Synopses & Reviews
This is not a book for normal people to learn how to handle difficult people -- there is no such thing. This is a book about how imperfect people can pursue community with other imperfect people.
To love and be loved is the fiercest longing of the soul. Community -- living in vital relationship with others -- is essential to human life. In his new book John Ortberg explores the biblical vision of community as the place God made for us and the place where God meets us.
Using the same popular, conversational style of his best-selling and Christianity Today award-winning book If You Want to Walk on Water, You've Got to Get Out of the Boat, Ortberg invites readers to experience the richness and depth of true community.
Just like the paralyzed man in the New Testament who had to be carried on his mat by his friends and then lowered through the roof into Jesus' presence, we all need help from dedicated friends. Our mat may be an uncontrollable temper, an inability to trust, or paralyzing fear. The only way to get help -- and get near to Jesus -- is to let trustworthy friends see our brokenness and to ask them for help. As we allow them to gather around our weakness, the mat -- that which we are most ashamed of -- becomes the connecting point for deeper relationships.
Synopsis
Using the same popular, conversational style of his bestselling and "Christianity Today" award-winning book "If You Want to Walk on Water, You've Got to Get Out of the Boat, " Ortberg invites readers to experience the richness and depth of true community.
Synopsis
This is not a book for normal people to learn how to handle difficult people -- there is no such thing. This is a book about how imperfect people can pursue community with other imperfect people. Winner of the Retailers Choice Award.
Synopsis
Includes bibliographical references (p. 235-248).
Synopsis
Normal? Who's Normal?
Not you, that's for sure! No one you've ever met, either. None of us are normal according to God's definition, and the closer we get to each other, the plainer that becomes.
Yet for all our quirks, sins, and jagged edges, we need each other. Community is more than just a word--it is one of our most fundamental requirements. So how do flawed, abnormal people such as ourselves master the forces that can drive us apart and come together in the life-changing relationships God designed us for?
In Everybody's Normal Till You Get to Know Them, teacher and best-selling author John Ortberg zooms in on the things that make community tick. You'll get a thought-provoking look at God's heart, at others, and at yourself. Even better, you'll gain wisdom and tools for drawing closer to others in powerful, impactful ways. With humor, insight, and a gift for storytelling, Ortberg shows how community pays tremendous dividends in happiness, health, support, and growth. It's where all of us weird, unwieldy people encounter God's love in tangible ways and discover the transforming power of being loved, accepted, and valued just the way we are.
The need for community is woven into the very fabric of our being. Nothing else can substitute for the life-giving benefits of connecting with others--not even God. He won't preempt the way he himself has designed us to reflect his own intensely relational nature.
But there's a hitch in our experience of community, says John Ortberg: We're all weird. Folks around us may seem normal enough, but just wait till we get to know them--and they get to know us. The unhealthy, sinful ways we respond to life in a fallen world arehardly God's idea of "normal," and they can make us as unhuggable as porcupines. We face the "porcupine dilemma," says Ortberg: We need each other, but how do we get close without getting hurt? How do we get past all those quills and grow together in Christ?
In Everybody's Normal Till You Get to Know Them, Ortberg once again reveals his gift for sharing profound insights using a lighten-up approach. With winsome humor and a fondness for well-spun stories, he pops the myth of normalcy and hands us the keys to creating and sustaining relationships. "God's dream for community encompasses the redemption of all spheres of life," he says.
Who doesn't want like to be liked, to be wanted, to have solid, satisfying friendships! Ortberg shows what such relationships are made of. He reveals the benefits of authenticity--what it means to live with an "unveiled face," as the Bible puts it. He encourages us to trade the stones it's so easy to cast at others for acceptance. He opens our eyes and heart to empathy, the art of reading people. And he takes us through the ins and outs of conflict, forgiveness, confrontation, inclusion, and gratitude.
The principles and discussion questions in this book are down-to-earth. They're for real people living in a real world, and are intended to help us count the practical cost of relationship and then pay it--because in all the rewards and struggles of community, we're investing in something beyond our comprehension. You could call it heaven. You could call it home. It's the place where all of us are headed, all of us belong, and all of us will be normal at last.