How to Have a God-Filled Life

God Has Designs on Your Life

Patterns: Ways to Develop a God-Filled Life by Mel Lawrenz

Zondervan; Hardcover, 188 pages.

So many ideas exist about spiritual growth that the subject can get confusing. We complicate what God makes simple. Getting close to God is a matter of honoring some basic patterns that are a part of the Bible and of life.
Discover how to nurture a God-filled life by the choices you make and the patterns you create. This practical guide helps you develop character patterns that display the fruit of the Spirit, and devotion patterns based on the spiritual disciplines. It’s spiritual growth made plain. Patterns helps you apply God’s design to your life so you can reflect his glory and experience his fullness.

Character patterns—The building of a character can begin at any moment and comes from a lifetime of small steps, simple daily choices. The fruit of the Spirit—love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self control—are the very shape and substance of personhood. They furnish a captivating description of a God-filled character.

Devotion patterns—Whenever we talk to Jesus, he transforms our hearts and minds into a shape God can call “very good!” Devotion patterns are spiritual disciplines that enable us to maintain an authentic relationship with God. Learn how to experience his filling out your prayers, filling you in worship, emptying you, and filling you again through godly service.

[This] "entertaining and deeply spiritual book... would make a terrific group or individual Bible-study choice."
review in Christian Booksellers Association Marketplace

"A remarkably fresh treatise." review in Publishers' Weekly

"It is a remarkable book filled with wisdom and guidance for the Christian journey.... the questions at the end of each chapter are well chosen and genuinely thought provoking. In addition to personal reflection, the questions undoubtedly make the book suitable for group discussion.
"R. Munday, Dean and President, Nashotah House Seminary

"I found this book to be very effective in my Christian life and in having a closer relationship with our Lord Jesus Christ. I would recommend this book to every Christian who is truly desiring a closer walk with the Lord. It gives new meaning to what a closer relationship with the Lord means.
"L. Boudreau, South Carolina

"I am in a book study (small group) with Patterns, and it is an excellent book for personal reading, and for talking about in group discussion. Each chapter ends with thought provoking questions. Mel Lawrenz has his material orderly and concise. The basis of the book is explaining different life Patterns, and how to incorporate them in your own life. We have new Christians and mature Christians and this book is great for both.
AJ, Minneapolis

$15.95 plus shipping and handling

ORDER NOW and you will receive a second book, I Want to Believe: Finding Your Way in an Age of Many Faiths by Mel Lawrenz, at no additional cost.

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$15.95 for both books.

Review by Dr. Scot McKnight
Apologetics is changing in the 21st Century, changing from arguments that rationally prove the truth of Christianity to a gospel that, as Mel Lawrenz calls it, summons humans because of the "divine allure." In his book, I Want to Believe, what Mel... does is focus on one theme: the human yearning to believe that is prompted by the reality that God wants us. We’ve looked on this blog at a few books on world religions, but this one is the best one for lay folks. And the angle Mel cuts into this jungle of issues creates a path I’ve not seen — the angle of the human need to believe in God. Humans, this book observes, have never been able to talk themselves out of believing in God — though humans have tried. Mel, pastor now for more than 25 years, can write readable prose and he can speak to the church. Because he has advanced degrees in theology and philosophy, he knows his stuff — but he puts on no airs. This book is a simple, clear, level-headed, but informed exposition of the human attraction to the "divine allure." The book functions as both a brief sketch of world religions and at the same time a Christian response to the central themes of those religions — not by way of refutation but by way of what I would call "counter-story." Instead of doing the thoroughly text-bookish thing of description and evaluation and refutation and defense of Christianity, this book is much more of a description and counter description. Laced up with stories, both personal and drawn from history (and a good one about Brett Favre), Mel’s book offers to lay folks a book that could function as a Sunday School text, a small group text, and — and this is what I would say might be its best contribution — a book a college student or a Sunday school teacher or a thinking Christian should read one chapter at at time and then ponder over that chapter’s contents.

“Articulate, inspired, and inspiring...”

-Midwest Book Review

"Mel Lawrenz brings a wide curiosity, a deep insightfulness, and a rich humanity to his exploration of one of humankind’s most incurable habits: the need to believe--in something, in anything. But he goes one better, and helps us sort our jumble of impulses, hunches, and longings into something focused, resilient, and transforming--in short, into a faith. This is a good read regardless where you are in that journey."

-Mark Buchanan, Author of The Rest of God

"The world is full of people who struggle with issues of faith. Some don't want to believe, others desperately want to, some don't dare to believe, others don't know what to believe. Mel Lawrenz speaks to all of them clearly, cogently, caringly and convincingly. I warmly recommend I Want to Believe."

-Stuart Briscoe, Telling the Truth

"One chapter alone--'No More Excuses'--is worth the price of this book. Read this book not just to believe the believable, but to believe it to the very core of your being."

 -Leonard Sweet, Drew Theological School, George Fox University

About the Author

Mel Lawrenz was Senior Pastor of Elmbrook Church in Brookfield, Wisconsin, a suburb of Milwaukee, for the past ten years and has recently become Minister at Large for Elmbrook Church and director of a new networking ministry: The Brook Network. He has served at Elmbrook for thirty years altogether, succeeding Stuart Briscoe as senior pastor in 2000. Mel has a Ph.D. in historical theology from Marquette University, and an M.Div. from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. He is the author or coauthor of eleven books, and host of the radio program 'Faith Conversations,' which airs on commercial talk radio.

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