'Divine Applause' by Jeff Anderson

 
How will God make himself known to you?

How do we have a relationship with a God we can’t see? There must be more to the Christian life than silence, and more to God than a vacant stare.
 
Divine Applause weaves together biblical insights and personal stories that illustrate the surprising ways God connects with us. Let Jeff Anderson show you how to use your spiritual senses to experience God.
·         Sense God’s personal attention in unmistakable ways.
·         Cultivate a constant awareness of God’s presence.
·         Enjoy the reward of secrets between you and God.
·         Take risks to break out of a status-quo life and connect more directly with God.
·         Discover the intensity of God’s interest in you.

You don’t have to settle for a distant walk with God. He wants you to know that He notices—and that He delights in you.
 
MY THOUGHTS:

This book draws us in with a question we've surely all pondered. How do you form a father/child relationship with somebody who we can't detect with our five senses? The title appealed to me because we all hunger for feedback. I know many people hope to hear, 'Well done, good and faithful servant' in their next life, but what if there are ways we can detect divine applause in the lives we're living? I'm always interested to read about such things. As feedback has proven to be a powerful motivation tool for humans, it's probably not unreasonable to think God has given us means to be attuned to his.

I like the way Jeff Anderson explains that we must learn to see things differently. He has a hearing difficultly, and had to learn different approaches in receiving information at school, which didn't involve his ears. In the same way, we need to stop relying on our physical senses when it comes to God, and learn other techniques when it comes to hearing from him. These involve attuning our spiritual senses, and is what this book is all about. Thinking of it as learning a foreign language makes the whole concept a bit easier.

As a father of young children, Anderson uses frequent anecdotes of life with his family to lead into general principles about our lives with God. At times, the book seemed to drift into other subjects, such as giving and fasting, because these were subjects around which he felt he experienced some of his greatest revelations. For others, they will be different.

One of my favourite aspects of the book is the emphasis that our original purpose was not to evangelise the world but to simply share God's delight. When you think about it, people who successfully do the second may be best at doing the first anyway. Overall, we're encouraged to sharpen our spiritual senses by expecting good things from God.

Thanks to WaterBrook Multnomah and Blogging for Books for my review copy.

3.5 stars