Echo: Unbroken Truth Worth Repeating, Again

In his book, Echo: Unbroken Truth Worth Repeating, Again, Pastor Jonathan Fisk covers the basic truths of the Christian faith in a unique way.

In telling this truth, Pastor Fisk exposes how the Old Adam, the sinful self, perceives and responds to daily life.  Pastor Fisk refers to this Old Adam as “Me.” 


And I can relate to everything that sinful “Me” thinks, feels, and wants.  Whether we realize it or not, Christians all have the same struggles.  And I appreciate how Pastor Fisk is able to convey that message throughout the book. 

I especially value these points from Echo.

1. Pastor Fisk presents the Ten Commandments as The Ten Important Things About Being Creation.  By habit, we focus on the Ten Commandments as rules that we can follow or break.  

But Pastor Fisk's focus is that God created the world as a gift for us.  And this gift, all of creation, was meant to operate on the principles of the Ten Commandments.  God, His Word, our body, family, stuff, our name, happiness...they're all gifts.

2. In the Seventh Thing About Being Creation - God Gave You Stuff, Pastor Fisk takes on the Westminster Confession's famous phrase: "What is the chief end of man?...the chief end of man is to glorify God."

Although the Confession's answer sounds really good, Pastor Fisk’s response rings truth:

The chief end of man is not to give glory to God, but to receive it from Him.  He didn’t need people to worship Him…He wanted people to give things to…We enter God’s glory when we realize that He is the giver of all good things to us, when the direction is not up but down, when the worship is not flattery but thanksgiving…He wants us to take what we find in the world and share it with one another, because that is what He made it for.

3. The finale chapter - The Crux of the Matter - brings the ideas in the book together, and I keep coming back to this passage...

...waiting for mercy while mercifying one another, is the closest to imitating God that we will ever come in this age. 

Giving mercy to one another is imitating God.

Before healing a man, Jesus once said, 

Son, your sins are forgiven.  Mark 2:5

And the people were mad, saying that only God had the power to forgive sins.

Jesus also said, 

Which is easier, to say..."Your sins are forgiven," or to say, "Rise, take up your bed and walk?"  Mark 2:9

My thought is...the forgiveness is harder than the healing.  To Jesus, forgiveness meant the cross.  He died on the cross for that man's forgiveness, for my forgiveness.

And for me, to show mercy and to forgive someone...it's hard.  It hurts my pride; it hurts my sense of "Me."  

My prayer for my life, that I pray every day, is that I can show mercy to others, love others, forgive others...as I have been forgiven.
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Thanks, Pastor Fisk, for writing this book.  Echo should appeal to and be read by every Christian because it's about each one of them.