With by Skye Jethani

In this book, the author, Skye Jethani lists five ways people relate to God.  There is Life Under God, Life Over God, Life For God, Life From God and Life With God.  I will try and paraphrase the examples Jethani gives of each posture.

The Life Under God posture  is like when a business man seeks to make things right with God so that God will bless his business.

Life Over God is like a leader of a church putting prayer on a back burner and rather adopting a more contemporary approach to running a church like secular organizations, by understanding market forces and such.

Life For God is like the young student of a Christian college who is not sure anymore that she should go to medical school because she thinks she needs to ‘make something of her life’ and become a missionary.  She feels if she doesn’t do something the Christian world would think is significant, she has failed God.

Life From God is like the mother who is in despair because her teenaged son is depressed and using drugs and other destructive behavior, and she’s hurt and angry that God is not intervening.  She’s always raised her son on biblical principles, and honoured God in her home.  She feels like God is punishing her.

Any one of these postures is probably eerily familiar to all of us.  But they are all ways of controlling God for our own benefit.  We can’t control God, and trying to will only lead to a desperate cycle of trying more of the same.  The main point Jethani makes is that God just wants to be with us.  He wants us just as we are, and he wants to be in communion with us, to have a deep relationship with us.

This book really got me thinking.  I was kind of back and forth deciding if I liked it or not in the first few chapters, just because a lot of what the author says seems very controversial.  But in the end I realized I agree with him.  The other postures are ways that we seek to control God, not have a relationship with Him.  Jethani suggests we should live so that 'God would cease to be how we acquire our treasure, and he would become our treasure.' He states that even though the aspostle Paul was a great leader and missionary, and it seems as if God’s mission dominated his life, it did not define it.  If you study Paul’s letters closely you will see that ‘everything in the apostle’s life, including God’s mission, took a backseat to his paramount goal: God himself.’  The Life with God posture is different than the other four listed because 'its goal is not to use God, it's goal is God.'  

This is a very thought provoking, liberating and encouraging book.  I definitely recommend it.