The Christian Book Corner #10: The Singing God

I’m tempted to end this review with one and only one sentence: All Christians should buy this book and read it right now!!

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Hello Readers, hope all’s well. Today I present another Christian book for The Christian Book Corner. Today’s book is The Singing God by Sam Storms.

Not only is today’s book one of the best books I’ve reviewed for The Christian Book Corner, it instantly became one of my favorite books ever!! It’s that good, and I can’t recommend it highly enough.

I first learned about this book when I saw an interview on Steven Bancarz’s YouTube channel. He was talking with Sam Storms, the author, all about this book. I clicked on the video because it was titled: “How To Know & Experience God’s Love For You (Dr. Sam Storms).” And that was a subject I was desperate to know more about at the time. I, like many others, have trouble experiencing and feeling God’s Love for me. How do we do that?? I needed to know.

As I listened to Sam Storms talk about how to feel God’s Love for us, I knew I needed to read this book. I ordered it immediately, and it went straight to the top of my reading queue once it arrived. And best of all, the book lived up to my expectations. It was exactly what I was looking for, which is why I can’t praise it enough.

You can check out the full interview on YouTube below:

If you, like me, have trouble sometimes feeling Loved by God, you need to read this book!! So let’s take a look at what’s inside.

What’s in the Book

Why is this book called The Singing God?? It’s because of the metaphor that creates the message of the whole book. And that metaphor comes from Zephaniah 3:17. The message is very simple: God loves you and me and everyone so much, that He rejoices over us with singing!! God sings over us!! Can’t believe it?? Look at Scripture—God’s Word proclaims it!! HALLELUJAH!!

(17) The LORD your God is in your midst—a warrior bringing victory.
He will create calm with his love;
he will rejoice over you with singing.

Zephaniah 3:17 (CEB)

God has so much joy over us, His beloved creations, that He sings over us!! But Sam Storms knows many Christians don’t feel that. Many Christians feel like they’re unlovable, and that their sins must be too great for God to ever love them. And that’s why he wrote this book. He wrote it for people who feel unloved by God, so that they can understand the Truth of how God feels about them. It may very well be a Truth they were never thought. If this sounds like you, you’d better read this book!!

This tragic state of not feeling Loved by God is much more common than you might think. NO, you are not the only one who feels that way. Many Christians feel it because of their sins or for other reasons. But The Singing God is a great help for understanding why these ideas aren’t Biblical.

And no, the book does not say that God is OK with our sins or that He tolerates them. The Singing God is doctrinally sound and shows how God takes us on a journey of defeating our sins because He loves us. But God does love us first, while we’re still sinners, as Romans 5:8 tells us. God loves us too much to leave us in sin where He finds us, so He transforms us when we turn to Him. But He loves us before we turn to Him. This is a Biblical fact.

(8) But God shows his love for us, because while we were still sinners Christ died for us.

Romans 5:8 (CEB)

A related idea is found in 1 John 4, where it explains that God didn’t love us because we loved Him so much. In fact, God loved us while we were still hostile to Him!! But God sent His son Jesus to die for our sins anyway. NOW THAT’S LOVE!!

(10) This is love: it is not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son as the sacrifice that deals with our sins.

1 John 4:10 (CEB)

But it’s one thing to know all this. We can read the Bible anytime, study these things, know them, but still not feel them. Feeling loved by God and experiencing His Love is another matter entirely. And that’s what Part 3 of The Singing God is all about.

The third section of the book is devoted to this topic. Sam Storms explains the importance of experiencing and feeling God’s Love, while also giving some practical tips on how to do that.

God rejoices over us so much, but it’s also God’s Will that we rejoice in Him too. It Glorifies God when we take our ultimate joy and contentment in the LORD. It Glorifies God when we experience and feel His Love. Sam Storms explains it like the difference between observing a beautiful river from your car as you drive by versus actually getting out of the car and swimming in the river.

Certainly it’s important for us to understand the meaning of divine love. We need to read about it in the Bible and meditate on it daily. But we mustn’t settle for that. I don’t want you to. More important still, God doesn’t want you to.

God wants you to go beyond merely knowing that He loves you. He wants you to move past simply believing and affirming by faith that He loves you. He wants you to taste it! He wants you to get out of your car, take off your shoes and socks, jump in, and get wet! He wants you to feel the joy of being loved. He wants you to receive His love personally in a way that is life-changing. He wants you to wade in it, swim in it, and be refreshed by drinking of it to your heart’s delight and fill.

Sam Storms, The Singing God, Page 136

What good is it if our experience of God’s Love is only intellectual—that we know and understand God loves us. What good is that?? How does it Glorify God??

God wants us to feel His love, and to feel loved. Because then we’ll rejoice in His Love, be restored by it, refreshed by it, and all those things Glorify Him. It seems many Christians unfortunately don’t care as much as they should about the emotional, feeling part of receiving God’s Love. But it’s vital to the Christian Walk and our healthy relationship with the LORD. God wants us to feel Loved, not only to know it.

And if that’s something you want but you wonder how exactly to do it, you’ll get a lot out of reading The Singing God. Because Part 3 has practical advice on how to feel God’s Love in our life. The whole book is great, but Part 3 was the best for me.

An Uneven Pour??

And now for what I didn’t like about the book. I don’t do these criticism sections to be petty, and I don’t go looking for minor little things to nitpick. I also don’t read the book with an eye toward finding problems to criticize. I have a positive opinion on most of the books I’ve read.

I need to point that out because there are times, like today, when I can’t think of much that bothered me with the book. The Singing God was an excellent read, with no serious flaws I can pick at. At the same time I don’t want to give the impression like it’s a perfect book, or should be seen as divinely inspired or anything like that!! But it is what it is; I thought the book was almost perfect.

If that makes you suspicious, well, maybe you can think of me and my review as biased toward the book. It’s now one of my favorites, I won’t deny that.

Anyway, there is one thing I could say detracts a little from The Singing God. This book is at its best when it uses Scripture to make and explain its points. Scripture makes the idea of each chapter clearer and much easier to understand. Unfortunately, not every chapter has an equal amount of Scripture in it. The end result is that some chapters are “Scripture heavy” while others are “light” on God’s Word.

And this is too bad because, like I said, the Scripture heavy chapters are the easiest to follow, since Sam Storms does such a great job of explaining the passages he chooses. He also quotes other authors when they explain it better (or explained it first). These insights on Scripture are excellent and drive the points home.

When a chapter is light on Scripture, Storms usually uses personal stories to illustrate the point. These work too, but the Scriptural arguments along with the commentary and insight are much more valuable for Christian readers. So if the chapters that are light on Scripture had some more of God’s Word poured in them, I believe it could make an excellent book even better.

But like I said, it’s only a minor weakness. It doesn’t have too much of a negative impact on The Singing God.

The Final Word

I’m tempted to end this review with one and only one sentence: All Christians should buy this book and read it right now!!

That’s my opinion on the book, as you can tell. As for why I value The Singing God so highly, it’s very simple ….

God doesn’t want us to only know that He Loves us. He wants us to feel Loved, to feel that He Loves us. But sometimes, for various reasons, we don’t feel God Loves us. I, like many Christians, struggle with this myself sometimes. But this is a common struggle; many Christians deal with it. So thank God for this book!!

Prayer and worship may be the best ways to learn how to feel God’s Love, but The Singing God is a great help for anyone who’s goal is to feel and experience the Love of God. For any Christian trying to reach this goal, I can’t recommend The Singing God enough. Read it right now!! You’ll be glad you did.

Well, my conclusion was more than one sentence long, but the Spirit and the message are still the same. This is one of the best books I’ve ever read, and has already been a great help in getting closer to the LORD and experiencing Him on a higher level. A book that helps us to do that is priceless, in my opinion, and it’s so valuable I recommend it to all Christians by default!!

I’ve made my opinion quite clear. Now I can only pray that you too will check out The Singing God, and that you will get as much out of it as I did.

The Singing God

by Sam Storms. Charisma House, 2013.

Buy The Singing God on Amazon (This is an affiliate link. I receive a small commission if you buy through this link.)

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Until next time, be strong and do good!

Your new best friend in Christ,

99:9

<<<EXALT THE LORD OUR GOD AND WORSHIP AT HIS HOLY HILL; FOR THE LORD OUR GOD IS HOLY>>>

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