The Answer to Our Cry

The cry of our soul is for freedom, it is what we were made for and what we lost in Eden. Freedom is what we are offered again in the gospel of Christ and yet each day for the Christian seems to be the struggle to take hold of what we have been given. This book is a huge help in that struggle.

Huw Williams | January 2016 - Highfields Book of the Month

By Rick McKinley - (2014) Ada :Baker Books

“If God is good, live fully, love boldly, and fear nothing, because all is grace.  Freedom in an innate longing we all have. We desire freedom from sin, freedom to love, and freedom form our anxieties and fears.  Jesus promises that the gospel brings us freedom in all of its fulness, yet many of us never quite experience it. But if we truly believe God is as good as we hope he is, then we should live fully, love boldly and fear nothing, because we are free from insecurity, selfishness, and self-protection.  I believe this freedom comes only when we are attracted to the communion of love between the Father, Son and Spirit… [it] is what gives us freedom through Jesus Christ, the Son.”

Thus opens the preface to this wonderful little book by Rick McKinley. If like me, you find those words striking chords inside you, both in terms of your personal longings as well as resonating with what you know to be truth, then you will find this book to be a huge blessing.

McKinley is a very readable writer.

McKinley is a very readable writer. This is not a long book - 150 pages or so of fairly large-print (and wide-spaced) pages make each of its eleven chapters a short read of 10 minutes or so.

His prose is attractive, informal and refreshingly free of theological jargon, but at the same time it is clear that what McKinley is offering us here is far from light and superficial, there is rich and deep theology here - just without the dusty packaging, and all explained accessibly and with the teacher’s gift of simplicity. In fact, that is one of the things which makes this book quite remarkable, I would happily give this to a new Christian or someone who has known Christ for many years - there is nothing here to frighten the former and plenty to encourage everyone.

The book is simply an expansion of the opening sentences quoted above, step by step, examining the character of God, the nature of grace which comes to us in the good news of Jesus, and how we are freed to live and love as a result of receiving the love of God. McKinley writes openly and honestly, sometimes with moving accounts of the author’s relationship with his autistic daughter and how he has learned to listen to God as He teaches him through his life with her, in all her joys and struggles.

The cry of our soul is for freedom, it is what we were made for and what we lost in Eden. Freedom is what we are offered again in the gospel of Christ and yet each day for the Christian seems to be the struggle to take hold of what we have been given. This book is a huge help in that struggle. I am very grateful for this book and recommend it heartily - easily one of my best reads of 2015 and I plan to re-read it regularly. As Tim Keller says in his recommendation of this book, “This is great, practical theology.”