Book review – “The Jesus Disruption” – by Dan Granstaff

Shaking up the Status Quo to Set You Free

Due to pressures at work, this book took me longer to read that I would have liked. But the very work issues that caused my delay, and the underlying reason for them, Dan masterfully addresses in his tome. My life has become about working toward the safe, secure, predicable, peaceful and non-confrontational leisurely life. There’s nothing humanly wrong with wanting these things. But as the author deconstructs the impulses, motives, and reasoning behind wanting the aforementioned pursuits, and he makes it clear that they are, in fact, quite human – and Godless. They are not our original design. They are not what is written on the heart of man. They are a product of the Fall.

As children, we generally are reckless adventurers. Our safety, and that of our compatriots, is in the hands of our earthly father and of divine providence – we rarely give it a second thought. However, as we grow older, and we’ve left the safety net of earthly parents behind, we depend less and less on the provision, protection, and providence of God and increasingly on security and comfort that we labor to achieve. So now we live a in a world governed by tips, tricks, and techniques to keep us and that which we value safe and secure. The author illustrates, with vivid descriptions of experiences from his life, how that type of thinking is faulty and godless. And that, if we have been transformed into the likeness of God’s son by the regenerating power of the Holy Spirit, restoring God’s original design for mankind, that he won’t let us languish in mediocrity and self-dependence. Dan Grandstaff quotes from Genesis regarding our original design; explaining that we were intended from the start to rule and have dominion. We were not created in God’s image to be mediocre. We have his DNA in us.

The author explains, that if we get some inkling of this truth, our enemy tries quickly to suppress or steal it away. The pressure mounts, the opposition increases with the deceiver’s goal being to get us to back down and go back to the way things were. Dan points out that we have our favorite “exit strategies” and “coping mechanisms” – too much food, improper sex, love of money, and phony religion. He calls these our “ships waiting in the harbor” to take us away. He says that rather than being a ship of escape, they are slave ships that keep us chained and going nowhere. Our father is too kind to leave us in shackles, especially of our own making. He will, like Cortez, burn the ships. He will crash them on the rocks. There is no going back. The disruption is painful, feels even cruel, but God is doing it for our good and for his glory. We have a destiny that is nowhere near what traditional western Christianity aspires to.

Dan explains that we know a huge amount of truth, we can quote scripture, biblical principles, recite facts, discuss hermeneutics, but we rarely experience Jesus and the zoe life he made available to us. We don’t need to know more truth; we need to live in the truth. And the author points out, just like riding a bike, entering into truth is sometimes painful. Change almost never comes to us in times of comfort.

We must look differently at the world in which we live. We must ask different questions. We were not made to conform; we were made to transform, not just us, but all those around us. We are all in the process of becoming – becoming the true sons and daughters of God. And the process of becoming will not end, continuing to transform us until we reach the promised kingdom.

The book is well worth your time. I heartily recommend it. There is so much more in there than this short missive can cover. I’ll leave off with this quote from chapter 12.

“God is telling us to reorient ourselves into a kingdom we cannot see, to a way of life that requires faith. This however, is not our preference. We like doing what we feel we can pull-off, just-in case God doesn’t show up. But nowhere in scripture does God ever call men and women into what they can do. He always created a disruption by asking them to venture out with Him into the impossible. Into a mystery that changed the world because He always showed up.”

From The Jesus Disruption by Dan Grandstaff

Where’s your impossible? What is God asking you to risk, to give up, to trust – without a safety net?

Read The Jesus Disruption by Dan Grandstaff. You’ll be glad you did.

Review by Jan Broucinek – Wildmen Ministry

• Published by Outlander Publishing LLC
• Hardcover ISBN, 978-1-09831-580-1
• Paperback ISBN, 978-109831-198-8
• eISBN, 978-109831-581-8