Close Enough to Hear God Breathe: The Great Story of Divine Intimacy [Paperback]

Greg Paul's book 'Close Enough To Hear God Breathe' tells intimate stories of the author's life illustrating God's great intimate story of Creation, The Fall, Redemption and Consummation. He talks about his family, children, failure and success in marriage, sex and street ministry.

I read this book with a lump in my throat ready to shed tears on any given page. The great themes of God are manifest in our mortal existence. Greg reminds us of that.

Greg Paul is not a haphazard writer. He writes brilliantly and is too provocative to avoid an enduring legacy.

Greg Paul is a pastor and member of Sanctuary (Toronto), an inner-city church where saints and sinners worship together. It is a church without the protective, social insulation more prevalent in 'nice' safe suburban communities. It is the church Jesus frequents when He is in Toronto.

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There comes a time when reading a few good books that you come across a bad apple, despite the expectations of a good read. Just as eagerly as I am to recommend a book, so I am in discouraging readers from a book. Greg Paul, the author of Close Enough to Hear God Breathe, uses a variety of family experiences and memories to relate to the intimacy we can have with God. I must honestly say that there aren't many books on intimacy with God, and so this immediately intrigued me with curiosity. However, despite Greg's efforts to use important biblical passages to bring to light the importance and the availability of God's intimacy along with his experiences, he does so with very little biblical accuracy when it's most needed (in fact, one of his depictions of John the Baptizer is quite inappropriate).

Though not specifically stated, his writings come across as a Christian liberalist, not so conservative in regards to presenting and interpreting the Scriptures. I have found much of what he wrote to be unnecessary additions to the biblical accounts such as in the case of presenting John the Baptist with crude humour in its depiction, this has only heightened my concern of what spiritual leaders have been set into place for our current generation. Though I am a supporter of ensuring that the Gospel be communicated effectively and relevantly to our culture, I am firmly against compromising the integrity, accuracy, context and interpretation of the Bible. You'll find my reviews to be a good reference for purchasing books, but in rare cases such as this, I recommend discarding this from your shopping bag. You want a book that will edify you, I have not found this book to come close to fulfilling that role. I believe that the author meant well, keeping the reader in mind, and putting in a great deal of effort, but in my eyes it falls short of the mark. My apologies Greg Paul, but I'm no fan of your book.

I've received this complimentary e-book from Thomas Nelson Publishing House through the Book Sneeze program in exchange for a review. A positive review was not required and the views expressed in my review are strictly my own.

I was first introduced to Greg Paul through his book 'God In The Alley.' Greg is a pastor at Sanctuary, in Toronto, a community that loves and includes the least of these.

Greg is a story teller. In "Close Enough To Hear God Breathe" Greg tells stories about God, about family, about people who live at street level, about love and brokenness. He tells stories from his life and ministry. In this book he paints a picture of God as father, and us as his children. He develops this theme by telling stories about his family and other relationships with others to show what it means to be in relationship with God and feel his love. He gently draws into understanding God as Father and not as judge. He makes the connection between his relationships and God's relationship with humanity. He does an excellent job of keeping his 'little' story, as he calls his life, in perspective with the great divine story that is God and man striving together.

"Close Enough to Hear God Breathe" is about more than life with the poor in the city. It draws us into intimacy with God, into that close place that sounds like a soft puff of air, an almost inaudible exhale or a quiet heartbeat deep in the chest cavity your head is resting on.

His stories are rooted in the theological story of Creation, Fall, Redemption, and Consummation, not in an abstract or academic sense but from the perspective of what God's desire to be close to us means in a world that is broken.

Here's a couple of excerpts:
"The Fall, and my own willful disobedience, has broken the image of my Father in me, like a mirror shattered into a thousand shards. Yet each jagged piece still in some small way reflects an aspect of his being, and he will not dispose of it. The Fall is not the utter ruin of my relationship with him, but the proof of its ultimate inviolability. He is not sweeping those shards into a duty pile to be thrown into the trash, cursing the inconvenience. He is gathering them, every sparkling sliver. Assembling them into a new mosaic of his identity uniquely reflected in mine."

'Two things are necessary for me to be able to hear someone breathing: I must be quiet and I must be close. Paul is telling me that when I learn to hear God breathing in Scripture, it will be rest to my soul. Not merely an academic exercise or a dogmatic wrangle. And I will know that God is very near, perhaps particularly when I'm stumped by a mystery I cannot penetrate. Amazingly, I find that when I listen carefully enough to the sound of that breathing in Scripture, it echoes also through the stories of my own life.'

"Close Enough to Hear God Breathe: The Great Story of Divine Intimacy" is not a how to book on how to have divine intimacy, it's the story of Greg's journey into intimacy with God along with some of the people who make up the Sanctuary community.

"Book has been provided courtesy of Thomas Nelson and Graf-Martin Communications, Inc. Available at your favourite bookseller from Thomas Nelson".