With: Reimagining the Way You Relate to God
This book showed up on my (Claire) doorstep in an Amazon package several years ago, sent as a gift by a wonderful mentor of mine. He must have seen in me an uptightness and fear that did not allow me to relax in the face of whatever task was before me. He must have known that it had something to do with my view of God.
With has been a book that has followed me around for over fifteen years. It has helped change my connection with God, and is still helping me to relax and enjoy working alongside Him.
Skye Jethani describes four ways of living – under God, over God, from God, and for God – and shows how each one has captured some element of truth but is in the end deficient. He unmasks the clichéd posturing that too often masquerades as communion with Christ. Skye shows how everything changes with just one word: “with”. What if we lived “with God” and what if that empowered us to be fully “alive”?
Skye writes, “My concern is that we are inoculating an entire generation to the Christian faith. Many come with a holy desire to know God, to experience his presence in their lives, to be cared for like sheep entrusted to a meek and gentle shepherd. But this is not what they see or experience. In fact, they may leave the church without ever seeing a beautiful and enthralling vision of ‘life with God’. The lights are never turned on to reveal the beauty that is present just behind the shadows.” (p. 3)
