World Magazine’s Dec 7, 2019 issue awards J-Curve: Dying and Rising With Jesus in Everyday Life, by Paul Miller “ACCESIBLE THEOLOGY BOOK OF THE YEAR.”

Marvin Olasky summarizes,

 

Paul Miller shows how the Bible teaches a pattern of dying and rising in the form of a J: We need to go down to come up. His message challenges the part of American evangelicalism that values winning and defines success much as the broader culture does, with adulation of celebrities and equation of suffering with failure. Miller shows through many examples that being born again often means the death of some previous ambitions, but the J-Curve is not a one-time experience: Miller calls the J-Curve “the spine of sanctification” and “dying and rising with Christ the normal Christian life.”

Miller is the son of seminary professor, Jack Miller who piloted The Sonship Course. That notebook and audio series was inspired by his grace awakeing through meditating on the Epistle to the Galatians, such as:

But when the fullness of the time had come, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, that we might receive the adoption as sons. And because you are sons, God has sent forth the Spirit of His Son into your hearts, crying out, “Abba, Father!” Therefore you are no longer a slave but a son, and if a son, then an heir of God through Christ. (Gal. 4:4-7)

The Sonship Course contains a helpful emphasis on grace, sanctification by faith and the believers identity in Christ. All of these themes are essential to revitalization.

World Magazine’s interview with Paul Miller is here: “Curving Heavenward.”