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Living the Story: Biblical Spirituality for Everyday Christians ReviewIt is not for nothing that the authors of the book Living the Story: Biblical Spirituality for Everyday Christians named it thus, for it is a book that seeks to make everyday sense of a topic that is popularly perceived as a lofty and theological or worse, ethereal and unattainable. In fact it could just as easily be called Everyday Spirituality for Biblical Christians so clearly does it enunciate and demystify Christian Spirituality using language and expression that is easily grasped by the reader.
The book's form takes three parts. Understanding that Biblical spirituality is centred on love for and worship of a God of three persons it begins by exploring the nature of worship itself cultivating an understanding of how that worship is rightly directed towards Abba Father, how that worship is worked out in our lifestyles as disciples to Jesus Christ, and how our power to live that life of worship is accessible to us as temples of the Holy Spirit. Parts two and three of the book delve into the Old and the New Testaments exploring the spirituality as it was lived in the Bible and seeking to make it relevant to the reader for their life in the 21st century.
The history of man is a story, a great compelling story that cannot be told in its fullness unless it is told as part of the story of God. `Living the Story' recounts the chronicle of the `Great Story' through the narratives of the men and women of God in the books of the Old and the New Testaments drawing from their encounters lessons and instruction for us as to how to incorporate our lives into this greater narrative of the history of man. It draws also on the themes and revelations of the Biblical writers and the apostles to hand down ancient wisdom that has lost none of its potency in the intervening thousands of years.
In current society it appears to me that modern men and women lead compartmentalised lives allocating regulated space and time for the many facets of their world, family, career, social, emotional, financial and spiritual areas of life are attended to as and when they are at their most pressing. Clearly some press more often and harder than others and so get more attention and equally, some elements overlap each other and are attended to in concert but it is also my observation that spirituality is an element that is relegated to the least pressing of issues, or is brought out for special occasions or dusted off on Sundays. However, the intent of this book is to advocate an integrated approach to spirituality, one where life is infused with it rather than nodding to it on a Sunday in a `worship' service. Stevens and Green gently sacrifice the sacred cow of religiosity for the sake of practising the presence of God, living a life that experiences the power of God in a holistic, spiritually saturated way where man is walking with God daily and is involved in an authentic and rich relationship with Him, a relationship that infuses all areas of their life rather than one where life makes room for spirituality.
Critically, the authors examine the nature of Christian Spirituality in more than just the backdrop of the individual; they incorporate the quest, the story of the one into the context of the many, into the community of the people of God. For the journey of man, whether it is with God or without is a journey that is forged in community. Stevens and Green are not especially kind to the traditions and the routines that the body of Christ has slipped into as we fall more and more into the traps of modern life. They are particularly critical of the notion of fellowship as having been downgraded to watery tea and a biscuit after a Sunday Service, they urge us deeper into fellowship with each other, encouraging getting messy with each other's lives as did the apostles in the New Testament. Living in true fellowship where life is `done together' living an authentic Christianity. It is here that the biggest challenge lies for us in an individualistic urban society where there are schedules to keep, tasks to be completed and lives to be kept afloat in the face of stiff competition. It seems to me, and clearly, to the authors, that there has to be more to life than this. Christianity has to do more, it has to touch the sides as it goes down, or else it is no different than any other sop to spirituality that a guru or a master could concoct.
As a person who has been in and around church all my life I find it refreshing to read a spiritual guide that doesn't simply begin and end with pray and read your bible, go to church on Sunday and pay your tithe. Stevens and Green by no means leave these things out, nor do they pass over the sacraments of communion and baptism but they present all of these crucial elements of the Christian walk as part of the lifelong conversation between man and God.
The book is readable and applicable and for that it is of immense value. It doesn't preach and expound a set of religious rules and regulations that formulate a spiritual life. Instead, throughout its pages `Living the Story' introduces a loving and generous God, one who draws man to himself and elicits the worship he so richly deserves by his very nature, a nature of Love. The book achieves all this by putting in plain words the structure and manifesto of an authentic Christian life; a life that is enriched for the person living it and is attractive to those who live outside of its Christian context. Stevens and Green have accomplished a work that is more than a reference book for people exploring Christianity, it is a manual for those of us who want to (as Jonathan Swift once wrote) "...live all the days of our life".
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