Forgotten God review

I haven't read too many of the books I put on my to-read list this summer. I want to blame my small-town library that doesn't have the books I planned to read (and charges money for an inter-library loan; I'm still grumbling about that), but I already had some of them. I took one of them home with me from school: Forgotten God, by Francis Chan.

This was assigned reading for the discipleship program I'm in for my second year. (Last year's book was With by Skye Jethani; I recommend all Christians go read it now. Or you can read this one first, if you like.) I'm glad there are people who make disciples of Jesus for a living so they can point me at good books, among other things. I have not read Chan's Crazy Love, but I've heard good things about it. If it's as good as this one, I'll put Crazy Love close to the top of my reading list.

Forgotten God is subtitled "Reversing our tragic neglect of the Holy Spirit." This intrigued me, because for a while I've had the sneaking suspicion that I was doing just that. How was I supposed to interact with the Holy Spirit? Where was the warm, fuzzy feeling I'd hoped for, expected? Why didn't I feel like I hadn't learned anything about Him in church?

Maybe I didn't get direct answers to those questions, but Chan, in clear, effective language, described what a relationship with the Holy Spirit looks like and why we need it. He put in useful terms things I needed to hear and refreshed my enthusiasm for spiritual discipline.

This is not a book to be read without study or reflection. I know, because I feel like I missed a ton when I read it in bits and pieces over the summer. I'm going to give it another go before I head back to school because I want to absorb everything. Some of the lessons that stood out to me, though this is far from the sum of the book, were these:

• You can pray to the Holy Spirit. This was something I'd never thought of before.
• This quote from near the end of the book: "We often choose to face life's issues and circumstances in exactly the same way as someone without the Spirit of God." Food for thought.
• TRUST the Holy Spirit. This one's really come into play for me the last few days.

Give it a look yourself. There is no Church without the Spirit of God. We shouldn't neglect that.