Whether you’re a new believer, or you’ve been a Christian for as long as you can remember, there are times when we all feel like we aren’t living up to “God’s standards.” It seems like He’s given us impossible rules to live by and when we strive to be perfect, we let ourselves and everyone else around us down. In The Easy Burden of Pleasing God, author Patty Kirk writes to debunk the myth that pleasing God is an impossible task, something we will continue to fail at for our entire Christian walk.
Kirk uses her own life experiences with her children, in her marriage, her relationship with her mother and even in her college writing classes to illustrate that God’s basic desire is for us to love Him with everything we have. She explains that the “rules” we sometimes see as daunting are nothing but guidelines to keep us happy, healthy and safe – And that they really do achieve those things if we open our hearts to them.
The book is broken out into four parts that help the reader understand why God gave us guidelines, how we can carry them out in our everyday lives, what sorts of difficulties we face along the way, and how it is all backed by biblical truth even in the life of Jesus, the disciples and other biblical figures.
In a society ravaged by perfectionism, Kirk explains that God never desired for us to be perfect, he simply wants us to walk with Him, enjoy life and love Him and depend on Him as earthly children love and depend on earthly parents. She also explains that it’s perfectly fine to take a rest and it’s okay to say “no” to certain things – Jesus himself rested and refused to carry out specific tasks until he was certain that it was a job appointed by God.
Kirk argues that it’s not about “doing” our faith, it’s about relaxing and enjoying the life we’ve been given so that we will become more intensely aware of God. We will give our time more freely, we will choose “the better thing” more often and we will know when to rest and when to work. We will be more bold, we will live more freely and we will love God for loving us enough to give us rules to live by.
If you’ve been bogged down by the “rules” associated with being a Christian, the guidelines that seem to pull us away from living an “exciting” life as the world sees it, pick up The Easy Burden of Pleasing God. This book takes a very practical look at the ways we can truly become better Christians and see that the life we’ve chosen is actually the more fulfilling one. Kirk does a great job of telling her own life story in a way that most can relate to while backing it up with scripture and stories of real life bible characters. This book is recommended for women of all ages, wives and mothers.
Visit Patty Kirk’s Blog HERE.
Purchase from InterVarsity Press HERE.
This post was written by our dear friend Abby Netti.
