Resurrection Lifestyle - Book Review
Joseph Morris’s Resurrection Lifestyle stands as a breath of fresh air in a stale environment of works-based faith and infantile Christianity. In the past twenty or so years, “faith” preaching has moved from proclaiming the believer’s rights and privileges in the finished work of Christ to metaphysics, psychology, and even natural/herbal health cures. Tithing has evolved into the come-all means for God to move in the earth and on the believer’s behalf. Resurrection Lifestyle takes us back to the “first principles,” Christians as the “living letters” of Christ.
Without explicitly saying so, Resurrection Lifestyle is premised on Acts 5:20 where an angel instructs Peter and John to “go and stand and speak in the temple to the people all the words of this life.” Morris demonstrates that the believer has entered into this life” and how he should act on it and speak about it. In the book, he writes:
Jesus had the Spirit of God without measure. Because of that, there was a continual operation of the gifts of healing and working of miracles in His ministry. The fact that Jesus had the Spirit without measure indicates that we have it ‘with’ measure. Whatever measure I have, I need to be ready to operate in it. (13).
As proof of his premise, Morris shares some extraordinary experiences with the gift of discerning of spirits in his life and ministry. He adds to those many everyday experiences that should be concomitant to the Christian following God’s voice. In doing this, he typifies Ananeas, an ordinary disciple who was praying when Jesus suddenly appears to him and instructs him about Paul. One great example of our modern attitudes towards the Word and Spirit, worth the price of the book itself, is Morris’s story of the waterskiing pastor. The strength of Resurrection Lifestyle is Morris’s demonstration that an “average Joe” Christian already possesses the “life” due to Jesus’s finished work. The Christian’s responsibility is to act on what he already possesses.
This book is a nice surprise. I wish that there were more like this one.