Jesus Calling

The Daily Beast has picked up on the publishing sensation that is Jesus Calling, a book which Todd Pruitt actually made me read for a forthcoming MoS podcast.  That is ten dollars and two hours of my life which are gone forever.  Am I a better person, though?  I somehow doubt it.

The book is an odd mix of mysticism, sentimentality, and highly flawed theology. Tim Keller's wife, Kathy, did a quite superb review of the book back in 2012 which, given Jesus Calling's continuing popularity, is well worth reading.

The whole phenomenon raises tangentially one of the cultural problems which seems to be emerging amidst the current popular evangelical market for books written by women.   I consider that market in itself to be a good thing. No man could have written Wuthering Heights, after all, and what's true for literature might well prove true for theology.  Indeed, various genres of theological writing seem on the whole to have been enriched by women's voices. It is interesting, however, that critiquing such literature seems to be becoming increasingly hard and subject to vehement reaction.  Witness the response to Tim Challies' comments on Ann Voskamp from a while back, or the author's own preemptive publicity on Jesus Feminist which ruled any future criticism as unfair and hateful.  And who in this age wants to be seen to be beating up on women?   Continue at Carl Trueman

The Strange Saga of ‘Jesus Calling,’ The Evangelical Bestseller You’ve Never Heard Of

A ten-year-old devotional written in the voice of God suddenly became a commercial juggernaut. Now, its publisher is trying to reconcile its New Age origins with evangelical orthodoxy.

 

The seventh-best selling book in America last year was a 10-year-old Christian devotional written by a woman who claims to have written down the words of God. Jesus Calling: Enjoying Peace in His Presence sold more copies in 2013 than the much more buzzed-about titles Lean In, the latest Stephen King book, and 50 Shades of Grey, according to Nielsen BookScan. Overall, more than 10 million copies in 26 languages have been sold since the book’s inauspicious debut in 2004.

Jesus Calling is a devotional, a mainstay genre in Christian publishing and in the daily lives of many Christians. Best-selling devotionals like Our Daily Bread, My Utmost for His Highest, and The Purpose-Driven Life consist of short sections that are meant to be read each day for encouragement and contemplation. Christians who value the idea of nurturing a personal relationship with Jesus—or of the idea of spending time each day in quiet contemplation—often use devotionals as a tool to accompany prayer and Bible-reading.  Continue at Ruth Graham

The Boundaries of Evangelicalism

As I survey the contemporary church, one of my gravest concerns is the power and prevalence of mysticism. It appears in pulpits, books, and conversation. It is at the heart of Sarah Young’s bestselling Jesus Calling, it is in all the much-loved books by John Eldredge, it fills the pages of so many books on spiritual disciplines or spiritual formation, it is almost everywhere you look. Language that was once considered the distinguishing language of mysticism is now commonly used by Evangelicals.

Mysticism was once regarded as an alternative to Evangelical Christianity. You were Evangelical or you were a mystic, you heeded the doctrine of the Reformation and understood it to faithfully describe the doctrine laid out in Scripture or you heeded the doctrine of mysticism. Today, though, mysticism has wormed its way inside Evangelicalism so that the two have become integrated and almost inseparable. In an age of syncretism we fail to spot the contradiction and opposition.

Several years ago Donald Whitney attempted to define the boundaries of Evangelical spirituality--the boundaries of how we may rightly live out our Christian faith. His paper has been very helpful to me as I’ve thought this through.   Continue at Tim Challies

Review of Jesus Calling

As far back as you can recall, you’ve started or ended the day with a time of personal meditation on God’s Word and prayer. Only this time, you try something different. You want to hear Jesus speak to you personally. So you take out pen and paper and record the results. As she tells us in her introduction, this is what happened when Sarah Young sought a deeper sense of the presence of Jesus. The result is the daily devotional, Jesus Calling: Enjoying Peace in His Presence (Thomas Nelson, 2004). The book has taken off since it was first published. It now includes a variety of supplements and has even been turned into a NKJV study Bible.

The author states up front that, unlike Scripture, the words she reports from Jesus are not inerrant. Nevertheless, she presents them as first-person speech from Jesus himself. “I knew that God communicated with me through the Bible,” she says, “but I yearned for more.” “Increasingly, I wanted to hear what God had to say to me personally on a given day.” That “more” was “the Presence of Jesus,” something beyond the ordinary means of grace. “So I was ready to begin a new spiritual quest,” beginning with Andrew Murray’s The Secret of the Abiding Presence. After reading God Calling, she relates, “I began to wonder if I, too, could receive messages during my times of communing with God.” 

Preparing for an interview today on the topic, I read through Jesus Calling. A few reflections: first touching on the method and then on the message.    Continue at Michael Horton

Jesus Calling

Although it came out in 2004, Sarah Young’s devotional has seen a steady increase in popularity over the last two years. Published by Thomas Nelson, Jesus Calling has to be one of the more popular devotionals today. While Challies reviewed it last year, I had not given it much thought until recently, when the radio station I listen to started reading excerpts from it every morning. I was understandably startled to hear Jesus speaking directly to me, through my speakers, on a daily basis.

If you are not familiar with it, Jesus Calling is a collection of transcribed messages that were given verbatim from Jesus to Sarah. As such, they are all in the first person from Jesus’ perspective. Here is a typical example (from the day I wrote this review):

(July 8) “When you seek my face, put aside thoughts of everything else. I am above all, as well as in all; your communion with me transcends both time and circumstances. Be prepared to be blessed bountifully by my Presence, for I am a God of unlimited abundance. Open wide you heart and mind to receive more and more of Me. When your Joy in me meets my Joy in you, there are fireworks of heavenly ecstasy. This is eternal life here and now: a tiny foretaste of what waits you in the life to come.”

Most of the book is relatively harmless, content wise. There are some minor issues where I would object to the actual content of the devotionals, but generally the book is so generic and positive that it stays out of serious theological ditches.   Continue at Jesse Johnson

Jesus Calling

"One night I found myself leaving the warmth of our cozy chalet to walk alone in the snowy mountains. I went into a deeply wooded area, feeling vulnerable and awed by cold, moonlit beauty. The air was crisp and dry, piercing to inhale. Suddenly I felt as if a warm mist enveloped me. I became aware of a lovely Presence, and my involuntary response was to whisper, ‘Sweet Jesus .’ This utterance was totally uncharacteristic of me, and I was shocked to hear myself speaking so tenderly to Jesus. As I pondered this brief communication, I realized it was the response of a converted heart; at that moment I knew I belonged to Him. This was far more than the intellectual answers for which I’d been searching. This was a relationship with the Creator of the universe." Read the whole review HERE