Experiencing God at Home by Tom and Richard Blackaby

Recently I was contacted again by Shelton Interactive to review another book. I jumped at the chance as it was Experiencing God at Home by Tom & Richard Blackaby. I have been a fan for some time of Experiencing God by their dad, as the principles of Experiencing God are fundamental for every Christian and have been very helpful for me. Although Shelton Interactive generously shipped the book to me in Asia, the opinions are my own.

Leading Your Children to Experience God for Themselves

In Experiencing God at Home, Tom and Richard take their dad’s 7 truths from Experiencing God and apply them to the family and home life.  They fill the book with personal stories and anecdotes from the Blackaby family, which bring these truths to life. The goal of the book is to help you lead your children into experiencing God for themselves.

Here are the main truths of this book:

1. God Is at Work Around You and Your Children
2. God Calls Your Family Into a Love Relationship
3. God Invites Your Family to Join Him
4. God Speaks to Your Family
5. God’s Invitation to Join Him Leads to Your Crisis of Belief
6. Your Family Must Adjust Its Life to Join Him
7. Your Family Can Experience God as You Obey Him

Some Suggestions in Reading This Book

With a goal and topics like that, which parent would not want to read this book? However I did find two things that I would add to the review (these are my opinions which you may not agree with).

1. Going through the Experiencing God workbook would be a better use of your time to make sure you get these truths deep into your convictions. While this book explains the truths, it does seem to assume you are familiar with them.

2. I would encourage you to skip the first seven chapters. There is nothing wrong with them, but chapter 8 starts the meat of the book and it is easy to miss the richness this book offers if you tire out in the setup. Chapters 2 – 5 would be a good appendix and chapter 6 would be a great introduction.

Concluding Thoughts on Experiencing God at Home

Please don’t take my last comments wrong. This is a long book, and there are some great thoughts included inside. Chapters 8 – 17 are wonderful. There is no question that Tom and Richard live out these truths at home and have shared many helpful experiences to give you insight to how to live these truths out yourself.

Their repeated examples of getting their kids to enter into other people’s pain and life experiences are worth the book. As we get our kids to taste and see that God can and wants to use them, these God experiences become fuel for their personal relationships with God the rest of their lives.

That is our goal as parents. It is not to make nice, well-behaved children; it is for them to experience God for themselves. Tom and Richard end the book with this quote, with which I wholeheartedly agree:

“We trust that you love your family far too much to leave them where they are when you know there is still more of God for them to experience.”