Designer Living by Susan Sutton (Book Review)
Article Date: 06/02/2015 17:11:54
Uncover the wondrous things that can happen when you discover your identity and purpose in Christ and find peace and joy in your relationship with Him. A must-read for 2015!
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Designer Living by Susan Sutton
Review by Sheena Wardrope, CLC International Office / ISBN: 9781619581586 / Price: £7.99
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Well, before I had come to the end of the introduction, I already knew I would deeply appreciate this beautifully written book. A simple quote — “A product is at its best when it does what it is meant to do. In the same way, we are at our best when we live as we are meant to live” — caught my attention in particular. Who doesn’t want to know how to be at their [God designed] best?! This sets the tone for the rest of the book – a gently phrased but immensely challenging encouragement to live as our Creator God intends us to.
Susan weaves personal experience, her own reflections, wise words from others and, most importantly, pertinent verses from scripture to describe, as the book says in its subtitle, ‘what happens when the real you meets the real God’. As Susan puts it, what happens is ‘real change’. Each chapter deals with an aspect of our design and ends with ideas for further study and meditation. This works well for personal use, but would also be a valuable resource for people studying the book in a group.
Here are two excerpts from the text; one is also worth using as the basis for a Bible study and the other is a wonderful reminder of what ‘being at our best’ really means!
EXCERPT 1: Chapter 1 - Designed to Belong (Pages 21-22)
No one is more serious than God about being with us. He declares this time and again to His people:
To Isaac: “Sojourn in this land, and I will be with you and will bless you” (Gen. 26:3).To Jacob: “I myself will go down with you to Egypt” (Gen. 46:4).
To Moses: “My presence will go with you, and I will give you rest” (Exod. 33:14).To Joshua: “Be strong and courageous. Do not be frightened, and do not be dismayed, for the LORD your God is with you wherever you go” (Josh. 1:9).
To Gideon: “But I will be with you, and you shall strike the Midianites as one man” (Judg. 6:16).To the people of Israel through Isaiah: “When you pass through the waters, I will be with you. . . . Fear not, for I am with you” (Isa. 43:2, 5).
To Jeremiah: “Do not be afraid of them, for I am with you to deliver you” (Jer. 1:8).
None of these conversations were held in a place of worship. Each one took place in the nitty-gritty of life. Isaac was worried about his family’s survival in a time of economic crisis; Jacob was on the verge of a major move; Moses was dealing with intense ministry pressures; Joshua faced a huge military campaign; Gideon felt inadequate to do what God was asking him to do; and Jeremiah faced hostility, slander, and public humiliation from declaring the truth. In each case, God reminded them that they were not alone.
EXCERPT 2: Chapter 3 - Designed to be Image Bearers (Pages 41-42)
Significance and security are gifts from God to each one of us. We did nothing to earn them, and they are ours through nothing of our own making. To live in our God-designed place of significance and place of security is to be the real you, the real me. Yet, as good as it is to be significant and secure, there is more to life than feeling good about ourselves and being confident in what we believe. There is something called purpose which takes us outside of ourselves and gives meaning to our lives in a larger context. Discovering this purpose and living by it leads us to our soul’s deepest place of satisfaction.
When we go to the Bible, the operating manual of the world, we learn a startling thing. You and I are designed for glory. Not ours, of course, but God’s. Built into our system is the ability to reflect the wonder and glory of the God who made us. It should be automatic; not something we do by effort, but rather something we cannot help but do, simply because this is who we are. God planted such a possibility in us at creation, and He chose, for some reason, to give this possibility only to humans. The animals, insects, reptiles, and plants of the world are amazing, but the human creation is even more so. God’s plan from the beginning was that humans alone are to reflect His likeness in the world.
Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. . . .so God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him, male and female he created them” (Gen. 1:26–27).
The Hebrew word translated in Genesis as “likeness” comes from a verb which means “to compare. ” The word itself, demuth”, can be translated “likeness, resemblance; image, model, pattern, or shape.” “Let us make man,” God says in effect, “to resemble us, to be modeled after us. When others compare them with us, there will be a likeness. They will be able to say, ‘Yes, I can see the family resemblance.’”
Designer Living: What Happens When the Real You Meets the Real God by Susan Sutton, © 2014 by Susan Sutton.
Used by permission of CLC Publications. May not be further reproduced. All rights reserved.
Keywords: CLC-Publications, CLC-USA, CLC-International, CLC-International-UK, CLC-Bookshops, Christian-literature, Christian-books, Bibles, Life-transforming-books, deeper-life-Christian-books, Prayer, Christian
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