Jesus is Better than You Imagined by Jonathan Merritt (FaithWords)
Some readers will recognize Jonathan Merritt as the creation stewardship advocate who wrote Green Like God. Some will remember him as the stereotype-defying voice of young evangelicals who wrote A Faith of Our Own: Following Jesus Beyond the Culture Wars. Others may know him as a perceptive analyst of faith and culture for Religion News Service and numerous national media outlets.
In Jesus is Better than You Imagined, Merritt takes a much more personal approach. He honestly describes the emptiness of legalistic religion and how it left him longing for something more. He transparently allows readers access into the hidden places of his life—his childhood sexual abuse by an older boy, the trauma of losing a dear friend to a rare disease, the betrayal of confidence he experienced when his struggle with same-sex attraction became public, the questions that plagued him when he saw Third World suffering up close and the dark nights of the soul when God seemed absent.
But in the process, Merritt experiences Jesus in unexpected places in the company of unlikely people. He finds joy in a vital and vibrant relationship with Jesus—the One who welcomes wandering sinners but confounds and confronts the self-righteous.
Read this book and discover anew why you fell in love with Jesus in the first place.
Ken Camp, managing editor
Baptist Standard
Plano
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