My new book Sons and Daughters releases everywhere on October 9th. This book embodies my life message and I am so anxious for you to read it and discuss it. Here is an excerpt from Chapter 2.

Most people I meet who are plagued by an orphan spirit believe that Jesus Christ can save them; they just can’t seem to fathom how he adores them too. It’s interesting, isn’t it? The cry of the orphan heart is, “Won’t somebody please see anything remotely worthwhile in me?” And all the while God lovingly says, “I do. I really do.”

Every weekend at New Life, as I’m dismissing the service, I ask our congregation to take time before they leave to introduce themselves to two or three people they do not know. It’s not just a fleeting comment; there is deep purpose behind my reminder. What goes through my mind as I say those words is, Please, New Life, do what I’m asking you to do. Please let God lead you to a possible divine encounter. The power of even a passing word can radically change a life.

Countless people sitting in our auditorium every weekend carry an orphan spirit. They are unimpressed by flashy lights, loud surround-sound, and the slightly above-average speaker on the stage. What impresses them—what really moves them—is to be seen. To be acknowledged. To be greeted. To be embraced. To be cared for and prayed for and loved.

God knows it’s what moves us all. He knows that’s what brings us home.

My new book, Sons and Daughters releases October 9th. Here is an excerpt from Chapter 21.

A man approached me after a Sunday worship service and said that he had been lying in a hospital bed for weeks on end, dealing with complications of his recently diagnosed leukemia. He decided to read through portions of the Bible, in hopes of finding some comfort and hope, when he sensed God directing him to Ephesians 3—the part about how wide and how deep God’s love is. For the first time in forty years, he said, he finally caught the love of his Father. “It came in waves,” he explained to me that Sunday. “Wave after wave of his love.”

The man said he became so overwhelmed by the reality that he actually prayed for God to stop revealing his love, just so the guy could catch his breath. “I can’t take it anymore!” he said aloud. “Just give me a second here to absorb what you’ve already shown me of your love!”

People such as he have seen God’s love, they’ve sensed his love, they’ve felt his love, they’ve known it. And those of us who have experienced this immersion into God’s love now serve him with all our heart and all our strength, because that’s what love compels well-loved people to do. He doesn’t dole out teaspoons full of love, not a soaked dishrag amount of love, but rather wave upon wave upon gigantic, overwhelming wave—washing over us, sweeping under us, surrounding us on all sides. It is wide, it is high, it is deep, it is long. It is in us and all around us and never lets us go. It envelops us and consumes us, it sustains us and empowers us. Wherever we’ve come from and wherever we’re going, we can’t help but run into God’s love.

This messes with the mind, doesn’t it? You can’t comprehend love so all-encompassing as that. All you can do is receive it.

If there were time in heaven, I think you and I would spend our first billion years there exploring the love of God. This is why heaven is filled to overflowing with worship, because God’s mysteries are finally being revealed. And don’t you know that questions regarding his great love must be first on everybody’s list?

Why the blessing?

Why the favor?

Why the care and concern and regard?

Why the provision?

Why the enjoyment?

Why the compassion?

Why the grace?

Until we’re bowing before his visible presence, we’ll never fully grasp the love of God. His love toward us is illogical and irrational and would short-circuit our brains if we could ever get close to sorting it out. But lovingly he says, “Between now and then, by the help of my Spirit, may you know my unknowable love.”

Isn’t that a beautiful thought? It’s like being let in on a divine secret, or like discovering the solution to the most complex puzzle in life. God offers us insider info on something that otherwise can’t be known.

And so I pray fervently and frequently for people I know who do not yet know Christ. I pray that they would be absolutely taken out by wave upon wave upon gigantic, overwhelming wave of God’s love. That they would be drawn by God’s Spirit to his welcoming side and then be given capacity for understanding just how loved they really are.

Sons and Daughters

My new book Sons and Daughters releases October 9th. Here is a brief excerpt from chapter 32.

Take any kid in any country on any continent in the world and tell them you’d like to give them a gift, and you’d better have something to hang onto, because you’re about to be plowed right down. Kids love to get gifts. They are born with open arms. They know beautifully well how to receive.

They don’t concern themselves with repayment plans or schemes to give in return. They simply throw the doors wide open and say, “For me? Hot diggidy dog!” This is the response God asks of us, the response of a wonder-filled child. “Thank you, Father, for your great gift of grace. I receive it with open arms.”

There’s a final thought, as it relates to this idea of becoming more like a child. As my own kids have grown up, I’ve noticed that they love to be invited into adventure and that they have a sky-high tolerance for risk. I can say, “Hey, Abram and Callie! Do you want to—” And before I can fill in the blank, two sets of dancing eyes have already said yes.

“Do you want to go camping and see if we can find any bears, even though if we’re successful we could get eaten alive?”

“Yes!”

“Do you want to play touch football in the snow, even though it’s so cold outside that your noses could freeze and fall right off?”

“Yes!”

“Do you want to see who can eat the most donuts in five minutes flat, even though you might have a belly ache for three days?”

“Yes!”

It has never mattered what the offer is, if it involves adventure and a measure of risk, my kids have always been game. Still, what I want my kids to dive into more than anything is the idea that following Jesus is the best adventure they can have.

Depending on which research survey you read, somewhere between 50 and 80 percent of today’s young adults are turning their backs on the church. These are kids who have been raised in the church, who have been leaders in their youth groups, who have said they want to trust God with their lives. But as soon as they hit age eighteen, they flee church and never come back.

And honestly, I don’t blame them a bit.

As older, wiser, more mature Christ-followers, we have watered down Jesus’ call on our lives and presented a gospel that requires zero risk. Kids look at the Christianity we have created and say, “Why would I give everything to something that costs me nothing?” Instinctively, they have surmised that life without risk requires no faith at all. And life without risk is no fun.

And so, in an attempt to inject necessary risk into their lives, they veer off the narrow road and experiment with drugs and booze and sex. They cut themselves with sharp objects just to feel something, just to prove that they’re really alive. And all the while, Jesus says, “If real life is what you’re after, boy, have I got a mission for you.”

Certainly, I’m not encouraging senseless risk-taking here. Although when I was a kid, I slept in a bed that was covered in lead paint, I drank out of a rusty water hose every single summer day, and I rode around in the back of a pickup truck, with the tailgate down, no less—and I lived to tell about it all. What I am suggesting is that we call out our kids’ sense of adventure and point them to Christ, who can lead them on the biggest adventure of their lives. I’m suggesting that we live in such a way that we present a gospel that is risky and raw, and that we show our kids by our example that faith is essential to the life that we live.