Book review: Compelled by Love – by Ed Stetzer
Compelled by Love: The Most Excellent Way to Missional Living. Ed Stetzer and Philip Nation. Birmingham, Alabama: New Hope Publishing, 2008. 224 pp.
Does your church live in a bubble?
Do not read Compelled by Love if you are looking for “101 ways to love better,” or “7 reasons why you should try harder to love.” You won’t find it. Ed Stetzer, with the help of Philip Nation, starts with the gospel of grace when declaring the truth about love and the church. Christ, not how-to sermons or elbow-grease, is the only solution to the church’s inability to love as we ought. Compelled by Christ’s love, we can step out of the bubble our churches live behind far too often. That’s missional living.
Consider these quotes from the opening chapter:
“The old nature must die so Christ can live in and through us. The change that occurs by Christ’s love is the only path to love as God loves. We cannot by our own strength be loving persons as Christians. We can only become those persons when Christ lives in us. God gives the gracious endowment of the sacrificial life of Christ to indwell us so we might live by faith and not by sight, emotion, or any other earthly power.”
“The way of Jesus is contrary to what we naturally desire. Our fleshly nature refuses to love those we find unworthy. It’s only Christ in us that changes us and makes us see people as God sees them and to live a new life of compassion for both the saved and the lost (see Matthew 22:35-40).”
Stetzer draws from his personal experience as a church planter to provide keen insight. The book is designed for small groups, and each chapter includes a thought-provoking list of discussion questions to spur deeper thinking on what it means to live a missional lifestyle of love towards those around us.
7 Reasons why your church should read Compelled by Love:
1. It is a Christ-centered resource for anyone who wants to grow in love.
2. It reminds us that the bubble the church lives in keeps us from being effectively reaching the lost, because “God is on a mission outside that bubble.”
3. It brings us back to the Father’s heart as the motivation for ministry. “We begin with the knowledge of God because the mission originates with His heart.”
4. It is Bible-saturated, easy to read, and far from dry.
5. It explains the difference between treaty and surrender in our relationship with God, a section worth praying earnestly through.
6. Chapter 7 very likely will rattle your concept of church in regards to relevancy to the culture. It certainly rattled mine.
7. The book provides direction and spurs discussion that will encourage you and your church to prayerfully seek specific ways to lovingly reach the culture around you.
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