Mark Batterson blows me away.  His new book came out today, and I think the best way for me to describe it is thick.  This book is thick.  Now, it’s only 171 pages.  But there is so much in there.  I’m going to have to reread this book a few times just because it points out so much about who God is.  Seriously, it blows me away how much research must have gone into this book.  The best part is that it doesn’t read heavy.  It’s not like you have to sort through all this random information to get the gist; Mark has already done that.  He just lays it out in a brilliant structure that has moved me.

Primal does an incredible job of laying out what it looks like to love God.  Why?  Because we are commanded to love God.  That’s why.  But many of us are good at a lot of things.  Some of us are great at a few things.  But hardly any of us are good at loving God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength.  Mark points out that we need to be great at it.  He then walks through sections of what it means to love God in these four ways.  I cannot recommend this book enough.  If you are pursuing God with your life in any way, read this book.  It will challenge you in ways you didn’t know you could be challenged.  It will challenge you to love God, to amo Dei.

After the break I’ll post some of my favorite quotes from the book.

• loving God in one way isn’t enough.
• If I say what God wants me to say, then all the criticism in the world doesn’t matter.  And if I don’t say what God wants me to say, then all the compliments in the world don’t matter.
• it’s much easier to act like a Christian than to react like one.
• I stopped setting income goals and started setting giving goals.
• making money is the way you make a living and giving it away is the way you make a life.
• it’s our capacity to wonder that determines the size of our soul.
• If the goal of reading is to get through the Bible, the goal of meditation is to get the Bible through us.
• We are too easily satisfied in our study of Scripture.  Or should I say, we are too easily dissatisfied?  Maybe that is why we are so infrequently astonished.
• We dissect Scripture instead of letting Scripture dissect us.
• your life translates Scripture into a language that those around you can read.
• The church ought to be the most curious place on the planet.
• Lack of faith is not a failure of logic.  It’s a failure of imagination.
• Faithfulness is playing offense for the kingdom even if some Pharisees find it offensive.

There are so many more things that I have underlined in this book, but seriously, if you’ve read this far, it obviously interests you.  You should just go buy the book.  I would love to share more things that were in these pages (and I probably will), but they need to be processed more than they need to be shared right now.  For instance, the whole section called Hindsight Bias is changing the way that I engage in conversations, on Sunday mornings, in meetings, on phone calls, reading the word, and the list goes on.  Just go get it.