slow comer to reading anything by Francis Chan.  I know, some of you will gasp since you've been reading him since "Crazy Love" (almost next on my list... almost).  I filed him away as an uber-hip, emergent type that likes to say cool and deep things from behind funky-thick framed glasses while dawning cool hair, a prius, sipping coffee and thoughfully contimplating the next thing they're going to say while looking cool saying it... and contemplating it type.  I was wrong.  Again.  (So that's why Jesus said Matthew 7:1-2 - thankfully Jesus numbered stuff to make it easier for us to quote Him.)

Before going on our tenth anniversary cruise, I prayed to find a book to read while abroad (Can you say that if you go on a cruise? I've just always wanted to say that, I mean... we were in Mexico).  Something struck a nerve to me about this book..., it was on sale.  Not really, but it was in the pre-cruise budget my wife gave me and it looked cool, so I picked it up.  I only read a couple of chapters while on our tenth anniversary cruise, better things to do I guess, but I wasn't at all prepared for the book.

Now before you go running off and downloading this eBook to your Nook, eReader or Kindle don't expect to hear anything too new.  What got me about this book is how challenging the Holy Spirit was to me while I was reading this book.  Again, you may read this and not have the same reaction, but it's worth the read nonetheless (I love typing that word).

"Forgotten God" is about the Holy Spirit, in a nutshell (or a book).

I finished the book yesterday, while pacing back and forth on a side walk outside my place of business under the shade of trees, and I cried like a baby.  Metaphorically speaking.  (Some of you are so literal.)  I wanted what Chan wrote about; to be led by the Spirit.  In everything.  Everyday.  And, I don't know if I've ever lived like that.  "Why in America do we need the Comforter when we're already so comfortable (paraphrase mine)?"  And that was it.  In the shadow of my place of business - my bread and butter, my security blanket, my retirement plan, my mortgage payment, my health insurance, my car payment, my comfort, my health club, my non-Churched friends, - all that my job is to me, it hit me like a ton of bricks.  "I didn't need God".  Granted, if the thunder cloud would have gathered over me, I would have changed my tune, but then I realized something... I hadn't said that.  The Holy Spirit had said that.

...and, Jeremy wept.

I paced back and forth, strolling on the sidewalk under comfortable shadow, utterly wrecked.  Still am.  The question that lingers, "What about my life points anyone to be in awe of Christ instead of me?"  The answer that lingers, "Nothing."

The prayer began last week in my heart, ever before I finished this book, "Holy Spirit, form yourself in me?" It continues daily, "Form yourself in me?"  It's a request, not a command.

My desperate desire now is to live needing Him, never forgetting Him, no matter how that translates to real life. "Sell my house, move my family to the slums...," if that means living a life led by the Spirit, then... do you know any Real Estate agents? (I know, easy to type and hard to do.  But hopefully that was the old me.  The new me that was Spirit filled yesterday will hopefully hear and then obey.  Because the new me doesn't want to hold on to things of this life that have only temporal value... I would like to not give Francis Chan a reason to write a sequel "Forgetting God.")