Customer Reviews

Life with God: Reading the Bible for Spiritual Transformation

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Richard Foster has provided us with yet another treasure. I found this book an encouraging guide to the reading of the Scriptures. Foster invites his readers to enter the world of the Bible and find a God who is intimately and personally involved with his creation. This God has invited us into relationship, and Foster directs his reader how they might be transformed by this relationship through the reading of the Bible. A common refrain in Foster's account is that God is continually found in the Scriptures as being with his people, yet God asks us, "Are you with me?" God is present with us. Foster challenges us to learn how to pay attention.

The book includes instruction on how to read the Bible with the heart, the mind, and within the context of the community. Foster, drawing from the work of Dallas Willard, wants to encourage his readers to take up the reading of the Bible in a way that one's character is transformed. He believes that the Bible, by God's grace, can help us to be disciplined people who "do the right thing at the right time for the right reason." Foster's final section instructs the reader on how they might be disciplined in relationships, discover freedom in Christ, and walk by God's grace.

This book is a good read with a number of examples drawn from Foster's experience and his extensive readings from classic devotional works. I would recommend this book for anyone who wants to further refine their approach to reading the Bible.

Foster condenses the whole of the Bible into the above simple phrase, and with the simple stroke of a pen it comes clear. God is with us! From beginning to end God is with us! Do we desire to be with him? Anyone who has read Foster before knows the gentle and almost poetic nature of his writing. He is not negative or judgmental but always calling us to a way of life that is with God.
In this work Foster gives us the vision of what vision of what a life immersed in the scriptures can bring to us, the intention of our hearts, minds and community to do our part, and the means to begin the process.
People who have read any of Foster's previous works will see a common theme running through them - discipline, and this book is no exception. It does a fine job of reviewing the highlights of his past work and clarifying the spiritual disciplines again to ward us away from both `legalism' and `cheap grace' and guide us toward a life where we do what we can do and allow God to do what we cannot do.

I went to Amazon to purchase another book by Richard Foster. When I saw the suggestion for this title, its subtitle intrigued me very much, "Reading the Bible for Spiritual Transformation". I bought the book based on that subtitle and I was not disappointed. In addition, it addressed the larger subject of the spiritual disciplines. I got what I was hoping for and much, much, more. This great book puts into perspective the key message/theme of the whole Bible. I totally recommend it to anyone who cares about getting from the Bible what God has put there for us.

This book had been sitting on my shelf for a couple of years before I started into it. It's one of the better, deeper books I have read recently. I thought it was going to be heavy on the importance of practicing the spiritual disciplines as a means to growth, and while Foster certainly advocates the value and wisdom of the "disciplines of grace", his approach is wonderfully balanced, wise and full of grace. Foster's theology is sound. I found the book encouraging, insightful, and thought-provoking. I read it over a couple of weeks, 10-15 pages at a time, and I looked forward to my engagement with it. I found it sufficiently helpful that I bought copies for two young men who are very important to my daughters (and me). I told them it was a book I wish I had read (and taken to heart) when I was their age. It's one that merits a second read in years to come.

I think the title and content of this book say it all. The Bible reveals that God is with us - Immanuel. And that is the only truth that I know that we can count on for the rest of our lives. I know of nothing else that is certain. Thank you Richard for writing this book.

The book arrived in great time and was in the condition advertised. Good service, Amazon.

This book was good as new one w/ this old cheap price. I'm glad to use amazon.com to buy something I need always.
Thanks
JJK