Finding more

Stories are wonderful things and people love to hear them. Whether it’s a little child going to bed, or whether it’s that book you have been devouring, or whether it’s just that coffee catching up with a friend. The majority of the world love a good story.

That’s one of the reasons why I always encourage people to think about their own story, their own testimony and to tell it to people. People won’t be willing to listen to an apologetics course about God and homosexuality for example, but they’ll happily listen to someone’s story about it.

That’s why I’ve really enjoyed Finding More such a good read. Rico Tice says

“This book is an opportunity to look at life through a different pair of eyes – an invitation to enjoy the stories of these people’s live, and perhaps to find inspiration and direction as you chart your own”

Rico Tice and Rachel Jones have done a tremendous job at writing this book together, it was a joy to read and to hear how peoples lives have been transformed!

In this book there are 11 stories of individuals, all from different backgrounds, all coming with different questions and/or objections to Christianity and it describes how they encountered Jesus.

I enjoyed this book 1) because it told people’s stories, 2) because in the process it showed the beauty of Jesus and the good news, and 3) because it helped me think more about how I share my story.

In a culture that celebrates the narrative of the individual a book like this can be hugely helpful, there are few people who will refuse to listen to or read someone’s story. The testimonies in this book are all short and to the point and personally relatable to different people in different situations.

The people who have written these testimonies are open and honest about their questions regarding Christianity and they do such a tremendous job at pointing the reader to the truth of the gospel. Here are just a few great quotes from the book

“I realised that the stakes were pretty high. If Christianity was true, it mattered. So I couldn’t just walk away – I kept coming back.”

“That’s the thing about faith, apparently. You don’t necessarily have a fizz-bang moment and ‘become a Christian’. More often you just slowly find that yes – the evidence stacks up, yes- what Jesus says about you is true, and yes – you want the kind of friendship with God that the Bible talks about.”

“Even now, I’m still learning that I still have to come to Jesus each day, bringing him my mess and my weakness and my worries, and asking him for help. It’s when I come to him like that that my relationship with him is so sweet.”

” I was so surprised by the things Jesus said. What I loved was that he was honest enough to tell me what I am actually really like. He exposes your heart. There’s no hiding  from the fact that Jesus thinks everybody without exception has the same problem: we’ve got these hearts that just spew out evil. That’s what the Bible call sin.”

The list could go on and on of wonderful stories of lives transformed. Stories of ‘normal people’, your typical family man and student all the way to a drug dealer who met Jesus and became a Pastor.

This book can be read in short bursts by yourself, or you could read it with your Christian friend who is struggling, or with a non-Christian or as a group of people who are going through a Christianity Explored course. The way you read the book doesn’t really matter, but I would highly recommend that you read it!

This book doesn’t give you the magic formula to ‘make a Christian’ it won’t answers everyone’s questions, but it will point the reader to the Good News of Jesus and it will encourage people to pick up their Bibles and read.

Rico ends the book with this

“Give Jesus the fair hearing that we all want when we’re telling our story about who we are. See if the claims he makes about himself have the ring of truth, and whether the offer he makes sounds satisfying.”

Can I be so bold as to challenge you? Why not buy the book and a copy of Mark’s Gospel and ask one friend to read them both together with you. That is a small challenge to get people thinking about people’s stories and to get to grips with Jesus’ story.

Rating 4/5