In December of 2011, I first told you about this book that was wrecking my thoughts and thinking.  It was called Interuppted, and it’s written by Jen Hatmaker.  I did a little review on it here, but basically what you need to know is God used that book to speak to me at the beginning of my life “interrupted”.  Stephen + I had just gotten home a few months earlier from our first mission trip to Africa, and our dossier [to adopt] had been in Ethiopia just a few short months.  I was for sure searching, and seeking, and wondering what it really meant to live missionally.  To live wrecked, interrupted, and gloriously ruined.   I remember having a lot of questions, a lot of fear, and wondering how to live now that my eyes had been opened – and Jen’s book let me know that we weren’t alone out in those waters.  As I said in 2011, reading this book & starting to pray about living missionally has already started to transform my thinking. 

Enter July 2014, I was in Rwanda with Noonday + IJM sitting next to said author as she told me about her revised and expanded version of Interuppted.  I knew right then I needed to re-read it.  It was an honor to sit in that coffee shop that day and tell Jen that her voice has been one God has used in my life, and in our generation, to unlock scriptures and teaching for many.

If you have, or even if you haven’t, read any of Jen’s books – I would say (and she says too) THIS is the one to read.  Without this book, she couldn’t have written 7 – this was the “prequel” as she says to 7.  This book is her heartbeat.  The revised + expanded version has so much to offer – not only new material but notes from her husband Brandon and much more.  I mean the title just grabs you: Interuppted: when Jesus wrecks your comfortable christianity.  It’s the story of God taking the Hatmakers and plucking them out of ” complacent, comfortable, safe Christianity” and dropping them into “the deep end of struggle, injustice, brokenness, and a hurting humanity”.

Has God done that to you?  Has he opened your eyes to the hurting world around you and you just don’t know what to DO with it?  Have you been in church all your life, like me, but missed some key scriptures about the poor and oppressed? You aren’t alone, sister.  Let this book help mobilize you, educate you, convict you, and push you out towards what you are called to do.

I’ve loved re-reading this book, as the Lord is not done with us.  He is continually wrecking our lives for Him and His glory and it’s books and writers like this one that help push us out the door.  I don’t have it all together, I have so much more to learn, and God has so much left to speak to me.  Reading this book 3 years into this journey He’s called us on, is even more confirmation that the best is yet to come.

Until reading this book, and hearing Jen speak several times, I hadn’t ever heard someone be so real about our interpretations of several scriptures talking about the poor.  This is what I mean…

“hey, here’s something crazy:  In the Word, poverty, widows, huger – these are not metaphors. There are billions of lambs that literally need to be fed.  WITH FOOD” 

I know reading this book will open your eyes and your heart to understand the scriptures we’ve read over and over, even deeper.  It’s not easy, y’all, but it’s important.  Will you take the challenge and pray about what could happen when we fully surrender, and allow Jesus to completely wreck and interrupt our lives?  

I’m giving away 1 paperback copy of Interrupted today – simply comment and tell me why you want to get your hands on a copy of this book.  Winner will be chosen at random on Wednesday.