Pastor Jurgen Matthesius’ book on prayer was a great book to start off 2015 with. I have read a lot of books on prayer over the last 35+ years of my Christian walk. I will go ahead and say up front, PUSH: Pray Until Something Happens: Divine Principles for Praying with Confidence, Discerning God’s Will, and Blessing Others
is probably one of the top three to five books I have ever read on this important subject.
If you have ever heard Pastor Jurgen speak, you know that he is dynamic, entertaining, and always shares a message that is challenging. Thankfully, he writes like he speaks. He shares many stories form his own journey to illustrate the principles that he is writing about. One of the things that I appreciate in a communicator is vulnerability. An audience can applaud a speaker or writer’s victories, but they can relate to their failures and weaknesses. Many of the stories that Jurgen shares are from when his faith was lacking or when he did not want to obey what he felt God wanted him to do.
Each chapter is titled after a movie. Jurgen then uses some of content from the movie to highlight a particular aspect of prayer. This is a brilliant way to reach a modern audience. At the same time, he uses a multitude of Scripture as his primary source for talking about prayer. While PUSH is clearly a book about the spiritual discipline of prayer, it actually is much more than that.
As I was reading PUSH, I could not help but think that Pastor Jurgen had written an updated version of Dr. David Cho’s classic The Fourth Dimension
. In many ways, the books are very different. At the same time, they are both great reminders of who are in Christ and what our inheritance is as children of God. Both books remind us that we are more than conquerors in Christ and God has given us the authority in Christ to bring the Kingdom of God into our worlds.
One of the greatest strengths of PUSH is how it deals with the theology of God’s perfect will and His permissive will. There is no doubt that some very bad theology has been allowed to thrive in the modern Church in the area of God’s will. How many times have you heard someone say, “It will happen if it is meant to be?” This is just not true. God has chosen not to force His will on humanity. The human free will is one of the most powerful forces in the universe. Even Jesus, the perfect Son of God, was limited by people’s unbelief.
So, how do God’s will and our will work? What is the relationship between the two. And most importantly, how can we experience God’s perfect will in our lives? Get a copy of PUSH and let Pastor Jurgen take you deeper into what it means to pray and experience life in the Spirit.
Annie and I are serving the Lord in Brazil. We are training leaders and helping plant churches. Would you become a part of our team? Together, we can see lives changed by the power of the Gospel. Just click here to get involved. Obrigado!
