Review –
Finding
God Where You Least Expect Him |
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by John Fischer
Harvest House Publishers
review by Tom Gilbert
John Fischer’s writing leads into areas we often
don’t travel, but need to. He confronts the contradiction in
us all. His new book, Finding
God Where You Least Expect Him (Harvest
House Publishers) looks at how we separate
our spiritual lives from our everyday living. Our tendency
to compartmentalize our lives this way is dangerous,
because it creates split personalities. We end up living
two lives, our “Christian/God
life” and the life where we spend most of our time,
the material world.
In chapter three, “Hide and Seek” Fischer
writes, “He (God) is a grand paradox to be contemplated,
not a doctrine to be espoused. He refuses to fit anywhere”.
That’s a marvelous statement. It gets us off
our high horses of righteousness. Christians should
especially be mindful that God is everywhere, although
they are often quick to point out where they think
God is not. We do well to be attentive to God’s
presence. He is found in our moments of prayerful ecstasy
and happiness; He is there in our lowest moments of
despair. He’s with us at meals, during our sleeping
hours, in the sweating of our bodies and the laughter
and tears of true fellowship.
God is there whether we are aware of him or not.
How do we avoid the “disconnect” between
the material and spiritual? More importantly, how do
we integrate our lives into a whole that is holy?
Fischer claims far too many believers are really practicing
a form of Gnosticism. We know that God is real and
that Jesus is the way, but we fail to live it. We are
up in our heads. This allows for all kinds of rationalization.
We justify our sinful nature because we “know” we
are that way. After all, we’re only human.
So, we keep God up in His heaven and we go about our
business on earth oblivious to the contradiction. Here
is the dangerous duality of our existence. Our thinking
and practice do not line up. We should know better.
James tells us clearly our faith without works is dead.
We need to stop just looking up and start looking
out for God in the middle of everything.
As is stated so clearly in chapter 2 (“It’s
a Material World”), we are missing a theology
for being human. We miss this despite the theme running
through the entire Bible, from Genesis to Revelation,
of our human condition. We are born, live, die and
too often miss the transformative and redemptive experience.
Finding God outside of our expectations means re-thinking
your ideas of how God works. This begs the question “how
big is your God?” If He is bigger than anything
you can imagine, truly omniscient and all powerful
then He is capable and WILL show up where we least
expect Him. God will reveal His truth in ways that
contradict our understanding of it. In the chapter “All
Truth Is God’s Truth” we get inside Fischer’s
head as he reminisces about the New York City benefit
concert in the month following the September 11, 2001
terrorist attacks. He shares his insight about James
Taylor’s performance of “Fire and Rain”.
Here, a song written thirty years prior eerily captures
the sentiment many of us felt at the site of the fiery
debris falling from the sky and the wreckage of “flying
machines in pieces on the ground”. Fischer ruminates
that God was at work in the prophecy of the song unbeknownst
to Taylor or anyone else at the time he wrote it. Why
not? The Holy Spirit blows where it will and can inspire
anyone.
One of the themes trumpeted in this book is that we
all have a tendency to be judging the world and others
by the way we see things, by our personal worldview.
This is exceedingly dangerous for Christians with an “agenda” that
is built on an “us against the world” foundation.
The Truth is out there and as we discover it we need
to be humble and joyful that the plan of salvation
is for everyone. Isn’t it possible that non-Christians
might discover some of the truth about God regardless
their personal belief system?
The way we see the world and how God fits, or doesn’t
fit, into that worldview speaks volumes about us all.
The author vigorously confronts our tendency to define
things the way we see them as opposed to the way they
really are. The pursuit of truly seeing the way things
are is to ultimately “see” God. We are
told if we are pure in heart we will see Him (Matthew
5:8). Fischer really gets at this in Chapters 8 and
9 and makes the great statement, “I’m not
so sure it’s more of my time God wants as much
as he wants more of my attention”.
Near the end of the book is the admonition to think
and celebrate all that is good in the world (see Philippians
4:8). And despite all that we find wrong with the world
there is plenty of good and beauty worthy of praise.
Christianity would have a better reputation among many
if they saw us appreciating and praising the good things
more than railing against all the evil. True, both
exist, but can’t we fight evil by concentrating
on whatever is noble, right, pure, lovely and admirable?
Christians in the culture or cultural Christians:
to Fischer this makes all the difference. The topic
is the subject of much of his writing, but in Finding
God Where You Least Expect Him there is a fresh directness
presented in a challenging and well-articulated fashion.
I find I can’t get mad at his directness because
he’s so on the mark! If you get nothing else
from this book get the point he makes that God is not
defined by “the view that God’s activity
in the world is largely confined to Christians” (chapter
5).
John Fischer is an artist, thinker, communicator driven to
create and personally deliver a message of deeper understanding of
God, confirming those seeking a faith that intersects
the real world. Visit his website, The
Fischtank
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Scripture taken from the Holy
Bible, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®.Copyright ©
1973, 1978, 1984 International Bible Society. All rights
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Scripture quotations marked (NLT) are taken from the Holy
Bible, New Living Translation, copyright ©1996. Used
by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Wheaton,
IL 60189, USA. All rights reserved.
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