4-MAT Book Review of John Ortberg’s The Life You’ve Always Wanted
Summary
The author of the book The Life You’ve Always Wanted is John Ortberg. The publisher is Zondervan and the book was published in 2004.
The book is about transforming one’s self to be the Christian God wants one to be. Spiritual transformation, however, requires training: one cannot run a marathon unless one spends time getting ready—and so too one cannot expect to transform one’s spiritual life unless one engages in some spiritual training. One can try—and likely not succeed. Or one can train and succeed. Spiritual transformation requires spiritual discipline and that means one must be willing to undergo a disciplined regimen of spiritual training. One should not be in a hurry to achieve transformation all at once. All transformations take time. One must learn to be joyful in the spirit in the manner that God wants. One must be able to celebrate, fast, pray, rejoice, do penance, and so on. Joy is strength and if there is no joy in what one is doing, one should not expect to last long doing it. Therefore, one must be able to find joy in spiritual transformation—to see the transformation as positive and as worth doing. Instead of focusing on what one is losing in making this transformation (i.e., the things of the world, the fleeting pleasures, the passing idle distractions), one should focus on the positives and benefits of spiritual transformation and take time to rejoice in these blessings.
Thus, praying and confessing are two important parts of the transformation for both are about getting back to God in a meaningful way, acknowledging one’s weaknesses and sins, and making a firm purpose of amendment while expressing real sorrow for them and a desire to do God’s will. Prayer and confession are two powerful tools that one cannot do without in the transformation of the spirit. One must use both because they are the tools given to us by God Himself: he wants us to use them to reach out to Him. The Bible can also be a source of power—a tool for meditation that one can rely upon during those times when the mind needs food and nourishment to get the...
The will, the mind and the heart must be in unison for the transformation to be complete. The will is the outlet—it is where the spirit finds its expression. So whether it is in prayer, in confession, or in being a servant to others just like Christ was a servant to sinners He sought to redeem through His goodness, we have the power to demonstrate our love for God by serving Him and serving others. The heart must be disciplined, however, and once the heart is in order, dedicating its love and energy to God and others rather than to the fulfillment of the self, one’s transformation is in the final stages. It is at this point that one is ready to be the person God wants him to be.
Concrete Responses
The book relates to a personal period in my own life when I was trying to make a major life decision regarding my state in life. I wanted to start a new period in my life but I felt that I was struggling to take the first step and instead for months on end I was just spinning my wheels not doing anything one way or the other. Even when I would finally make up my mind that the step had to be taken, I was still unable to do anything to move in the direction I knew I should go. It was as though I just expected myself to wake up one day in the spot I wanted to be in. That was when I realized that I wasn’t moving in the right direction because I was not taking the small steps that would enable me to get going. I started recognizing what all the small obstacles were that were preventing me from changing my life, and I started addressing them one by one, focusing my attention on them one at a time. Before I knew it, I was halfway through making the change and I did not even realize that I was moving. I could look back and see where I was and how I had stalled out so many times before and now I had no desire to go back there; I could keep pressing on with what I was doing, tackling the small obstacles—and finally I was finished and I had made it to the point I wanted to be at. To me this is like what Ortberg calls the training part of spiritual life.
Reflection
Actually nothing bothered me about this book because…
