Craig T. Owens

The Old Testament prophet thundered out, “Thus saith the Lord!” and called the people back into a right relationship with God. The prophet’s words were not always well-received or well-liked, but they were always proved correct by God Himself. In many ways I felt like I was hearing a prophet’s voice in Leonard Sweet’s thundering words in What Matters Most, words calling us back into a right relationship with God.

The subtitle of the book is dead-on: How we got the point but missed the Person. Wow, how true that is! Christians and the Church today have so focused on getting the point of Christianity right, that we’ve missed the central point of CHRISTianity: Jesus Christ!

Leonard Sweet reminds us that we weren’t created to follow the rules of religion in isolated, solitary lives, but we were created to be in an intimate relationship with the Creator and with His creation. Sweet writes:

“What makes us human is the same thing that makes us created in the image of God. We are not isolated entities, self-contained, existing apart from God or from one another or even from God’s creation. We are made for “community” and “communion” and “ecology” …. We are judged by the world not on the basis of how “right” we’ve gotten what we believe but on how well we’re living it—on how we love God and people.”

So in What Matters Most Leonard Sweet focuses on those living relationships that should be the hallmark of Christians. Things like our relationship with…

• our faith
• our Creator
• other people of faith
• other people outside the faith
• creation
• arts
• the unseen spiritual world

As I wrote earlier, often the prophet’s message was not received well initially. This is how you may feel when you first read What Matters Most. But if you will prayerfully read through this book, I think you will find (as I did) how these words resonate with the “Thus saith the Lord” tenor of Scripture and cause you to reevaluate your relationship with God and others.

I am a Waterbrook book reviewer. Check out some of the quotes I shared from this book by clicking here.