I am participating in a monthly book study through our church's women's ministry, led by our pastor's wife, Karon Walls. Karon has come up with an excellent list of Christian books for us to read this year, and I thought it would be good to share some of these with you by way of review.
The book Fresh Faith: What Happens when Real Faith Ignites God’s People by the famous Brooklyn Tabernacle pastor Jim Cymbala is one in a series that includes Fresh Wind, Fresh Fire and Fresh Power. Published in 1999 with coauthor Dean Merrill, the book offers a straightforward, roll up your sleeves and take God at His Word approach to living the Christian life.
The power of this book comes not only from its reliance on Scriptural mandates and role models, but on the raw and rugged faithwalk of a pastor and his congregation as they have embraced truth and experienced a transformation among its members that has become legendary among American evangelical churches. However, Cymbala is quick to confess that neither he nor his flock has any special formula that unlocks the mystery of spiritual “success.” And it is that fresh, no-frills transparency that makes this book so appealing.
The book is structured in three sections. The first part, “Something is Missing,” addresses the absence of real vibrant faith in our churches and in our personal lives. Rather than placing blame, Cymbala takes aim at the Enemy who has stolen two of the most important weapons we have: faith and prayer. He asks, “Whatever happened to the core truth of the Protestant Reformation, namely, that we do not earn our way with God but rather receive his grace by faith?”(44). Instead of attacking the symptoms of unbelief, we must abandon our efforts to just try harder and instead place our complete faith in “God’s unfailing promises” (49).
The second section, “Getting Past the Barricades,” speaks to the circumstances and challenges in our lives that have dimmed or challenged our faith. The first is our own hurtful past: the mistakes we have made that make us feel unable and inadequate to receive God’s promises or the hurts and abuses others have inflicted upon us that cause us to doubt God’s goodness. Using Joseph as an example, Cymbala offers the hope of forgetting (“Manasseh”) and finding fruitfulness (“Ephraim”) in the land of our suffering.
Another challenge is the often gray area of how one is actually led by God on a daily basis. Can we trust God to lead us? Or are we mostly on our own? Cymbala calls for “sanctified reasoning” (70) that asks for God’s leading and then follows it as it is revealed. What often gets in the way of this, he says, is our own cleverness and our impatience to wait on God’s timing for a desired result. King Saul failed this test by offering the sacrifice himself. His lack of faith resulted in an act of disobedience that cost him his crown and his legacy. Sometimes, the test comes in the waiting as we become discouraged. Cymbala emphasizes endurance as a key component to a life-changing faith. Ultimately, however, great faith is rooted in an awareness of great grace. Life change is always an act of God’s grace and not our own effort. No matter how destructive the sin-choice or horrific the consequence, life-changing faith realizes that grace trumps it all. No exception. Faith in God’s grace to redeem is a fundamental requirement for a faith that pleases God and changes lives.
Part three, “Following the Divine Channel,” provides some concrete faith principles and paradigms that can be applied by every believer. First, he describes Abraham as a person of faith who followed (and sometimes failed to follow) God, but who endured as a legacy of faith because his faith was focused on the promises of God, rather than His commands. Cymbala’s most compelling insight comes from this emphasis on God’s promises as the basis of our faith. We tend to focus on God’s commands and have faith depending upon our level of obedience to those commands. Cymbala states, “It is true that God’s moral commands teach us where we fall short. That is necessary—but it does not bring a solution to our human dilemma. Only the promises bring us hope, if we respond in faith, as Abraham did” (152). Another key principle for gaining fresh faith is the inevitable refining process. Cymbala calls this “addition by subtraction” and encourages us to embrace, rather than fight, God’s work of purification.
Cymbala ends with a chapter with guidance on cultivating an “atmosphere of faith.” In addition to the practice of Bible study and prayer, we should look back with thanksgiving and forward with anticipation, focused always on the promises of God.
Laced with real-life stories of transformed New Yorkers and flesh-and-blood examples from Scripture, this book takes living by faith out of the theoretical and ethereal and places it right into the everyday, whether we find ourselves desperately at the end of our rope or whether we are just trying to find God in the day-to day challenges in our world.
The paperback published by Zondervan has 210 pages of text, an Epilogue of faith-building Scripture promises, and a study guide.
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