Don't we all love reading stories about other people's lives? Sent: How One Ordinary Family Traded the American Dream for God's Greater Purpose, by Hilary Alan, is a fascinating look into one family's response to God's calling upon their lives. I would say "radical calling," but really, does God call any other way?
Hilary and her husband Curt were living an upper middle class life on the East Coast when God's call came. They loved Jesus completely and were fully involved in their church. They had two beautiful children, one pre teen and one a young teenager, who loved Jesus too. Curt had a well-paying, upwardly mobile job that afforded them a new house, new cars, and all the comforts of their hearts. But both Curt and Hilary knew that Curt wasn't doing what he was created to do. He enthusiastically provided for his family, but he knew deep inside his current job didn't fit him.
Responding to a short term mission trip call to Indonesia a year after the tsunami, Curt was changed and Hilary immediately knew this was what he was meant to do, so she and the kids threw their support behind him. Leaving everything behind here in the States, they moved to southeast Asia for three years to live in a Muslim village and impart their lives to people rebuilding their own.
Hilary's book is both captivating and challenging. She doesn't gloss over the hardships, but she does write with wonder about God's enabling power and grace when we obey Him in what He has purposed us to do. We hear amazing stories about people impacted by this American family, people for whom her family's love is tangible. And she points back to us in our comfortable lives and says, what has God created YOU to do? What is holding you back? (The discussion guide at the end of the book makes the challenge personal. This would be an excellent book to do in a small group format.)
We are not all created to go to a foreign mission field, but we are all created by God for something outside ourselves, something radical unto us...because that is the nature of God. Read this book with an honest and inquiring heart, listening to what God may be whispering to you!
I received this book for free from WaterBrook Multnomah Publishing for review purposes.
Read chapter one here.
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