Crazy Love by Francis Chan

Crazy Love
Overwhelmed By A Relentless God

For some reason this book became wildly popular on Miami's campus this past year, despite it's 2008 publication.  I bought it, but before I even read it, other students borrowed it, and read it first!  Once I finally opened Crazy Love for myself, it took more highlighters than days to read it.

Chan's clearest desire is for his life, preaching, and writing is to ignite a response, not just in word, but in deed.  Referencing the early church, Chan reminds us "After the apostle Peter preached on the day of Pentecost, people 'were cut to the heart and said... 'Brothers, what shall we do?' (Acts 2:37).  The first church responded with immediate action: repentance, baptism, selling possessions, sharing the Gospel."  Why is this relevant to us today?  Because the church today has a frighteningly different response!  "We respond with words like Amen, Convicting sermons, Great book... and then we are paralyzed as we try to decipher what God wants of our lives."  This was never the response that God desired for us!  In Chan's final chapter, 'The Crux of the Matter', he writes:

I wrote this book because much of our talk doesn't match our lives.  We say things like, "I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me," and "Trust in the Lord with all your heart."  Then we live and plan like we don't believe God even exists.  We try to set our lives up so everything will be fine if God doesn't come through.  But true faith means holding nothing back.  It means putting every hope in God's fidelity to His promises.

Sooo-ooh many people would agree that Christian's talk-the-talk, but don't walk-the-walk, but their only response is embitterment and complaining.  This is why Chan's response is so true and refreshing.  Honesty and passion emanate from the pages of this book.  When Chan is asked "Do you think God calls you to live a radical, crazy life?" his response is simple, honest, and powerful:

It's not that this lifestyle should be crazy to us.  It should be the only thing that makes sense.  Giving up everything and sacrificing everything we can for the afterlife is logical.  "Crazy" is living a safe life and storing up things while trying to enjoy our time on earth, knowing that any millisecond God could take your life.  To me that is crazy, and that is radical.  The crazy ones are the ones who live like there is no God.  To me that is insanity.

Chan's writing overflows with passionate love for God and for others, with an exciting, deeply convicting, vision of what it looks like to really live it out.  This book inspires a new, and Biblical, way of life while enticing it's reader to wholeheartedly worship God.  I highly recommend grabbing a copy of Crazy Love and reading it from front-to-back.

Have you read it?  Post your comments!

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