Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Review for National Catholic Review, Nov. 17, 1995, November 12, 1998
By A Customer
They are clerks, homemakers, psychiatrists, ministers, construction workers and teachers. They are Protestant, Catholic, Jewish, Buddhist, agnostic and atheists. They are married, single, divorced and remarried. They are women, men, boys and girls. They are healed, consoled, challenged, commissioned and most often simply affirmed. They are contemporary Americans who have tangibly experienced the risen Jesus Christ. He comes as a brilliant light emanating warmth and love. He comes as a voice communicating forgiveness, acceptance, confrontation or direction. He comes as a translucent, glowing face. He comes as a tall, bearded figure dressed in a white robe. He comes as a balding, middle-aged man, mildly overweight. He meets people in their dreams, in their homes, at their workplaces, at hospitals, at churches, in parks, forests and beaches. He meets people as they walk down the street. He meets them in their cars. In l Am With You Always, G. Scott Sparrow has compiled an extraordinary collection of peoples' firsthand accounts of their experiences of the risen Christ. Sparrow, a therapist who has had his own visions and dreams of Jesus, orga nizes and analyzes the accounts according to the "type" of Christ encounter that occurs: awakenings, physical healings, emotional healings, confrontations, initiations and instructions. Collected over five years, the stories included are mostly excerpts from letters sent to sparrow by individuals who had discovered that he was studying Christ encounters. The stories were often contributed by people who were telling their stories for the first time, as this was the first time they'd found someone they thought might believe them. It is tempting to be skeptical about this book. It is especially tempting to disbelieve sorne stories as wish fulfillment, such as when Christ comes to people dressed like the standard poster image of him: long brown hair, thin heard, glistening blue eyes and a classic Nordic profile.It is also tempting to disbelieve certain episodes in which Jesus appears in the present and is chiefly interested in exalting Mary, defending the Catholic church or lecturing about the moral decay of contemporary society. But such reports are rare. What is really surprising cans nd refreshing -- even convincing -- is that in nearly all the encounters presented (a) Jesus comes to people unbidden; (b) his primary object in most of his appearances is to affirm people and tell them that he loves them; and (c) he is remarkably uninterested in what many of our religious leaders would claim to be the important spiritual, moral issues of the day. An tinmarried woman deeply involved in a relationship encounters Christ, who tells her simply "I am with You always."The woman writes: I am not a holy person and I don't know why Christ came to me, except to tell me that I need not fear loneliness." Jesus does not reprimand the woman nor insist that she end her relationship. He promises to be with her no matter what she does. A man who has not practiced any religion for 30 years writes that during a funeral Mass, he heard the voice of Jesus saying, "Come, have supper with me." In another encounter, Jesus comes to a woman who has recently had an abortion. Now if this wasn't an opportunity for our lord to scold someone for their unchurchly behavior what is? Yet Jesus doesn't even speak to this woman; he enters her car as warm, brilliant, accepting light. The woman wrote, when he left, "I felt calm, restored, forgiven." Apparently Christ has not spent the past 2,000 years fretting over the broken rules. He seem so far more concerned about broken lives. In other words; Christ comes to people today much as he did in the incarnation as rendered in the four gospels of the New Testament. He comes to people without regard to their race, religion, social staus or moral track record. His overriding message to indviduals is that they are lavishly loved by God. One woman writes that the shattering message she received from Jesus was simply, "You are loved." Jesus does not slap people's wrists for their moral failures he simply expresses his love in away that transforms people. And they are transformed, though, sometimes secretly. Of the hundreds of experiences presented in the book, most are prefaced with the comment, "I have never told anyone about this" and are closed with the remark, "This experience has changed me forever." The changed lives are, perhaps, the strongest evidence of thc authenticity of the Christ encounters. The pleasnre of the experience is so strong that most people are reluctant for the vision to end. One person says, "I couldn't bear to have so much love taken from me." Is the Jesus presented in I Am With You Always the same Jesus who walked in Palestine in the first century and who appeared in the days following his death to the then and women who were his original disciples? That's a difficult question to answer. The similarities between the Christ of hundreds of independent 20th century witnesses and the Christ of the New Testament are, however, astonishing. Another qtiestion that must be asked: Is he with all of us always? Are waking and dreaming encounters with Jesus available to all of us. Sparrow suggests that the answer is "yes" and that many people are so close to Christ encounters that they never notice Jesus' presence. I Am With You Always is an exciting book for those who delight in hearing people express their own experiences of God in their own words. Most of the contributions have all the trademark ingredients of the gospel: strangeness, unorthodoxy, exhilaration, transformation and, most important, a focus not on the institutional church but on its central reality: the risen, living Jesus Christ.
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Review for Online Journal for Practicing Preachers, November 12, 1998
By A Customer
George Gallup says one-third of all American adults 18 and over have had a "religious experience," which he defines as a "particularly powerful religious insight or awakening." He says this is true for quarter of the adults who do not go to church and 40% of those who do. I suspect Gallup's numbers may be low because people are not always willing to label their experiences as "religious," and many of us are reluctant to discuss them with others. I Am With You Always is a collection of stories of Christ encounters by Scott Sparrow, a psychotherapist. They come from persons he counseled, others he met on the lecture circuit and his own personal experiences. Sparrow defines a Christ encounter as"... any experience in which a person perceives the presence of a being whom he or she identifies as Jesus or Christ." He summarizes the experiences reported and states his own outlook: "Jesus can awaken us to a relationship with him. As the great physician, he can heal our bodies and our hearts. As taskmaster, he can confront and initiate us, encouraging us to remove obstacles to a closer relationship with him. As the consummate teacher, he can instruct and guide us into areas of new growth. And as the bridegroom, he can come to reassure us that we are, above all else, loved. [p. 223]" Sparrow's work has little in common with the current glut of books about angels and channeling, or the stories TV evangelists tell. Most of his accounts are of dreams or experiences in meditation: few are about near-death experiences. They are experiences you, and I, and people we know, might have had: consistent with Emmanuel, God with us, the Word that became flesh and dwelt among us. There is surprise at the way Jesus looks in a dream: "Instead of the traditional Christ figure, he was wearing a gray pin-striped suit. He was bald-his face didn't look like the traditional Jesus face. Actually he resembled my uncle Ed. I knew unquestioningly, however, that it was Jesus." Later in the same dream the Jesus figure explains,". .. Of course, everyone would come to see me if I descended from the clouds in a white robe with angels attending; but that is not my purpose...Those who truly know me will recognize me in spirit--the rest will not know me. In this way I am gathering my true followers." I Am With You Always is sometimes inspiring, sometimes very moving. Mostly, however, it is affirming of our own encounters with the risen Lord. The ring of truth in these experiences of others has a grace which helps us evaluate and accept the ways in which Christ may be addressing you and me.
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A beautiful book about different people meeting Jesus Christ, November 4, 2001
I found this to be truly one of the best books I ever read.
My sister bought it for me, for my birthday, and I have read
it many many times. I highly recommend it to anyone. They are
really beautiful true stories of people meeting Jesus Christ
in real life. I'd give it 100 stars if I could!
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