Book Review: Growing for God

Spiritual growth is so incredibly important to the Christian walk, especially in a culture which wants to preserve youthfulness, follow your pleasures, do what you want, when you want, with whom you want, a culture that is becoming immature not celebrating maturity as the Bible does.

Even in the church, where some are being carried away by the events surrounding Todd Bentley (see my posts here), there is a desperate need for believers to be well fed, to discern truth from falsehood, to make wise decisions, and most importantly desire to follow Christ as Lord.

|Growing for God, is a good book to give to new believers or those who are at the first steps of growing in God for a number of reasons. Firstly, it is short. Increasingly I find that the people I come across are not readers, there are few books in their homes and yet for me, almost my first thought is to lend a book which is helpful. So aside from the fact that I need to better help people who are not book people, I need books which are not intimidating, and at 80 pages this book won't scare too many people.

Secondly, this book is 80 pages of easily understood teaching. It rarely follows complicated arguments or uses terms that would confuse and it gives helpful definitions of key words. Thirdly, the illustrations, while not being in the league of say a John Ortberg, are down to earth, relevant and effective. Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, the content is solid. It isn't exhaustive or comprehensive but IF a believer applied half of what they read, their lives would change considerably.

So, while not being the most dynamic book around, there is something reliable, earthy, solid to it that is part of learning what it means to grow in God. Useful.