Your God Is Too Safe: Rediscovering the Wonder of a God You Can’t Control

by Mark Buchanan

There is a place called “borderland”—a place that is safe and familiar. “It’s ground that can be staked out, marked off, well trod, packed down. It holds some things in and keeps some things out. It may take endurance to live there, but not much else: It’s the endurance of inertia. Life there requires no discipline but falls into neat routines. It’s domesticated lawlessness. It’s chaotic, but predictable. Borderland might be dangerous, but even more, it’s safe.”

Such is Buchanan’s description of Busia, the city that lies along the border between Uganda and Kenya. But rather than dwelling on the geographical borderland of Busia, he uses its existence to springboard into a discussion of a spiritual borderland—a place where too many Christians make their residence: attempting to leave the world behind, but not quite moving into God’s kingdom. And so they sit in the middle, looking into both lands, but moving toward neither.

In Your God Is Too Safe, Buchanan seeks to outline some of the characteristics of life in borderland in the first half of this book, offering the reader the opportunity to see if his spiritual life is one that lies in borderland. In the second half, he explores the ways that men and women of all ages “keep the fire in their hearts ever brighter, ever hotter.”

As with all authors, you need to be watchful when reading this book, holding his words against the true standard. With such a reading, Your God Is Too Safe will greatly benefit you for the time you put into it.

The Editors do not advocate everything taught by the authors of the books we review. Like us, these authors are fallible humans and those who choose to read these books should measure them by the bible, the one true standard.