I've been following Philip Anthony Mitchell over the last several years, and every time I'm impressed. I'm not just impressed, but I'm stirred up. I love his passion. I love his working through the Bible and speaking plainly about important topics. But most of all, I love his sense of urgency. Something that's been missing in the American church for some time, as we've become complacent over the last fifty years or so since the Jesus revolution, is that we just don't seem to take it seriously that Jesus could come back at any time. We've become complacent in the types of entertainment that we consume, and in the types of pulpits that we listen to. We don't challenge our churches to do things, to be the hands and feet of Jesus anymore. We're more content. In fact, the opposite word to contend is content, and I think that is the spirit of this church age: to be content. We're so content to meet once a week for an hour, hear a TED talk, feel good about it. Maybe there's a concert. Maybe there's just a couple of songs. Perhaps we serve every once in a while, and we think that that's all we had to do to move the kingdom forward. And I'm not belittling service or church or worship. I'm belittling our attitude of contentment toward those things, and the way that they're not spurring us on to good works. Churches continue to get bigger and bigger and bigger and consolidate. Smaller churches tend to get more myopic and focused on their own church. You have a lot of really good churches. You have a lot of really bad churches.
Mormonism is now the nice version of Christianity, even though it's not Christianity. People like James Talarico and Raphael Warnock become the new face of Christianity, which is a Christianity without Christ. There's no Jesus that comes to save you, because there's nothing to save you from. There's no such thing as sin. And evil has become good, and good has become evil. And in this world, we watch it happen. The elections just happened here in the United States. And no matter how they were going to vote, my sense is that a large share of self-professing Christians didn't even vote. The mandate to be salt and light in the world does not seem to be something that we're taking seriously as we become more and more content, and as we continue to compromise our faith with the time and the talents and the treasures that we have going to things that aren't pushing forward the kingdom. Pastor Philip Anthony Mitchell is doing the Lord's work on this, calling us clearly to take our Christianity seriously, especially through repentance. I have my own opinions about quite a lot of things, and they line up very well with Philip Anthony Mitchell, so I might be biased here. But what has been in my spirit over the last several days, as we've gone through this election, is that a lot of people are willing to share political beliefs no matter where they are. They will wear hats or shirts. They will put up signs in their yards. They will get into quick debates and arguments, or they will assert their beliefs about who they're going to vote for. When the vote happened, people showed no shame. They were not content. They kept contending for the people they thought should have won, or thought did win and were the right ones.
There is no lack of talking about politics or about social issues that they agree with. But I am struck, and it's been in my spirit, and I am also condemning myself here: how much did we pray about these topics? Did Christians just muster up the effort to vote, to try to get out the vote, to tell people how they should vote, but never once go to the Lord? And by the way, going to the Lord and saying, "God, I hope these people win," or "God, I hope that person loses," is not prayer.
Earnestly contending means spending time talking to God and telling him your concerns and your worries, and allowing him to comfort you and to stir you up in the right direction, helping to align your beliefs and concerns and anxieties with the Lord's vision and values in this situation. My rough impression is that a large share of Christians didn't vote, a smaller share were super vociferous about who they should vote for, and a tiny share of us prayed. In his teaching on Nehemiah 4, when Nehemiah was being threatened while he was trying to rebuild the walls, Philip Anthony Mitchell points out that Nehemiah decided to do two things. Number one, post a guard. Make sure that the people were armed and ready. Set up an alert system. So he did physical activities. He prepared.
But then he also prayed. He set the people up to pray and to seek God, because they knew that ultimately it was God who would be the one who would save them or not. Mitchell's point from that teaching is that preparedness without prayer is pride, and prayer without preparedness is presumption. And I think that's absolutely right. I think that the church is so prideful because we think how good things are right now is based on what we've done. Like we've earned this. We're the blessed ones of Christ. Like nothing can happen. The gates of hell can't prevail against us. But we haven't attacked the gates of hell in decades in the United States.
Now, at an individual level or in a certain church level, if that's you and you've been doing it, praise the Lord. But just as a whole, the church has been asleep in the light, as Keith Green sang back in 1978. We have been full of compromise. We have been full of contentment. And we remain that way. And one of the things I always say when I'm teaching is that our time is short. Either Jesus is coming back or you're going to die. There is not unlimited time to waste on things, and yet we do. We waste so much time just striving for ourselves, concerned about what's going to happen fifty years from now, a thousand years from now, whatever. It doesn't matter.
What matters is right now. That person that you talked to that's serving you food: did you offer to pray? Did you say you're a Christian? Did you go home and pray? Did you lead your family well? There's so many practical steps at the end of every chapter of this book. Each chapter ends with a Takeaway Truth and a Contender's Charge. I'm going to recommend it to my church as a life group resource.
I can just imagine a thousand churches, or ten thousand, all studying this at the same time and coming to the same conclusion: that it is time for us to stop being content, and it is time for us to start to contend.
And that happens in our household, in our marriage, in our local church. It happens with repentance and prayer first. Preparedness second. It happens when we stop presuming God's going to take care of everything for us without us doing anything, and we stop having pride that says we're going to do everything and we don't need God's help on it. I think this is an important book, and I was so glad to see Matt Chandler write the foreword for it, because Matt Chandler is another one of these people. Now right now in the cultural moment, Philip Anthony Mitchell has the platform to be able to get this out in a way that Matt Chandler does not. That doesn't mean that Matt's not great. I love Matt. But Philip is the one that we need to pray for to protect.
I pray regularly for just a few things, because I'm terrible at this too. But one of the things that comes to my mind, and I pray every single time it does, is: Lord, don't let Philip Anthony Mitchell fall. Because the world is going to come against people that say it's time to get out and fight. Not in the way that the world fights, not in just voting or getting the word out, but fighting for culture to change, and for the Christian culture to turn back to Jesus as our main goal.
To stop looking at pornography. To stop lusting after everything. To watch the amusements and the entertainments that we're focused on. To stop allowing our children to be indoctrinated and discipled by secular institutions and secular groups and schools and friend groups. It's time to put Christ back at the center of our dining room tables, our living room tables, our marriage beds, our families, our churches. Serving, understanding that the kingdom is what we're putting forward. I'm just going to repeat myself over and over again because it's such a message that's important, in my opinion the most important message. So do I recommend this book? I 100% recommend this book. Is it a new message? No. But it's a new messenger. And if Philip Anthony Mitchell can make the message resonate in a way that the people before him could not, then I pray for his success, because his success is the kingdom's success.
Five out of five stars.
Reviewed by Scott Asher
