BookSneeze Review: With: Reimagining The Way You Relate To God by Skye Jethani

Skye Jethani’s With: Reimagining The Way You Relate to God was my first book through the BookSneeze review program, and I’m honestly glad I found the program and this book on it. You see, this is one of the more mind blowing books I’ve ever read – which is saying something, considering I’ve read books such as Ted Dekker’s Circle Series and most books Bill Myers has put out.

If you want to quit reading this review now, I’ll leave you with this: READ THIS BOOK. You will NOT regret it.

Some details:

Mr. Jethani – an editor of a leading Christian magazine – uses the first half of the book to talk about the four basic ways most of us relate to God:

Life UNDER God is basically what I call “Talibaptists”, though Mr. Jethani never gets CLOSE to using that word. These people believe that we must live life strictly by the Bible and that if we don’t, we’re doomed.

Life OVER God essentially uses the Bible as a divine “how to” manual, nothing more, nothing less. These are the people that keep the “self help” authors in business.

Life FROM God sees God as a divine bank account that can never run out. This is the consumer culture variant of Christianity.

Life FOR God sees life as a mission. These people will go to Outer Mongolia at the drop of a hat – and still miss the point.

In each of the first four chapters, Mr. Jethani delves into each of these first four ways of relating to God, and shows both their strengths (yes, they have them), and their critical weaknesses.

In the remainder of the book, Mr. Jethani describes a life WITH God, what it looks like, and why it is the epitome of a Biblical understanding of our relationship to God. While I’ve tweeted a lot of amazing quotes from this book, you’ll just have to read it to see them for yourself, as well as the remaining treasure trove I simply couldn’t tweet out for many reasons.

In my Kindle edition, the appendices began at roughly 80% or so, and included both a discussion on some “how to pray” techniques as well as a brief discussion guide for the book. Overall, the only weakness that I saw – though it was a bit glaring – was that when I hit the appendices, I was still looking for a more succinct summation chapter than the one we got.

Overall, a VERY strong book, and I would give it a 5/5 without any hesitation at all.

Now time for some legalese:

Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this book free from the publisher through the BookSneeze®.com book review bloggers program. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”