Book Review: Secondhand Jesus

“God didn’t want me leaning completely on someone else’s knowledge of Him; He didn’t want me coasting, finding shortcuts for knowing Him. He wanted me to do the carrying, the heavy lifting, the hard and delightfully glorious work of knowing Him.” Glenn Packiam, Secondhand Jesus

How many times have I fallen into the trap of believing what someone else knew about Jesus?  How much time have I wasted allowing someone else’s relationship with Christ sustain me?  I’d certainly never settle for thrift store salvation, why am I so willing to worship secondhand Jesus?

Glenn Packiam’s book Secondhand Jesus is an open and honest confession sharing Packiam’s own journey over the past 5 years through his own crisis of faith.  Packiam is the worship pastor at New Life Church in Colorado Springs and his story starts with the day the news broke about the Ted Haggard scandal.  This book is not about Haggard, but instead about what it means to make your faith your own.  The tagline of the book is “trading rumors of God for a firsthand faith.”  This book is a powerful wakeup call for many, like me, who so easily fall into the rut of being “professional Christians” rather than running hard after Christ as a disciple that truly desires life change.  If you truly want more of Jesus…not just more of what others have experienced…this book is a great resource to dive into that journey!

Below I have pasted several things that I highlighted while reading…

• Honest was the new normal. That sounds so strange to say.
• Yet you are enthroned as the Holy One; you are the praise of Israel. (Ps. 22:3)
• Here is the lesson of the psalmists: All of our experiences and emotions can become a springboard to find God and see Him for ourselves. God is present on every scene, waiting, wanting us to seek Him, believe in Him, and worship Him with every ounce of our existence.
• C. S. Lewis wrote, “God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pain: it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world.”
• Do you think your knowledge of Christ is active and alive or stale and sentimental?
• Don’t look for shortcuts to God. The market is flooded with surefire, easygoing formulas for a successful life that can be practiced in your spare time. Don’t fall for that stuff, even though crowds of people do. The way to life—to God!—is vigorous and requires total attention. (Matt. 7:13 –14 MSG)
• Far too often, rumors about God originate in church. We hear a preacher say something about God with confident certainty, and we take it as truth.
• There is a way that God designed us to encounter Him: firsthand. God has always preferred and invited firsthand communication. He desires to show Himself to us, speak to us, draw us to Himself. It is we humans, the objects of His affection, who have repeatedly declined.
• In the beginning God. This is how His story begins—with God speaking into the shapeless, vast cosmos, bringing order, meaning, and life. It is also how our story begins—with God on the scene, in the middle of our empty chaos, our “what the heck?” moment, speaking. He is inviting us on a journey, a long, narrow road of mystery and breathless wonder where rumors die and revelation comes alive.Far too many church attendees are not disciples-in-the-making; we are customers who are always right, consumers who need to have our demands met.
• There are things in life beyond our control. And God is first among them.“I will betroth you to me forever,” God said to Israel. “I will betroth you in righteousness and justice, in love and compassion. I will betroth you in faithfulness, and you will acknowledge the LORD” (Hos. 2:19–20).Covenant is not a bargaining chip.
• Obedience reminds us that we are the servants, He is the master.
• As with everything that God requires of us, allowing God to dethrone our many allegiances and fully and firmly establish His exclusive rule in our hearts works for His glory and for our good. When we persist in idolatry by calling something God that He is not, we are not only robbing Him of the glory He is worthy of, but we are also robbing ourselves of the good He designed us for. The real danger of sending the subversive Jesus away is that we miss the power of His grace.
• “Those who cling to worthless idols forfeit the grace that could be theirs” (Jonah 2:8).
• God didn’t want me leaning completely on someone else’s knowledge of Him; He didn’t want me coasting, finding shortcuts for knowing Him. He wanted me to do the carrying, the heavy lifting, the hard and delightfully glorious work of knowing Him.
• My point is that the one with more knowledge does not have more access. We all have equal access and should never forfeit our privilege of having relationship with God.All my functional roles are expendable, completely replaceable. It is my relational roles that are the irreplaceable ones.
• I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead. Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already been made perfect, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. Brothers, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus. (Phil. 3:10–14)
• The more we hear God’s call and respond in love and worship, the more we hear God’s call.
• I admit I once lived by rumors of you; now I have it all firsthand—from my own eyes and ears! I’m sorry—forgive me. I’ll never do that again, I promise! I’ll never again live on crusts of hearsay, crumbs of rumor. (Job 42:5–6 MSG)
• Jesus, for the joy set before Him, endured the cross. In similar fashion, we for the joy of knowing Christ set before us embrace the vigorous, lifelong journey of firsthand faith. Our discussion here has ended. But your journey has just begun. Are you ready?

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