Chasing a God You Don't Want to Catch

This was an excellent book about Darren Wilson's own joirney to understand his relationship with God, but beyond that Wilson also offers insight into some of the key characters in the Bible and highlights their own struggles in their relationship wuth God and their eventual triumphs. I loved the conversational tone of the book, as books about religion can sometimes be mundane, this helps to keep it more interesting. I thought it was a great book that definitely will have you thinking long after you are finished reading it.

Normally books of the Christian persuasion are met with a little resistance when it comes to being reviewed because they tend to fall into one of two camps… either horrible or really fantastic. Some books can be so didactic that all enjoyment for spending time reading to gain a better education on something God-related is taken away and the emotional feel is one of heaviness and lethargy. Or they can be so easy to read they are as welcome as like vanilla ice-cream on a hot summers day in that they make their teaching points without ever being preachy. Thankfully Chasing a God You Don’t Want to Catch is like a double scoop on a waffle cone and sweet sprinkles added to the fun.

We all carry around in our hearts and minds images and understandings of God that are wrong. Not because we have been taught bad theology on purpose by ministers who faithfully preach to their congregations every Sunday. No. These ideas develop because of our own misunderstandings, our own twisted ideas of what the bible means and we never are brave enough to admit to our concerns, our issues for fear of appearing lower on the ladder of faith than we think we are supposed to be on.

But Wilson is a brave spiritual warrior who has laid bare all of his suspicions and anxieties about who God the Father is and taken the time to research, pray and work through the problems to find insights and teachings that are like a breath of fresh air. He is challenging and encouraging all at the same time, with the constant refrain that God is love and that there is a way for the believer to have a stronger friendship with God. Yes. Imagine it… a friendship with God. Wilson takes away from the foreboding and sombre image of God and turns it on its head, urging us to develop a relationship as close as a best friend and he teaches the reader how to strive towards this goal, encouraging the reasons as to why such effort is worthy of our time.

And he manages to do it with more than a touch of humour. In this era when bands such as BTS are taking over the world of pop music and world tours feature heavily in the modern-day vernacular, sentences such as “Jesus is on his three-year kingdom world tour, selling out fields and meadows everywhere…….” Is witty and attention-grabbing. Never once is the reader made to feel that reading this book is like taking a dose of strong medicine that tastes terrible but is good for you. Rather it is as if given with a spoon full of sugar to help the medicine go down (thanks Mary Poppins for that clever technique!) that makes the learning easy on the soul. In twelve easily read chapters Wilson takes us through such topics of being afraid to be really sold out to God because of a fear that He will take us away from our loved ones to make us a missionary in deepest darkest Africa, or the question of why bad things happening to good people being compared to someone not winning the lottery. And he explores the idea of why God allows things to get bad and appearing to swoop in at the 11th hour to save the day as His way of making Himself more important. You know, the kinds of questions we all think but are too scared to verbalise to each other.

This book is clever, well thought out, packed with biblical confirmation for the teaching and is open and honest about the struggles and journey Wilson has taken personally to get to the point of having a genuine friendship with God. And he saves the biggest kicker for the last few lines which leaves the reader pausing to think of the consequences and importance of what they have just read. It's funny, it's powerful and biblically sound. It isn’t overly long and isn’t filled with sentences that only your theology professor is going to understand. Its deep truths are desperately needing to be heard by the church at large. Even non-Christians would derive an enlargement of their understanding of God from reading this book, if for no other reason but to unlearn all the bunkum we Christians have espoused about God, unwittingly painting Him to be some stern, judgemental dictator, rather than the loving God who desperately wants to have a true relationship with all His children.

Highly recommended.

I saw this book and the description intrigued me but I had never heard of the author. The little blurb definitely caught my attention and I’ve found that I really enjoy his writing. I imagine some stuffier people would take issue with how flippant and sarcastic he is but I personally found I connected with this well! Inner He-Man (or I’ll go with She-ra since I’m female) made me laugh. There were some lines I highlighted and have stuck with me. “If he continually asks you to do things, and you continually say no, he’s going to move on to someone else” and “Faith isn’t about turning of your mind to simply become a gullible lemming following orders. Faith is about turning your mind in the right direction”.

I’d recommend this book to friends as well as new believers and have really enjoyed his writing style.

I received an ARC from Emanate Books, via NetGalley. This review is my opinion.

From chapter one I knew this was a great book, a must-read for everyone. Especially if you grew up since young age in church. With a funny and interesting approach, Darren Wilson takes us to his own journey to demolish all his wrong assumptions about God. This book is so honest, and right now we need this. Many of us struggle with praying more or doing more, how to have a better relationship with God. But how do we get there? The truth is that fear and anxiety due to not being where according to others we are supposed to be in our service to God and ultimately to believe the lies that we will reject it by Him. Each one of this chapter Darren Wilson teaches us how we need to stop using praying, fasting, and worshiping more than to be close to God but to accomplish our goals.

I like what he said, “Transformation must be the goal of our faith”. The importance of understanding that yes, there will be a judgment day. But our main focus should be to let God’s love known and that will change other’s people lives. The importance of being humble and how God could never be fooled about how our heart really is. This book is a challenge to take a leap of faith to a real and trustworthy God who loves us, who is in control(even when he is silent), even when it hurts and maybe it doesn’t make sense a God who wants to have a real relationship with everyone, I think this book could change many lives, not because is magical. But I can see the story of a man, who in the midst of his humanity and struggle has surrendered all to God. We can learn from him. Great book!