Worry is a natural human emotion. Worrying about the future seems to be something a lot of us do. But is that necessary? Or healthy?

One of the reasons we worry is that we doubt our abilities and God’s ability to use them. We lack trust perhaps, or fail to understand the potential we have. We feel like we are wandering in a wilderness of scarcity, hoping somehow to find abundance.   

Sometimes a book grows on you, and that is what I found with The God Guarantee by Jack Alexander. For the first couple of chapters I found myself not liking it. That changed as I went deeper.

What annoyed me at the outset was Alexander’s insistence on using the word “capacity” as a synonym for potential. He explained his reasoning, and his point may be a valid one, but it still didn’t sit right with me.

Alexander uses other terms also. He discusses the need for consecration, for persevering when facing challenges and how to be in community, which is what we humans are designed to be.

This is a book about human potential and divine potential, and how to unleash it. It is centred around one story, which you may be familiar with, a New Testament miracle where Jesus feeds 5,000 people with five small loaves of bread and a couple of fish. They didn’t have enough food, but no-one went hungry.

I’ve heard that story before. I’ve read it hundreds of times.  I’ve read commentaries and heard sermons, but there are questions I’ve never heard asked, some I have never thought of asking. Alexander asks them.

For example, what if the disciples, tired as they must have been, had chosen to eat first and not pass the food around? After all, who thought that food for one could stretch to feed so many? Yes, Jesus had performed miracles before, but this would be taking things to a whole new level. I hadn’t thought about that before. I’d guess you hadn’t either.

Alexander is a businessman, not a theologian, so he brings a different perspective to his subject, one that I appreciated in the end.

What is your potential and how will you achieve it? The God Guarantee takes you on a journey to a hillside crowded with people waiting to be fed. The story of what happened then might help you on your voyage.

“Book has been provided courtesy of Baker Publishing Group and Graf-Martin Communications, Inc.”