Delves into topics about the messiness of life and the God who meets us where we are. ( )

I really liked this one. Swoboda keeps it real, without getting the least bit preachy. His writing style is very conversational, as if you are just sitting there with him in a coffee shop as he talks about his faith and the everyday things ghat challenge each of us in our own walks of faith. Do i agree with everything he says? No. But he gets me thinking about many aspects of my faith and why i do much of what i do. He got me to think hard about my own walk, which i think is all he could ask for in writing this book.

I made a lot of notes and highlighted a lot of lines in this book. Just a few of my favorites from the book are:
- Stop looking for your church to give you a mission. Start practicing the things Jesus did at church. Probably no one will follow. That's okay. You aren't called to have disciples. Jesus is.
- You don't even have to talk about God to talk about God. When i read the book of Esther in the bible, i found out that God's name isn't even mentioned. Not once.
- Theology is only as good as it gets us to God. So too, Christianity is only as good as it gets us to Christ. ( )

Swoboda writes with humor, insight, depth, wisdom, and a sharp wit. It's rare that I read a book that I simply can't put down. There were times I laughed out loud, and times I had to reflect in holy contemplation. He's a sharp young man and I look forward to reading more of his books. ( )

Musings of a post-modern pastor. Swoboda had a lot of excellent insight on various topics ranging from church, prayer, family, sex, suffering, and theology, just to name a few. Drawing from both Scripture and real life experiences, Swoboda does an excellent job in achieving his point. Namely, that many aspects of our lives are messy and God works through these messes to make us more into the person He wants us to be. Not sure God would have it any other way. Easy and quick to read, entertaining, many times comical, and definitely not academic. I highly recommend this refreshing read for all of us who have messy lives... one way or another.

Some of my favorite quotes include:

"Preaching a beautiful message of grace, we so rarely, if ever, practice it on each other. Let alone ourselves."

"Frankly, I sometimes worry that people sell Christianity because they've conjured it up in their mind as this solution that'll fix the mess of our life like some kind of drug with the long commercials. Jesus becomes almost therapeutic; like a vapor rub. With few to no side effects (that we know of)... But, honestly, my life is way messier after I started following the Jesus I met that it was before."

"Jesus asks people to be past tense people in the present for the future."

"We begin to see the Spirit at work in the church when we choose to take our idealized views of what church should be, with all of its holy trappings, out into the backyard and shoot them between the eyes."

"Paul could have started one church, stayed, grown it to be a megachurch, and been invited to speak at all the best pastor's conferences. But he didn't. He started a church, brought people to faith, then left... But, he had to be gone. It was brilliant because, had he not done that, they would have done to him what we do to pastors today. They would have started to worship Paul instead of Jesus."

"The Gospel is Jesus eating really really good food with really really bad people."

"Communal prayer is authenticated when the person you are praying with knows all the dirt on your life. All of it."

"God seems to be the sort of God who likes to move down the ladder of success for the greater purpose of redemption, to die in our shoes."

"Jesus gets humanity in a really special way that the other gods can't. Prayer is way easier when you know you're talking to someone who, like you, got in trouble for peeing on the sofa and not in the toilet. I can pray to that guy... It's the very beauty of God in the flesh that makes the gospel, the story of Jesus, so intriguing. Isn't it? Because God in the flesh has experienced the worst of everything we have had to experience."

"God is closer to you than you are to yourself."

"Conversion might take a second. But salvation takes a lifetime."

"If we can't make God love us more by doing really good things, then we can't make God love us less by doing really bad things."

"Sure, God hates sin. But I'm rather sure God hates sin the same way I hate dirty diapers. I'll always hate their diapers, but I'll never confuse the diaper with the baby."

"Christian spirituality goes wrong when we compare all the things we are good at with the world's sin."

"You know you have created God in your own image when God approves of everything you do."

"Jesus did have revenge. On everyone. It just looked different than our concept of revenge. The human version of revenge looks like retaliation. But, Jesus' revenge is very different. He called it resurrection. His way at getting back at the world for killing Him was by being raised from the grave."

"Because we can touch it, feel it, and flip through it, we accept our Bible as our personal Lord and Savior and turn it into our God."

"Christians are repentant atheists."

"Worrying about what God's will is often keeps you from doing God's will." ( )

A humorous but real look at how life really is. The author acknowledges Christian life can be messy, but God makes sense out of the mess. This book provides a pathway to answers many Christians and non-Christians have about God and life in general. ( )