Crazy Love: Overwhelmed by a Relentless God
by Francis Chan
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Book Summary Information
Author: Francis ChanEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2008-05-01
ISBN: 1434768511
Number of pages: 205
Publisher: David C. Cook
Product features:
- ISBN13: 9781434768513
- Condition: New
- Notes: BRAND NEW FROM PUBLISHER! 100% Satisfaction Guarantee. Tracking provided on most orders. Buy with Confidence! Millions of books sold!
Book Reviews of Crazy Love: Overwhelmed by a Relentless God
Book Review: Those who rate poorly, you can't handle the Truth.
Summary: 5 Stars
I am from Fremont, Nebraska. I was raised in what we know as a stereotypical American Church. I was under the impression that Jesus is just another thing you throw into the mix of life, just like school, work, shopping, etc. I saw people around me, most generations above me, going to Church, singing praise songs, giving tithes and offerings, and Pastors with good rhetoric.
So I went through elementary school thinking this is life, there really isn't anything special about it. In 4th grade, my parents got divorced. It wasn't difficult for me to handle, I don't remember ever crying, but I really did not get as to why that happened. My grandma (from my mom's side) and my dad really did not get along at all after this point. As my grandma knew it was not Biblical to divorce for whatever reason you felt like, this made her very upset with my dad. My grandma is the godliest woman I have ever known, but I failed to see this for a long, long time. Anyway, all in all, my dad and grandma were like oil and water.
So life went on, I got to middle school, I messed around a lot, and took nothing real seriously, and nothing extravagant happened in those years. Then I got to high school, and something sparked in me to seek fulfillment, as this is what everyone around me was doing. At that point I began meandering from girl to girl; over the course of high school I was involved with roughly 14 girls. I never understood why one relationship wouldn't work, and aimed for the next to be better, which almost always lead to being physically involved and lusting. The summer of my junior year I met a girl and for some reason thought this was extra special, and I ended up making many poor decisions regarding my sexual purity. I still recall being unable to sleep a good amount of nights that summer, terrified that I would have to wake up the next morning, call her dad, and tell him that his daughter was going to be a mother.
At the end of August that summer, I had hit rock bottom. I was fully conscious that I had drifted very far from what I viewed to be "God" and what I thought was "Christianity" I was not following. Needless to say I had not prayed in months, so coming from a whim, I decided to pray for that relationship to end (because I was bad at that sort of thing). Sure enough, it ended, and that was it.
So my friends and I (many of my friends had also been going through the same thing that summer) got together and began studying the Bible. We really seemed "fired up" about it, but we would read Scripture, and do the opposite of it. My senior year played out, I still saw a few girls but didn't make the same mistakes that I had made that previous summer, and graduated unfulfilled.
That summer I decided to try alcohol for the first time. My mentality going into it was "I will just try it once, to say I did". My good friend found out about it, and essentially disowned me as a friend and human being. About a week later we made up but it was quite the same. By the time mid-July rolled around I had drank seven times, and the same friend texted me one day saying "Dude I heard you drank, that's bad man, you should stop". So I took that to heart, and didn't drink for the rest of the summer.
I went to Doane College that fall (in Crete, NE) thinking that "This will be different, I won't drink and it will all be cool". I came to find out I wasn't very strong in that respect. I drank every Saturday regardless, if we didn't have a cross country meet I drank Friday as well, if I didn't have a test Friday, I drank Thursday as well, and by the time I got that far, I usually drank Wednesday as well.
So I'm a freshman in college, and this is my life. I drink 2, 3 or 4 nights a week, always in the back of my mind expecting to get a text from my friend saying "Dude I heard you drank again" or from my mom saying "We need to talk". By the time November came around, I had partied away a lot of that semester. Everyone came home for Thanksgiving break, and I saw my friend (whose name is Tim), and the majority of my other friends had not drank, and they all talked about how stupid it was and how much they hated alcohol etc. Tim went to Judson University (Elgin, IL), which is a very Christian Environment, 90% of the students are Christian. I am at Doane College, one of the only wet campuses in Nebraska, and I knew he would rip on me about how getting drunk and drinking underage isn't Biblical. I knew he would confront me about it eventually. I was ready to tell him I didn't believe in any of that anymore, and that I didn't care what he thought.
So then the first week of December came, the week before finals, and my mom called me that Tuesday and said "Zach, you have a sick grandma". This hit me pretty hard, from kindergarten all the way to high school, my grandma was at my house making breakfast for me every morning before school, took me to school, picked me up from school, and I stayed with her until 5:30 when my mom got off work. In all reality, I probably knew my grandma better than my mom. I actually shed my first college tear that day, but went on doing what I was doing, drank that Friday and Saturday, great.
Finals week came, I took my finals, I didn't really care, whatever. I finished my last final at 1 p.m. that Thursday, and began taking shots at 1:30 p.m. The suite that I lived in decided to go out to dinner as sort of a last time for us to be together, so there was a time in there where I was not drinking. However, we returned to our dorm and I continued drinking, and between the hours of 9ish pm. And 12:00 a.m. I consumed somewhere between 20 to 25 shots of vodka. I'm sure you are familiar with the effects of alcohol, and in order to flat out not remember things, you must be within the realm of alcohol poisoning. It was as if those two and a half hours didn't happen. I blacked out around 12:15.
I woke up at 6 a.m. in a pool of sweat that smelled like liquor, and felt like I had broken glass in my stomach. I immediately threw up, and threw up several times that morning. Around 1p.m. (it is Friday now) my mom called to tell me that my grandma had gone into intensive care, and asked if I could come see her. I had an analysis due Saturday morning by email at 9a.m. I lied and told her that I had something to finish and needed to stay and finish this thing that was due in the morning (even though I could totally go home and type it). At this point my mom was at wits end, she had been up for four days straight, and had gone crazy. She told me "Do whatever you need, school first, do what you have to do". She completely bought it. I was stoked, I was going to stay and get heavily intoxicated again.
Not long after that my dad called. He and my mom had not communicated that day, but he knew my grandmas condition and told me "Zach, I've been telling you your whole life: You aren't going to have your family around you forever. This is it; your grandma may not be alive tomorrow." I tried to pass off the same excuse that I did with my mom, but he wasn't stupid. He knew I was going to stay and drink again (I had talked to him intoxicated several times, he told me he made the same decisions in college, I felt okay about myself). What he told me was "I can't make you do anything, but I hope you make the right choice." Coming from my dad, who did not like my grandma at all, cut me pretty deep. So I swallowed my pride, told all the guys I was going to go see my grandma because she was sick, and that I wouldn't be staying tonight. My grandma ended up living the next day, the day after, and the following day as well, but that Friday night as I was sitting at home typing that analysis...around 11:30p.m. I got texts from my roommate and my best friend that I always went to parties with telling me that they had smoked marijuana for the first time. I guarantee 100% that if I was there that night; I would have done it as well. I have seen how much they have done it since then, it runs their lives. If I was there that night, I wouldn't be writing this right now, and you wouldn't be reading it. I would be getting high.
I look at that and think... "How can God not have a hand on my life?" If my parents wouldn't have gotten divorced, my dad and grandma would be indifferent with each other, had that happened, when my dad spoke to me about what he said that night, I would not have taken my dad seriously, I would know he was just listening to mom or speaking out of obligation, and I would not have told him about my drinking, and he would not have been conscious of it. If my grandma had not passed away then, I would not have gone home that night. How did that branch together as perfectly as it did? Not luck. Not coincidence. There are no coincidences.
Since the last night I drank, which was that Thursday, December 10, 2009, I have thought a lot about that night. The more I think about it, the more I realize I probably should have died. Obviously I have grown very curious about this and the possibility of it. So I found a BAC projector on the internet. You type in your weight, what you drank, how much, and the time frame of which you drank it. So I typed in 155 lbs, 23 (for good measure) shots of 80 proof vodka, over the course of the evening...a few hours
My BAC came up as .35 approximately. Exact numbers don't really matter, the point is I was above .3. I looked at symptoms of alcohol poisoning, one was pale skin. My friend and roommate took a picture of me with my phone after I passed out. My face was white. I woke up in a pool of sweat filled with alcohol; my body had been working so hard while I was passed out to excrete alcohol. Over 1/3 of what was flowing through my veins was alcohol. I indeed, should have died.
Had I died, which I should have, after getting to know the Bible since then, there is not a doubt in my mind that had I died that night, I would have gone to hell. I would have stood before God, and he would have said "I never knew you". Jesus would not have spoken up for me, for I never spoke up for him. I should be chained up in hell right now, waiting for Judgment Day, only to be thrown into the lake of fire with Satan and the false prophets. I know it to be true that I am breathing right now 100% by the Grace of God.
I believe I didn't die that night, and wasn't sent to hell so I could live now and share the Truth of the Gospel.
I know the Truth to be this: Don't live this life for yourself. If you try to live this life for yourself, if you try to hold onto this life, you're going to lose it. Solomon, who is the wisest person who ever lived, wrote in chapter 1 of Ecclesiastes in verse 7 "Countless rivers flow into the sea, yet the sea is never full". We are finite people living in a finite world. Yet, as finite people, we have an infinite hole in our being. I tried to fill it with stuff. Women, sexual favors, alcohol, social acceptance, the list goes on. I came to find out the hard way, that the only thing you can fill an infinite hole with, is another infinite.
I share this story with people, and this testimony is straight fire from God. I believe it to be a statement of how Crazy God is about his people. Not only did he have his son take the form of a lowly man and die on a cross for the atonement of our sins, and to satisfy justice, and then pour his Holy Spirit upon us...but he also spared me, a filthy sinner, who had done nothing but offend him for 18 years of my life, just so I could share this simple, plain, and the only absolute truth with you and everyone.
God is Crazy about you. The greatest command is "Love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, and soul." God wants us to love him, and I was missing it. It took something that outrageous to get my attention.
After I got back to school in January, I wasn't sure which way to head. Somehow I ended up with this book "Crazy Love". God communicated with me through that book just as clearly as you read this.
Believe me when I say I've tried not to believe the Gospel. I've tried to say "There's no way that's the only way." But now it's to the point where people can say whatever they want about science or philosophical arguments, I cannot deny what I have lived, and I cannot deny what has happened to my heart. I cannot deny God, or how his love is more intense than anything a person can ever experience in this world.
Summary of Crazy Love: Overwhelmed by a Relentless God
God is love. Crazy, relentless, all-powerful love. Have you ever wondered if we?re missing it? It?s crazy, if you think about it. The God of the universe--the Creator of nitrogen and pine needles, galaxies and E-minor--loves us with a radical, unconditional, self-sacrificing love. And what is our typical response? We go to church, sing songs, and try not to cuss. Whether you?ve verbalized it yet or not...we all know somethings wrong. Does something deep inside your heart long to break free from the status quo? Are you hungry for an authentic faith that addresses the problems of our world with tangible, even radical, solutions? God is calling you to a passionate love relationship with Himself. Because the answer to religious complacency isn?t working harder at a list of do?s and don?ts--it?s falling in love with God. And once you encounter His love, as Francis Chan describes it, you will never be the same. Because when you?re wildly in love with someone, it changes everything.Christian Living Books
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