ABAWFAY // Book #5: Forgotten God

ABAWFAY is short for “A Book A Week For A Year”. Read this post to find out more and to suggest the next book I read.

By the way, I am using a method for reviewing books which helps me extrapolate principles which lead to changed thinking and action called “Net Out”.

For more info and for a free template, go here.

(Note: I read the Kindle version and so I had to use locations instead of pages)

Quick Summary

Francis Chan seeks to demystify the Holy Spirit and demonstrate through Scripture why modern day believers need a relationship with the Him. Although he doesn’t specifically and directly tackle the appropriateness of the manifestation of the Holy Spirit such as healing and speaking in tongues, he makes a strong case for resetting our minds on what we have come to believe about the Holy Spirit and challenges us to make sure that our beliefs are born out of Scripture.

Key Insights

• The benchmark of success in church services has become more about attendance than the movement of the Holy Spirit. (Locations 44-47)
• The church becomes irrelevant when it becomes a purely human creation. We are not all we are made to be when everything in our lives and churches can be explained apart from the work and presence of the Spirit of God. (Locations 70-72)
• When we are referring to God, balance is a huge mistake. (Locations 88-92)
• Given our talent set, experience, and education, many of us are fairly capable of living rather successfully (according to the world’s standards) without any strength from the Holy Spirit. (Locations 164-167)
• …Many of us don’t need more knowledge about the Spirit from a cerebral vantage point – what we need is experiential knowledge of His presence. (Locations 217-219)
• Do you have enough humility to be open to the possibility that you have been wrong in your understanding of the Spirit? It’s easy to get into “defensive mode,” where you quickly disagree and turn to proof texts and learned arguments to defend what you’ve always believed. (Locations 263-266)
• A sure sign of the Holy Spirit’s working is that Christ is magnified, not people. (Locations 575-578)
• I think a lot of us need to forget about God’s will for my life. God cares more about our response to His Spirit’s leading today, in this moment, than what we intend to do next year. (Locations 809-814)
• …Simply having a good speaker, as service that is short and engaging, a good venue, and whatever else we add to the mix does not make a “good” or “successful” church. (Locations 982-985)
• As a church, we tend to do this to people to who are passionate and bold. We mellow them out. Institutionalize them. Deaden them to the work that the Spirit is doing in them. (Locations 1,136-1,139)

Personal Takeaways

1. I have to re-train my thinking in defining a successful church or church service. It should be less on what I did and more on what we saw the Holy Spirit do.
2. Church Programming should be a means to an end, not an end in itself. It should be about creating a community that reaches out to outsiders and creates room for people to respond to the work of the Holy Spirit.
3. Just because people liked it, doesn’t mean the Holy Spirit was present.

Here is my amazon associate link for Forgotten God.