God Soaked Life: Discovering a Kingdom of Spirituality Chris Webb, Hodder & Stoughton (2017) RRP £12.99 five stars
Chris Webb’s God-Soaked Life discusses precisely that: how we can utterly saturate our lives with God by opening them to his presence and kingdom. This beautiful image of God soaking our lives is sustained through the book, in a vivid reminder of a God who not only wants to be part of our lives, but wants to be part of every bit of our lives, drenching us with his love. The challenge of the book then comes to us and what we can do with this incredible love in the world around us. The prologue presents an idea of heaven, portraying people working and creating all sorts of things – construction workers alongside musicians – just as they do in our lives on earth, but there is ‘a single golden thread: love’.
Webb considers worn-out clichés of love in a new way, in a refreshing look at Scripture, including a detailed analysis of what exactly is ‘the kingdom of heaven’. His reassertion of Jesus’ alignment of these two things – the kingdom of God and the power of love in community – is compelling, and makes for both an encouraging and challenging read for anyone at any point in their Christian journey. He makes it clear that this is something for every one of us to participate in, not just the leaders of the church or the elders in a community – Jesus himself was never a Pharisee in the synagogue. This encouragement is followed up by ‘Over to You’ sections at the end of each chapter, in which Webb suggests Bible passages for the reader to reflect on and pray over. His honest examination of the human heart concludes that it is simultaneously powerful and ugly, and it is precisely this that consolidates his argument: our distorted and perverted human love desperately needs Jesus to make it whole and pure.
In our modern world that is so deeply divided and broken, where it is so easy to hate and scorn, God-Soaked Life is a beautiful vision for what Christian community, and indeed community as a whole, has the potential to be. It just takes some serious ‘God-soaking’ and a whole lotta love.
