How Does God Change Us?
Book Reviews aim to provide succinct, thoughtful summaries of books I have read. They contain quotes from the book, thoughts from others, and also some thoughts of my own. Typically they will be structured in the following order: author, introduction, message and purpose, remarkable chapter, and conclusion. This review will cover How Does God Change Us?, a more concise version of another book (Deeper) that reminds Christians not to look anywhere but Christ himself for real growth.
Author
Dane Ortlund
Introduction
Followers of Christ long to grow in godliness but often find themselves stuck. Sin runs deeps, we continue to fail, and we are easily tempted to give up. In How Does God Change Us?, Dane Ortlund explains that we change by going deeper into the same truths that saved us in the first place. With timeless counsel from historical Christian figures, Ortlund shows us how to get traction in our spiritual walk, experience real change, and live out our invincible identity in Christ.
Message and Purpose
The essential message of How Does God Change Us? is to provide a framework to experience Godly change in our lives. Ortlund does so by dividing the book into nine chapters:
Chapter One: Jesus
Chapter Two: Despair
Chapter Three: Union
Chapter Four: Embrace
Chapter Five: Acquittal
Chapter Six: Honesty
Chapter Seven: Pain
Chapter Eight: Breathing
Chapter Nine: Supernaturalized
Each chapter is succinct and concise in its style. Ortlund gives a blueprint for how to experience the radical change we all long for in our lives. By looking back to the gospel message, Ortlund reminds us that we don't need any new special revelation to experience this type of change; we need only to go deeper into the unchanging gospel of Jesus Christ.
Remarkable Chapter
Chapter eight on breathing was the most practical and impactful chapter in the book for me. In this chapter, Ortlund explains that two vital practices of the Christian walk are as important to our spiritual growth as breathing is to our physical growth: Bible reading (inhaling) and prayer (exhaling). Ortlund elaborates that what inhaling does for us physically, Bible reading does for us spiritually:
"In this shifty, uncertain world, God has given us actual words. Concrete, unmoving, fixed words. We can go to the rock of Scripture amid the shifting sands of this life. Your Bible is going to have the same words tomorrow that it does today. Friends can't provide that—they will move in and out of your life, loyal today but absent tomorrow. Parents and their counsel will die. Your pastor will not always be available to take your call. The counselor who has given you such sage instruction will one day retire, or maybe you'll move out of state. But you can roll out of bed tomorrow morning and, whatever stressors slide uncomfortably across your mental horizon as you groan with the anxieties of the day, your friend the Bible is unfailingly steady."
Regarding prayer, Ortlund explains how vital prayer is to our relationship with God:
"To put prayer together with Scripture reading is simply to acknowledge that God is a real person with whom believers have an actual, moment-by-moment relationship. The Bible is God speaking to us; prayer is our speaking to him. If we do not pray, we do not believe God is an actual person. We may say we do. But we don't really. If we do not pray, we actually think he is an impersonal force of some kind, distant and removed. We don't view him as Father."
Conclusion
Ortlund's goal in this book is to simply coach us into that single, simple, all-determining impulse of the heart: looking to Jesus. If we look to him, everything else is footnotes. All else will fall into place. If we do not look to Jesus, no amount of techniques or strategies will finally help us; all will be for nothing. How Does God Change Us? is a practical and applicable reminder to let our union with Jesus Christ take us ever deeper into the wonders of the gospel.