Book Report – The life you’ve always wanted

Here is the second book review. This one was for our Monday night small group. I really enjoy spending time with my small group friends and so it was worth reading two books at the same time. Though it did slow down my book reading time. Lesson for me is not to read more than one book at a time if I want to read through the books I have planned to read.

The Life You've Always Wanted by John Ortberg is a wonderful and practical book. The 6 week study series that we went through in our small group that paralleled the book made it all that much better. I have taken a lot from this reading and study but I will share only the two biggest ideas that I got.

1) In the chapter called, “The Practice of Reflection on Scripture,” John Ortberg shares, “An indispensable practice is to have our minds re-formed by immersing them in Scripture.” To be re-formed is a powerful thought to me. So often I have allowed myself to dwell on so much junk that it shouldn’t surprise me when I react in negative ways with my family or the people I work with. John goes on to share 5 practices of meditating on Scripture. One of them is, “Allow This Thought (a verse) to Become Part of Your Memory.” This has effected how I read, memorize, and meditate on God’s word. Now when I go to sleep I spend my last waking minutes repeating a verse I had been immersing myself in the whole day. The current verse I’m immersed in is John 3:30, “He (Jesus) must increase, I must decrease.”

2) The other idea that I’ve been trying to do (and I really mean this has been a trying one) is the act of “slowing.” It means what the word says - to slow down. “This involves cultivating patience by deliberately choosing to place ourselves in positions where we simply have to wait.” I like to keep doing something – in fact in our last church staff meeting (Feb 27) I was bouncing my legs around so much Pastor James Wartian asked me if I was ok. I can get busy about a lot of stuff and I just need to slow down and wait. Hmmm… maybe reading more than one book is a good idea because it did slow me down.