First sentence: For much of my life, I have struggled with my faith. I always wanted to believe, knew that I was supposed to believe, and hoped deep down inside that I really did believe...I’ve come to see that the problem—my lack of faith, my passionless heart, and my struggle to surrender—came from a fundamental deficiency in how I saw God.

In Not God Enough, J.D. Greear argues that if you're struggling with God--whether you're angry, disappointed, doubting--chances are that your God isn't BIG enough. Or, to rephrase that, YOUR God may be a God of your own making and not the God revealed by Scripture. It is of the utmost importance that the God you worship be the one true God.

Has Western culture made God small? Has Western culture made God domesticated? Sadly, I think the answer tends to be yes to both questions. J.D. Greear writes,
"We present God as the best way to a happy and prosperous life. We show how God is the best explanation for unanswered questions and the best means to the life we desire. Our worship services seem more like pep rallies accompanied by practical tips for living than encounters with the God who stands beyond time and whose presence is indescribably glorious. Ironically, our “diminished” God feels, for a while, easier to believe in. He acts in ways we can understand, explain, predict, and even control. He rarely offends us, so we are not embarrassed to talk about him with our friends. He helps us find our meaning and purpose. We think everyone should try him."
A small God can't be worshipped and adored. A small God can't be feared. The God of THE WORD is to be feared and worshiped.

Of the book's purpose he writes, "In this book, I want to give you a vision, as best I can, of God as he really is. Not the domesticated, practical, fix-it-and-make-you-feel-good god of Western Christianity, but the real one." He continues, "In order to discover this awesome god, we are going to delve into the faith encounters of several biblical heroes, but there’s one in particular we will keep coming back to: Moses...he wanted Moses’s experience to be both a comfort to us when we doubt and an example of how to follow God in the midst of doubt."

I really liked this one. I love that Greear quotes some of my favorite authors. I love his honesty and his passion for the gospel. I didn't agree with every single sentence in this one. There were one or two sentences in this one that felt a tiny bit off--in terms of not being quite Reformed enough. But overall I'd recommend this one.

Such an excellent and incredibly biblical resource. I learned a lot and J.D. Greear covered so much ground in a way that is easy to understand. The main point of "God is not just a slightly better, slightly smarter version of you" was really hammered home.

*This review is based on a free digital advance copy provided by the publisher. The opinions expressed are my own.

I started reading this book because I was curious about JD Greear. There are very few books that have left me searching my own heart as much as Not God Enough. Throughout the book, JD challenges the reader to enlarge their view of God. Often, as Christians, we view God as if He is a reflection of ourselves. JD exhortation is that we would allow our view of God to grow, even past our own understanding. I have already recommended this book to a friend who is struggling to grow spiritually and I will continue to recommend this book, especially to those who are questioning God or growing robotically accustomed to the everyday Christian life.

“A god small enough to be understood is not big enough to be worshiped.” – Evelyn Underhill

The God of American Christianity often resembles a cross between a wish-granting genie and an inspirational speaker who wants you to know just how special you are. Such a God is inadequate for the real world and bears little resemblance to the God of the Bible. This book calls people back to “the fear of the Lord.” Fearing God is not about cringing terror (though it sometimes produces that), but about reacting in awe to how infinitely great (and infinitely holy, and infinitely loving, and infinitely gracious, etc.) the eternal I AM is and just how small, limited, and dependent on him we are in comparison.

J. D. Greear uses a skillful blend of Scripture exposition, illustrations, and humor to help give us some perspective (if such a thing is possible for our finite minds) on the infinite God who loves us and what implications that has for our lives. I might quibble with how he interprets a few of the passages he uses, but this is an excellent and encouraging book that I would highly recommend.

I would also recommend pairing it with The Imperfect Disciple by Jared C. Wilson which offers more “where the rubber meets the road” applications of what it looks like to live in light of God’s infinite grace in the day-to-day.

It’s like he took one great sermon about the greatness of God and tried to turn it into a book, and then he ran out of ideas, so he starts repeating the same point. The main idea? You have a misunderstanding problem because you fail to see how great and incomprehensible God is. You put God in a comfortable, understandable box. That kind of God is convenient for now, but he isn’t big enough to solve your problems.

In chapter 4, he changes the pace and stops repeating the same point. He starts tackling the problem of pain, in light of this great God. He poses some great personal questions, just as he did in the beginning of the book. How can a good God allow so much suffering? His answer is that God has a purpose for pain that we do not comprehend. And because we do not understand, it makes us angry and judge God (or judge him to not exist).

This is a good book for those who are new to Christianity, but for those of us who have already read books by John Piper, John MacArthur, even Max Lucado, the great God theme is nothing new. These are old sermons in contemporary clothes. It’s a well-written book. just not for me.

I’m not really sure what brought me to J.D. Greear’s Not God Enough. It could have been that the book is being published by Zondervan, which has, in the past, published the work of progressives. It could have been the description of the book, as well — the book blub seemed to posit that this was a book for anyone who had doubts about God. God knows I’ve had a few. You can imagine my disappointment then when the book didn’t really deliver on what I thought it would. Let me be blunt: This is not a book for progressives. In fact, Greear takes aim at us progressives multiple times over the book, sniping us for wanting a God that’s edited beyond recognition so that He’s not that offensive. (Why is this a bad thing?)

No, Not God Enough is, at it’s core, a book about evangelical Christianity and how great it is. The book is so evangelical that Greear seems to take pride in offering an example where he wound up converting a Muslim woman to Christianity — though the book doesn’t say what the consequences were for that woman in changing her faith. Essentially, I think the whole point of the book is that if you don’t believe in Jesus, you will never find your way to God or Heaven. That’s so odiously offensive that I don’t know where to even begin. After all, is the belief in a Creator by indigenous communities, for instance, beyond all reproach in Greear’s worldview? (It probably is.) At the very worst, Not God Enough is culturally insensitive.

Before going any further, let me point out a few nice things that I can say about the book. Not God Enough is a title that has been well researched and thought over, despite the personal stories involving changing someone else’s faith. I was impressed by the titles in the endnotes, some of which were from secular sources. And the book is reasonably well written. I don’t agree with a great deal of it, but Greear — despite having a penchant for vanity as expressed in some of his examples — can write prose that may be convincing to some. It is the work of a well-educated man.

However, the book seems to say that we’ve made God so small in an effort to understand Him, that we don’t understand Him at all. Then, Greear points out that he doesn’t actually really know what God is thinking at any given time by allowing great suffering to happen in the world, which skirts the question that the book raises: How can you believe in a God that allowed something like the Holocaust to happen? The conclusion of the book is essentially that — since we don’t really know why God does such things — we should shuffle our feet forward to God and hope that the afterlife is a happy clappy place. At least, I think that’s the point of the book.

To be generous, after reading Not God Enough cover to cover, I’m really not sure what to think. Greear doesn’t seem to know the answers to the questions he poses with great certainty, which leaves those who are skeptical of God’s grace and love in a difficult position. The book hinges on select Bible quotes that seem to indicate that God is so infinitely bigger than us, God is really in the driver’s seat, and no matter what bad stuff happens to us, our family or the world at large, He is shaping a story that, in the end, will be filled with greatness.

Meanwhile, the book concludes by exhorting people for not being evangelical enough. We need to be out there preaching the Word at any given opportunity, or so seems to be what Greear is saying. I don’t know about you, but as a progressive, I try to not get too Jesus Freaky on people because I firmly believe that faith is a personal thing. It’s kind of like one of the guiding principles and traditions of Alcoholics Anonymous: bringing new people into the fold should be based on attraction rather than promotion. It should be that others should look to what we’ve got and want some of that on their own.

As you can tell, I had a lot of trouble with this book’s underlying message. I suppose it boils down to two things: one, I’m not a Southern Baptist as Greear is (and I know from my reading that Southern Baptists are at the centre of the culture wars) and, two, having read John Shelby Sprong’s upcoming book, a lot of my views on the Christian faith have changed. So, in a sense, I think you have to take this book for what it is, and it is little more than propaganda for a certain sect of Christianity. It seems, too, that the author has lived in Las Vegas for quite some time, so his surroundings may have had a role in shaping his worldview.

What can I say? If you’re in any way progressive, as I am, you can skip this book entirely. If not, I would caution readers to read Not God Enough with a critical mind. Not everything that Greear writes should be taken as Gospel, and the fact that he has no patience for non-Christians should be a warning sign for you to not take the findings of this book too liberally. There are many ways to God, of course, and if you’ve found something that works for you, that’s great. Books like this, though, seem to reinforce the belief that certain Christians (and, by extension, non-Christians) are not Christian enough, which is a rather non-Christian way of looking at the world, if you ask me. Take everything you read in Not God Enough with a grain of salt. You’ll probably need the seasoning to make this book even feel remotely palpable.

Absolutely loved this book! Explains so much how God is bigger than anything in this world with examples of Bible stories. Highly recommend!!