At the Feet of Jesus

Bruce and Carolyn Hindmarsh’s At the Feet of Jesus: A Guide to Encountering Christ in the Gospels is an invitation to deeper spiritual intimacy. The book seeks to blend biblical insight, historical wisdom, and practical exercises.

The book centers on the gospel stories of Mary, Martha, and Lazarus, some of Jesus’ closest friends, and uses their encounters with Christ as a framework for readers to experience Jesus’ presence in their own lives.

Sadly (and oddly), the authors don’t appear to be aware of the bestselling book, God’s Favorite Place on Earth, which takes a fresh, groundbreaking look at Jesus in Bethany and the Bethany family (Mary, Martha, Lazarus, and Simon).

At the Feet of Jesus attempts to function as a guided spiritual retreat.

The Hindmarshes structure the book around a series of meditative reflections-prepare, see, reflect, respond, and review-encouraging readers to use their imaginations and senses to enter the biblical narratives.

They seek to integrate classic Christian practices such as lectio divina and imaginative prayer, drawing on the traditions of Ignatian spirituality and Puritan devotion.

The authors’ aim to give readers a personal encounter with the Lord through the book. If any of you read the book and it does this for you, I’d love to hear from you.

I was super glad to see that the authors recommended Craig Keener’s work. Keener – as most of you know – wrote the Foreword for my new book which unlocks the New Testament. Keener was also my historical advisor for God’s Favorite Place on Earth and the follow-up, The Day I Met Jesus.

Disclaimer: I don’t personally know the authors and have never heard of them until IVP mailed me their book. A lament I’ve articulated for years is that Christians who are seeking a deeper walk with the Lord and whom God is using toward that end don’t know one another. In some cases, they’ve never even heard of each other, despite that some of them are very well known in the body of Christ. The highly fragmented nature of the Christian community despite the Internet has fostered a lamentable isolation among leaders whom the Holy Spirit is using. I hope someday this will change.