Welcome back to our book club discussion. Be honest, how many of you have read ahead? 
I can’t blame you! Once you get a taste of Jesus with all of His personality shining through, don’t you just want to spend every single second with Him?
This week we are discussing chapters 5 and 6 here on the blog as well as in the community. If you are reading along, I encourage you to check out the book club community thread and join in. So much goodness is being shared from the women reading along!
Alright, let’s get this thing going!
Chapter 5 – The Most Human Face of All
This chapter centers around the humanity of Jesus and the things John Eldredge writes about were nothing short of earth-shattering for me. As much as I hate to admit it, I think I really fell into the category of those who thought Jesus kind of pretended his way through his humanness. I mean He is the Son of God – was all of this really limiting for Him? Was he really hungry? Tired? Thirsty?
Yes. Yes. Yes.
Still God, but so human. It boggles the mind but it also opens the heart to a new relationship. One that feels understood. I’ve said before I read this book at a time when I so desperately needed to see Him as REAL – in the sense that He understood what it is like to be wrapped in human flesh, with human wants and desires and hopes. I needed to know it is possible to walk the hard stuff of obedience in the face of all that.
I needed to know my heart was heard and understood on a human level.
Eldredge writes, “Jesus was more human than humanity. His was the most human face of all. This is going to open up wonders for you.”
And it has!
So, for me, this chapter was freeing.
Would you say you’ve ever really sat back and thought about the full-on humanness of Jesus? What does it do to your heart, to wherever you are on this walk, to know He understands all the wants and needs and desires you’ve got going on inside your human flesh? Does it open to you a new side of your relationship with Him?
Chapter 6- Extravagant Generosity
I’m listening to the audiobook of Beautiful Outlaw as we read through together and I have to tell you, John Eldredge is quite the storyteller. I hope you’ve watched the Outlawcast or visted Beautiful Outlaw’s website to watch a few of the videos up.
So far this has been one of my favorite chapters to listen to John read. He says he is “thunderstruck by {Christ’s} abundant generosity strewn around” as he sits and stares at the waves rolling in along the beach. Can you relate? I grew up one mile from the beach. I was raised on sunshine and sand. So, the beach has always been a place of quiet and awe for me. I can go there and feel God all around me.
I wonder, what is your place? Where do you go to take in the generosity of His creation? His majesty? His extravagance?
I love page 62 of this book. LOVE. It makes me feel gratitude deep in my bones and all throughout my heart. Because of things like this:
“What do we make of the gift of water? You can swim in it, but also float upon it. You can drink it and surf it. Droplets fall from the sky in staggering abundance, yet it also flows in streams and rivers. It makes one sound as a brook, another as a waterfall, and something else entirely together in the silence of snow. This extravagance is almost scandalous.”
Wow.
Scandalous extravagance. Overflowing generosity we find in Jesus. Eldredge points out Jesus’ miracles, his water into wine (908 bottles of wine!!), his interaction with the least of these. Always abundance with Him.
And then he asks, “What does sunshine tell us about the personality of Jesus? What does the gift of our senses tell us about Jesus?”
I wonder today, what does {whatever your heart personally responds to in creation or in life} tell you (and us) about the personality of Jesus?
Do. Share!
We’ll be really working through this together and sharing over in the book club community. We would love for you to join us. So much good stuff is happening over there each week. It’s become a book community of sharing and encouragement and thoughts.
We’d love to see you there!
