God Came Near (Deluxe Edition) by Max Lucado


An enjoyable, short read

Published by Thomas Nelson in 2010.

I had just ended a book and was casting about for something to read in my big pile of books in the closet. I came up with God Came Near more as a "Why not?" choice than anything else. I've seen different versions of this book around for years, but I'd never picked it up.

I soon found myself drawn in. Lucado revels in the "God in the small things moments." He also focuses his readers on Jesus the man - not the movie version of Jesus, the untouchable, above it all Holy Man. Instead, as the title of this book reminds the readers, "God Came Near" - Jesus was God becoming one of us - a walking, talking human being with sore feet, who got thirsty, who took naps and who was known almost exclusively by his first name by everyone, and a fairly common first name, at that. He came as nobody special and became the most written about and talked about figure in history.

I was especially struck by a passage in Chapter 9 that noted that everyone, those for him, those against, the curious, they all felt they could approach him : "There was not one person who was reluctant to approach him for fear of being rejected."
Max Lucado
Lucado wanders around in his discussions. He has a cute and thought-provoking story based on the children's song "This Little Gospel Light of Mine", thoughts about what can weaken faith and the warning signs we should pay attention to, the end of life, the Christian as God's ambassador, and he encourages us to get up from our own failures in our walk of faith by looking at all of the big names in the Bible that failed but got back up and continued their own faith walks.

Mostly, the book works because it comes across as a book written for real people - it approaches the reader in the real world, reminds him or her of the amazing story of the God who came to his people who refused to come to him and, in my case, reminded me of how truly remarkable that is.
 
I rate this book 5 stars out of 5.

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: God Came Near Deluxe Edition
 
Reviewed on November 24, 2010.

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