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Posted : January 13, 2012

Searching for God Knows What – Donald Miller

I think it’s safe to say that there are many principles in living a Christ-like life that are impossible to always get right. From obeying the ten commandments to obeying the words of Jesus, or loving our neighbours (yes, all of them) and treating each other with the respect we sometimes don’t deserve, keeping ourselves on a ‘healthy level’ of Christianity is often the hardest part of our daily lives.

We keep ourselves busy with so many what-not-to-do check-lists , that we manage to go weeks ‘living like a Christian’ yet completely forgetting about Christ.

Donald Miller’s book brings things back into focus. Searching for God Knows What is a very close (sometimes uncomfortably close) look at our Christian lives. Are we doing it for ourselves or are we doing it for God? Miller expresses his thoughts on our motives in life, suggesting that more often than not, our motives are aimed to make us seem important, accepted and loved.

He compares life to a lifeboat:

“If there were a lifeboat adrift at sea, and in the lifeboat were a male lawyer, a female doctor, a crippled child, a stay-at-home mom, and a garbage man, and one person had to be thrown overboard to save the others, which person would we choose?”

He goes on to say that living in a society, we naturally and unhealthily are consistently trying to convince everyone else in our lifeboat that we are worthy of not being thrown overboard. In high school, the work place and even in our churches (in fact, mostly in our churches) we constantly try to find our worth through what we do, what we say and who we try to be, instead of finding our worth in Jesus.

At the core of the book, and what Miller tends to stress the most is that we should strive to live a relational life. Our lives should not be based on rules in the bible, or 5 step programme that will lead to our salvation. Rather, everything we need, every fulfilment can be found in having a relational exchange with Jesus. Spiritual knowledge in the head is not as important as spiritual faith in the heart.

The most comforting aspect of Miller’s writing is that he does not preach from a podium. His arguments are directed inwardly, never talking about how the reader should live his/her life, but rather about how he should live his life. This personal perspective opens the text to a more genuine view of how to live a relational life with Jesus.

Give it a read.