포이멘 화요일반 Relentless by John Bevere > 제자학교

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Relentless by John Bevere is a book that encourages Christians to actually use the full power of grace that God has gifted us. It begins by lamenting how many Christians today have a misunderstanding of grace (the "only 2% in a survey about the definition of grace responded with 'power'" reference is often brought up) and continues to explain throughout the book about how God's grace has given us all the power in this world to do His will, with Biblical and anecdotal references to back his statement. 

I honestly started the book without much expectation. To be honest, I do not enjoy reading "self-help" type books, Christian or secular. My final nit-pick would be that I felt that the "2% of Christians did not associate grace with 'power'" was a bit of a technicality -- I would think that many of the other 98% would associate the power of God in our lives with other words, such as "faith", and just didn't associate "power" with the word "grace". Anyways, however, nevertheless -- this book did give me a lot of self-reflection about my faith and how I have been treating the power of God and our stewardship of it.

The author's seemingly-reverse definition of humility felt gimmicky at first, but as I read through it, it was true that it is indeed pride when we gauge a situation in our own frame of possibility and not God's; it is indeed an assertion that we know better than God. It is undermining God's power, and I have felt guilty of committing that sin.

Another memorable content of the book was about directly confronting the devil. The book's analogy about the soldier calling the President and not doing the direct fighting felt was very convincing and made me realize how I also avoided such direct confrontation with the devil and his plans to thwart God and us, even when we, with the power of God, were overwhelmingly more powerful thanks to Jesus Christ.

I felt energized and motivated to be a steward of God's grace after reading this book. It reminded me that God's Will is something to be experienced in a long term perspective, and hence we have to be relentless with pursuing His Will until it is complete and we achieve our goal in His Plan.