Customer Reviews

Unexplainable: Pursuing a Life Only God Can Make Possible

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Cousins book covers some excellent material and he does a good job encouraging us to grow in our faith and to seek a life with fruit and fulfillment that can only be explained by the activity of God. Unexplainable is broken down into four parts:

Part One - Unexplainable Contentment - the biblical keys to contentment -- lifeshift from outside-in to inside-out
Part Two - Unexplainable Success - bearing fruit and experiencing joy -- lifeshift from temporal to eternal
Part Three - Unexplainable Significance - understanding calling and purpose -- lifeshift from Mine to His
Part Four - From Explainable to Unexplainable -- how to get there

I thought that material covered in each section was quite good. However, it just didn't seem like the choice of topics covered what one would expect from the title. In thinking about a life that is 'Unexplainable' apart from the power of God, "contentment" simply doesn't come to mind. Same for "Success". And the discussion on calling seems more focused on helping us see how we live out our average jobs as living out our calling. Finally, I for a wrap up I was hoping to hear more than "Let Go and Let God" (the title of Chapter 20). Those looking for a more radical challenge to a life with God-sized dreams may want to check out some of Mark Batterson's book such as Wild Goose Chase or In a Pit with a Lion on a Snowy Day

If you do want to get a well-written Biblical view of how to attain contentment and how to understand success as God sees it, and a tie-in to God's calling on our life, Unexplainable fits the bill.

There's a song by Matthew West that starts with these lines:
The king of contradictions
Strikes again
You said the last to cross the finish line
Will win
And the beggars will be millionaires someday
And the humble ones are gonna have their say
(My Finest Hour - if you haven't heard it already, check it out!)

Well, today's book, Unexplainable: Pursuing a Life Only God Can Make Possible, kind of matches those words. God's will and purpose for your life may seem totally contradictory to everyone around you. I love the premise of this book - God is beyond us. And a life lived in Him will be completely unexplainable to everyone around except in the context of God. And such a life will invariably point to Him and give glory to Him.

If you're looking for an inspiring Christian read that challenges you to do the unexplainable, this book is for you. With lots of illustrations and practical ideas to hold your attention, this book is well organized as it walks through experiencing contentment, measuring success, finding significance, and the steps to get there, all from the unexplainable perspective.

There are discussion questions at the end of each chapter to facilitate this book as a group study. I think that would be a great way to encourage and motivate and hold one another accountable in living an unexplainable life.

Definitely one of the most motivational books I've read in a while!

If you are going from day to day, hoping for Saturday and dreading Monday, then this book is for you. If you are dreaming of "someday" or "the old days", then this book is for you.

I was inspired, encouraged and uplifted. I was encouraged to keep pressing in to God and search for His work in my life, not settling for my best, but looking for God's best.

Unexplainable is a terrific inspirational book. If you haven't read one for a while, you will benefit. We all need a 'check up' once in a while. This book will refocus you on the reason why we are here, the hope that we have, and the One we walk with.

Everybody wants contentment, success and significance. We work hard and invest a lot trying to get them--and we often fail. But what if you didn't have to fail. What if content, success and significance were possible? Don Cousins' latest book, Unexplainable, says that it is, indeed, possible to achieve that kind of life. However, we won't find them by doing what we have always done.
In Unexplainable, Cousins shows us how to have a life we never thought was possible. A life of unexplainable contentment, success and significance. A life that is unexplainable apart from God.
In some ways, this book is Christianity 101, and the message is simple. Pray, read your bible, seek God and follow his ways. But Unexplainable is Christianity 101 on steroids. How do you follow God when your child dies? When your business fails or you lose your job? How do you seek God when your life turns out to be ordinary and unremarkable and disappointing? Don Cousins teaches us how to "pursue a life only God can make possible," no matter how tough that life is. He doesn't only tell us how to do it, though. By using stories and real life examples, he shows us. And that makes it doable.
Learning to live an unexplainable life requires what Cousins calls a "lifeshift," a shift of focus from outward-to-inward to inward-to-outward. It is a huge paradigm shift and is easiest to accomplish within a community of like-minded people.
Unexplainable is designed for small group study. There are discussion questions at the end of each chapter that help the group process information together. You can supplement the book study with a companion video for a six-week study. The video has live interviews with people who actually live unexplainable lives, who are able to do things that demonstrate lives lived with God at the center.
This is an excellent book for those who want to grow deeper spiritual roots. Although designed for group study, it works well for individual study, perhaps using the discussion questions as a guide for journaling. Whether you do an individual or a group study, if you work through the book and apply it to your life, you can have the life you long for. You can have unexplainable contentment, success and significance--no matter what happens.

I'm not sure what to say about "Unexplainable" by Don Cousins. It is a wonderful non-fiction volume that points to God as the source of all of our accomplishments. I know that I struggle with taking credit for what God has done, and this book brings that issue into the foreground with great focus. I don't think that anyone could read this book and come away from it unchanged.

This would also be a terrific book club pick as it has some terrific discussion questions at the end of each chapter. But those questions can certainly be used for personal reflection. And I guarantee that you will be doing a lot of reflecting while reading this book.

Our small group is doing a study on Unexplainable: Pursing a Life Only God Can Make Possible and find it inspiring and powerful. Embracing these ideas and living them out is the only way to demonstrate true gratitude for the gift Jesus gave us! Don Cousins does a great job encouraging his readers to do just that!

Great book -- have suggested it as a source of study for our home group through my church.