Book Review: “Gentle and Lowly” by Dane Ortlund

My friend Rich Crosby was the first one that told me about this book. We were talking at the local playground one morning and he told me how much it blessed him. He wanted me to read it.

Then, over the next few months it kept popping up in conversation, as different friends who were pastors had read it and had been moved and blessed by it.

Here’s the thing though, they were all Calvinists. And, this book was published by Crossway, which to my knowledge only publishes from that theological position. I’m not a Calvinist.

So, I don’t remember how I got a copy of this book. I may have grabbed it at the same time that I snatched “If You Can Keep It” by Eric Metaxas out of the lending library at Tennessee River Baptist Church a couple of months ago.

Anyway, I finished it a couple of days ago.

And…

Every Calvinist should read it! It provides a necessary correction to their view of God. I could see this being cold water to a heart that has been imbibing the neo-Calvinist idea of God.

If you don’t feel close to God, or have never experienced the love of God, or have listened to a lot of John MacArthur, John Piper and so forth (why are they all “Johns?”), may I encourage you to read this book?

A great way to do it, is to take a chapter a day, as a devotional and read it and meditate on it. Another idea would be to take a chapter a week, and read that chapter every day so you can meditate on it. There’s some wonderful truths about God, that God says of himself that have been neglected.

The title comes from Jesus’s autobiographical statement… “I am gentle and lowly of heart and you will find rest for your souls.”

Sadly, this book didn’t strike me as profoundly as it did my Calvinist friends. I’m happy for them, don’t get me wrong. But, I find that these books by Calvinist authors are more difficult for me to connect with.

For this topic, I was much more blessed and encouraged by “Love – The More Excellent Way” by Chuck Smith. That book was excellent. It’s the distillation of his teaching and meditating on the love of God over fifty years. It’s far more accessible, far more practical and exponentially deeper.

Have you read either of those? What do you think? I want to know.