Divine Detours: When God Messes Up Your Plans

by Sion Alford

God may give you a clear dream with an unexpected path.
 
We are impatient to get started. Once God confirms our life’s calling, we want to dive straight in. But God often orchestrates a detour for our benefit that prepares us for more than we could ever imagine.
 
The dream as you picture it may have to die to make way for a better one. Drawing from his own experiences, Sion Alford explores how believers


 

Genres: Christian

272 pages, Paperback

Published April 1, 2016

Reviews

[cloudyskye · Rating 3 out of 5]

I do agree with Scott's review. Sion Alford preached at my church two or three years ago, and that was wonderful. The book was a little difficult. Perhaps his insights don't translate so well into writing, I don't know.
What I liked were the chapters on pride-humility-manipulation, that really hit the spot. Also about brokenness as a prerequisite to humility. Interestingly enough today's sermon at my church was about messing up and being healed and repaired by God, with some lovely pictures of a Japanese technique of repairing broken dishes: by filling in the gaps and fractures with gold, thus creating beautiful patterns, unique to each dish, and making it more valuable in the process. A beautiful picture of God's work in our lives.
One typo towards the end: "diving detours". ;)

[Scott · Rating 2 out of 5]

A bit of a tough book to get through. The writing style is short chapters, full of pithy sayings, and it's sometimes hard to follow along with what the author is trying to say. There's not really a flow to the book - Sion really "detours" all over the place. A couple of chapters were good, where the author actually shares some personal details about his life, but the rest of the book is mostly a grab bag of Bible verses and the Western "read-and-apply" application to maximize our calling.

[Edward Arrington · Rating 5 out of 5]

Although I am a slow reader, I tend to rush through books at times and miss much of the message. I took my time reading this one so I could grasp the message better. After all, a book about God messing up your plans needs to be taken seriously. We all want to know why God messes up our plans, don’t we? He gives us a big dream and every way we turn, He seemingly has other ideas. As the author shares, God had given Joseph some truly big dreams about ruling over his family. Did Joseph wait for God to lead him in fulfilling those dreams? According to what we read in the Bible, Joseph acted just like practically every other teenager who has ever lived: it was full steam ahead for him. He thought the dream was for yesterday and he had already missed it. God quickly sent him on a detour. The author uses the Bible and events from his own life to help us get a better view of what God is up to when He sends us off on a detour. What we do while on that detour will have a huge bearing on whether or not the dream is ever realized as God intended it to be. Take your time and read this one carefully.

[Jaakko Ahola · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was an inspiring book. It's kind of Bible condensed in 250 pages. I have heard the author preach about this 4 years ago so the subject was somewhat familiar. I think the structure of the book was logical and the story was carried through well. It had a lot of teological and interesting details. Sometimes it was a bit hard to follow but towards the end it got easier.