Wild Goose Chase.

Book Review

Batterson, Mark. Wild Goose Chase. Reclaim the adventure of pursuing God. Multnomah Books. 2008
M.B.- lead pastor of Washington, DC’s National Community Church.

Comment. Henry.
Truth is multidimentional. This is true about our ‘pursuit of God’. Mark uses the analogy of a ‘Goose Chase’ (Celtic name for Holy Spirit is ‘the Wild Goose’) to explain his search for and/or pursuit of God. There are things about the analogy that don’t seem to fit into my own paradigm of the Holy Spirit however his thesis was helpful in adding to my understanding of a vital topic. There are many things that inhibit our pursuit of God. Mark calls them cages. This implies that we need to take action to escape from those cages and engage in our ‘Goose Chase. This resource focuses on being proactive in our pursuit of God the Holy Spirit.

“Nothing is more unnerving or disorienting than passionately pursuing God (the Holy Spirit). And the sooner we come to terms with that spiritual reality, the more we will enjoy the journey.” (2) There is danger in genuinely following Christ. Our Christian life becomes stagnant when we become ‘caged’ by responsibilities, routine, assumptions, guilt, failure, and fear.

We need to follow God-ordained passions to escape these cages. But first we must discover these passions. Effective prayer will always lead to purposeful action. “Passions and purposes of God converge.” (34)

We are surrounded by miracles but they become ordinary because they are constants, e.g. sunrises and sunsets. “Where you are geographically affects where you are spiritually.” (50) To keep good routine from becoming stale there must be continual change. Small change can be effective. Assumptions can become very limiting.

No days are so bad that we are beyond God’s grace and no days are so good that we are not in need of God’s grace. “We can’t appreciate the full extent of God’s grace until we realize the full extent of our sin.” (99) Guilt has a vicious way of hanging around. It is a conditioned response. E.g. what did Peter think every time he heard a rooster crow?

Failures or apparent failures are very often things that become significant events for growth and development. Exchanging fear with courage is a choice. “Small acts of courage change the course of history.” (155) e.g. Martin Luther’s ninety five theses.

It is suggested that we live “today as if it is the first day of our life and as if it is the last day of our life”. (166) In our pursuit of God (the Wild Goose) we must be aware of cages that will eliminate us from that pursuit.