Jack Alexander. The God Guarantee. Baker, 2017.

I am thankful that I read this book. I have to confess that there was not much new to me in it, but I needed to be reminded of the things the book shares.

The God Guarantee is subtitled Finding Freedom from the Fear of Not Having Enough. This book addresses that problem. For this reviewer, it brought me back to my first love (see Revelation 2:4), so to speak. I felt I knew these things and tried to live out these things when I was younger. I have never forgotten them, but perhaps I am not embracing them the way I once did. The very last two pages have the header “A Lifetime Journey.” That is it. Like many other things in life, as our journey continues we may need to be reminded of things we had learned before.

The author notes that the fear of not having enough could be material or it could be emotional. The point is very simple—he breaks down things into four parts which he relates to many Bible teachings but focuses on Jesus’ feeding of the five thousand.

The first thing is capacity. God has the capacity to do things. We trust Him with what He gives us, and He can do more for us. So in the miraculous feeding, the boy gave his lunch to Jesus. He had something to give. He had the capacity to give it. God had the capacity to increase what the boy started with.

Second is consecration. The boy gave the lunch to the Lord and the Lord, in turn, prayed over it and blessed it. It was given for God’s purposes and to help others.

Third come the challenges. We are fighting temptation and doubt. Even the disciples did not think there was enough to work with. Some had seen the wine miracle at Cana (John 2:1-11), but that was a while ago. Jesus told the disciples how to seat the people and how to distribute the loaves and fish. They needed order to handle such a crowd, and Jesus’ disciples, though questioning, did what he asked them to do. They had to take action, too.

Finally, there is community. Jesus used the disciples to help. He used what the boy contributed. So we are called to be part of a community of God, to serve, to give, and to share God’s blessings.

This encourages us to trust the Lord, to give generously, and to be part of a Christian community—both for help and to help others. It sounds like the Christian life.

N.B. The God Guarantee has a little quiz to tell us how well we participate in each of these four things. However, the web page that is supposed to evaluate the reader’s answers has been taken down. That was a minor disappointment.