Gloria and Dave Furman are a great example of the long term fruit of college ministry. Dave was a student involved in Cru at the University of North Texas when I was on staff there and has led in college ministry on four continents. Gloria became a Christian through a college ministry at North Texas.
Through their church in Dubai and their writing and speaking, Dave and Gloria are having an enormous impact on the world for Christ.
Dave asked me if I would read and review Gloria’s book and graciously sent me a copy of Glimpses of Grace: Treasuring the Gospel in Your Home.
Glimpses of Grace is Gospel-soaked and packed with Scripture as it explores: “How does the fact that Jesus himself bore our sins in his body on the tree so that we might die to sin and live to righteousness (1 Pet. 2:24) make a difference in my mundane life today?
I think one of the most helpful things in learning to live in light of the gospel is to see someone work through different scenarios and spell out how they preach the gospel to themselves. Gloria does a great job of diagnosing sin in her heart and showing how the cross of Christ intersects her life in mundane day to day struggles.
This book is not a quick read (thought it is rather short) and it doesn’t have any easy fixes – it doesn’t give 5 easy ways to be a better homemaker.
At first, I was frustrated by the book’s lack of “answers”. After several hours invested reading it, I wasn’t walking away with any easy solutions of how to glorify God in the mundane. I’m a list guy. I like bullet points and quick, easy-to-apply answers.
But I think Gloria is right in her approach. The reader will have to put in the effort for heart-probing gospel analysis.
And real change (and joy in living in the mundane) will not come from 5 easy steps. And it’s not quick. It will come from learning how to (and, in the case of this book: “watching” someone) apply the gospel to real life struggles.
Two chapters that stood out deal with Gospel Hospitality and Pain- in which Gloria shares honestly about their struggles as church planters in Dubai and her husband Dave’s debilitating nerve damage in his arms.
I recommend this to not only homemakers but all Christians (including men and single women).
The book gets rave reviews from a who’s who of Christian bloggers from John Piper to Jennie Allen to Challies to Justin Taylor.
And here’s some good insight on why men should read it.
To get a taste, here are some great quotes from the book:Â
I used to believe that this journey of sanctification–the adventure of God working in me, both to will and to work for his good pleasure (Phil. 2:13)–would only be accomplished when I am free from the “distractions” of my life…I saw my roles as wife, mother, homemaker as things that detracted, or took away from, my spiritual life. For example, if I set my alarm clock to attempt to wake up before one of my babies and had my plans foiled, then I would think, “Well, there goes my communion with God today! Thanks a lot,_____!”
Glimpses of Grace is about how God’s power in the gospel can transform us for his glory as we live by faith–right where we are in the mundane of our homes. It’s about how God has made us new in his likeness of true righteousness and holiness (Eph. 4:24). The grace of God in Christ radically changes us. But how does he change the way we wash the same dishes every day?
 “If God doesn’t rule your mundane, then he doesn’t rule you. Because that’s where you live.”
The grace of God is “training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age.” Consider this book a gospel training manual in living for God’s glory in the mundane.
The dirty dishes are not my biggest problem in life, even though it seems like they are when they’re stacked up to the ceiling and I’ve got a million other things to do. The biggest problem in my life and yours is sin.
Dirty dishes in the sink or red crayons smushed into an electrical socket by a curious toddler are not just worrisome ordeals in your otherwise uneventful day. They’re opportunities to see glimpses of grace.
Re-preaching the gospel and then showing how it applied to life was Paul’s choice method for ministering to believers, thereby providing a divinely inspired pattern for me to follow when ministering to myself and to other believers.
Your spiritual life is not restricted to early mornings before the noisemakers in your life wake up. If you feel that God meets with you only when the house is empty or quiet, you’ll view every noise and every noisemaker as an annoying distraction to your communion with God. Or worse–there are times when I’m tempted to think of my whining toddler or ringing doorbell as obstacles that Satan has put in my way to take my eyes off Jesus. The temptation is to believe that if you could only transcend this spiritually devoid existence, then you could meet with God on a higher level. This idea is not only practically impossible and pastorally unhelpful, but it is unbiblical as well.
When any of these good things turns into something we resent or complain about because we feel it is an obstacle to fellowship with God, our heart has manufactured an idol.
The purpose of a home is to serve the people who live there and the strangers who are invited in. Homemaking as unto the Lord is an adornment of the glorious gospel!
What does life-changing faith look like on a day-to-day basis in the midst of the mundane? Simply put, faith looks backward and forward. Faith looks backward to the cross and believes that Jesus has purchased every spiritual blessing for us with his blood (Eph. 1:3). Faith also looks forward to the reward of all that God has for us in Christ. This is the kind of faith that changes the way you live today and makes you into a homemaker whose goal and delight is in God and in being conformed to his image.
Contentment can’t come from Action Steps…Rejoicing in the Lord is primary to your contentment, because only the Lord can eternally and sufficiently satisfy your soul…Learning the art of contentment involves thanking God for the things he’s given us. Our gratitude to God for his blessings is a vehicle that God uses to give us something far more satisfying, namely, himself…God is the giver of all good gifts (James 1:17) and he uses these gifts to raise our soul’s affections to greater heights than any good thing in this world ever could. All of God’s gifts serve this purpose–to raise our soul’s affections for him.