Finding God's Life for My Will: His Presence Is the Plan by Mike Donehey - Book Review #9

Finding God's Life for My Will: His Presence Is the Plan by Mike Donehey
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Mike Donehey is the lead singer for one of my favorite bands ever - 'Tenth Avenue North'. With their songs ('By your side', 'Beloved', 'I have this hope' and so on) having helped me through some tough times and faith being a light in the world - I was excited when this book was announced.

Our perspectives are often built around what we hear growing up - and one phrase I certainly heard a lot was 'God's will for my life'. I wanted to do it, I wanted to find it out and certainly wanted to stick by it and not deviate from it. It seemed to make sense, but Mike has a way of stating the obvious truths mentioned in the Bible in a way that they seem clear, even if we have missed them before. His experience in realizing that it is much more relevant and important to find God Himself (realizing His presence) as we take any step is part of what makes the book 'Finding God's Life for My Will: His Presence Is the Plan' so great. God would rather that we find Him and do life with Him than for us to have a perfect plan that doesn't involve us doing life with Him.

The book is filled with thoughts on surrender, embracing God in everything, letting go of control, saying Yes to God at each step of our lives and how Grace is abounding every morning.
It changed my life (because it changed the way I think). It encouraged me to draw nearer to God - I'm praying for God to change my heart everyday (because it's quite easy to say 'No' to Him), instead of demanding a plan and then pouting if my life didn't go according to a certain plan.

There are so many well thought out truth bombs in this book, that I will definitely be re-reading it a few times to make sure I unpack at least most of them and digest it. One of my favorite quotes from the book is this one :
'It's incredible to find that what's usually keeping us from joy isn't our circumstances but rather our death grip on how our circumstances should have gone differently'.

I'm sure this book will challenge any Christian (or anyone) of their motives behind their desires and plans as it did for me, as it made me question - do I really want Jesus more than anything else?

I received an advanced reader copy from WaterBrook & Multnomah. Check out a preview of the book from the Amazon link : here. 

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