The Pursuing God: A Reckless, Irrational, Obsessed Love That's Dying to Bring Us Home

Is God lost? Many of us feel that way. It's as if God's gone missing, out in theuniverse somewhere--and we must pick up the hunt, following anytrail of breadcrumbs to go find him. We speak of "searching for God,""exploring spirituality," and "finding faith."  But what if we have it backward and God is the one pursuing us?What if our job is not to go find God, but to stop running and hiding?Not to discover the light, but step out of the shadows? Not to earnGod's love, but simply receive it?  Jesus reveals a God who comes after us, who is on the prowl, huntingdown his world for reconciliation. And the question we're left withis not whether we've been good enough, jumped high enough, orsought hard enough... The question is: "Do we want to be found?"-- Along the way, the book tackles tough topics like:Exclusivity: "Is Jesus the only way to God?" Jesus is not the one and only way we go out into the universe to find God; Jesus is the unique and decisive way God has come to us.The Fall: "Does God run away when we mess up?" It's not that God can't stand the presence of sin, so much as sin that can't stand the presence of God--God comes for us in our distance.Atonement: "Is the cross divine child abuse?" A mature account of Jesus' bearing our punishment within the broader framework of God's reconciling love.Sacrifice: "Is God a bloodthirsty carnivore?" Israel's sacrificial system was not how we clean ourselves up so God can stand to be in our presence, but how God cleanses us so that we can stand to be in God's presence--and it points to Jesus. Wrath: "Why does God get angry?" God's wrath arises from his love for the world, not in contradiction to it.The Church: "What is the Church?" The Church is not a group of individuals pursuing God together, so much as the body of people through whom God pursues the world.Tough Passages: Abraham's call to sacrifice Isaac, Noah's flood, Jesus' cry of forsakenness on the cross. Reclaim a greater confidence in the unrelenting goodness of God.Review"New Author of the Year" 2015 finalist -Evangelical Christian Publisher's Association (ECPA) "I commend this book front, left, and center because it thinks deeply and cares immensely for the moral vision of the Christian faith." Scot McKnight, Professor of New Testament, Northern Seminary (Chicago, IL)  "In vibrant prose, paints a dramatic, textured, and beautiful portrait of the God who we constantly underestimate."J. Todd Billings, Professor of Theology, Western Theological Seminary (Holland, MI)  "May well be the most spiritually perceptive writer of his generation."Sarah Thebarge, Author of The Invisible Girls  "Hands down: this is THE book to read for 2016!" Preston Sprinkle, Professor, Author of People to Be Loved, Charis, and Fight "Holds up a king-sized mirror to the heart of God and invites everyone to look inside. It's beautiful in there. Breathtakingly beautiful."Evan Wickham,Worship Pastor of A Jesus Church: Westside "A fiery prophetic word--a flaming arrow shot across the dark landscape of dead religion; piercing our moral codes and feeble attempts to find our way to God. Our work is not to find him, but to stop and be found.John Sowers, President of The Mentoring Project "A brilliant mind... a prophetic voice... tells us the truth about God--that he absolutely, recklessly loves us to death--while not shying away from the difficult passages that, at first glance, can seem to tell us otherwise." Nish Weiseth, Author ofSpeak "Artfully, beautifully, and emotionally written, Joshua deconstructs some of the most powerfully embedded caricatures we have around God and replaces them with gospel truth... it left me feeling more free to be human, mess and all." David Lomas, Pastor of Reality San Francisco "Sets out to restore a portrait of the biblical gospel of God's incarnate, crucified