It seems I find an author and stick with them for a bit, and this week’s book review is no different. This week we take a look at Francis Chan’s book Crazy Love. This book as been around for several years but is definitely worth the read. As I’ve explained the premise of Crazy Love and other selections of his to several people recently, his books have become a punch in the gut for the comfortable and complacent, Christian church in North America.

Chan writes this book with the intent on showing how a laissez-faire approach to our spiritual lives is just not going to work. The thread that ties this book together is the push to have the Christian deepen his/her spiritual life in how they express their love for God and one another. There is an epidemic of lukewarm Christianity in our world today, and Chan rightly quotes the passage from the book of Revelation on God’s response to lukewarm followers. In this passage, Jesus tells that the lukewarm will be spit from God’s mouth. There’s no room for lukewarm in the life of the Christian. We’re either red hot for him or ice cold against him but we can’t be apathetic and complacent.

Throughout the book, Chan drives home the point of a changed life. If we truly believe that Jesus is the source of all that is good and right in this world. And if we believe that God calls us to live a life that is about following him. And if we know that Jesus didn’t do things the way everyone else did them, then why do so many who call themselves Christians look like the rest of the world.

In one of Chan’s books he asks the question if God weren’t in your life what would be different? This book will force you to be honest with yourself about the view of Christianity to which you hold. Are you a comfortable Christian who’s become so complacent with life that you have separated your Sunday from the rest of your week?

Jesus calls us to be disciples who make disciples. This is the point of the church. Instead our North American culture has turned our sanctuaries into sitting rooms and our churches into consumer-driven gathering places. It’s time for the church to remember its roots. We were founded on a message and a hope. We were founded on the truth that Christ calls us to live a life of significance. What could happen if you would take a step in faith today and do something you know required God’s help? If you could do anything for the sake of the gospel, what would you do?

Now do it!