TRANSFORMED LIVING
Living out your life (Ephesians 4-6)
By Dave Smith
CWR. 188 pages. £6.99
ISBN 978 1 782 595 878
This is the second volume of a two-part series of devotional daily Bible readings from Ephesians.
It underpins a seven-week church programme called ‘Transformed Living’. The programme also provides free sermon outlines, small-group videos and small-group studies which can be downloaded from the web. The aim of the series is to encourage churches and individuals to ‘live out the Christian life’. The author is Dave Smith, who became a Christian while studying for his doctorate at Oxford. He is the senior pastor of four churches, in Peterborough, Cambridge, Leicester and London, called Kingsgate Community Church which, along with his wife, he founded in 1998.
Each volume has 50 days of Bible readings. The devotions are about two pages long, written in an engaging style, followed by questions to ‘reflect and respond’ and there is a memory verse for each week.
There is very much that I like about this book. The author uses Scripture well. He bases his exposition on good commentaries by John Stott, Peter O Brien and Martyn Lloyd Jones, from whom he regularly quotes. As a scholar, he is willing to address difficult theological questions, putting the various points of view and then stating his own conclusion. All this is done in an easy and accessible manner, with a desire that lives are changed for Jesus Christ.
My hesitation is his basic theological stance. He is charismatic in theology and this pops up on about five occasions, although it is allowed as a possibility rather than pushed as a dogma. So, although this is a good practical devotional study guide to the second half of Ephesians, it must be born in mind that the author is a mild charismatic. However, a more mature Christian may benefit from applying these lessons to their life and learning from Scripture.
