Challenging the idea of relying on impersonal “God experts,” Secondhand Jesus by Glen Packiam (978-1-434-76639-7, $14.99, David C. Cook), releasing this month, encourages readers to bypass outside opinions and discover a faith all their own.

A songwriter and one of the founding members of Desperation Band, based out of New Life Church in Colorado Springs, Colo., Packiam urges readers to a passionate pursuit of a personal relationship with Jesus.

“God wants us to know Him deeply and personally,” Packiam writes. “But there are no shortcuts to God. The Bible tells us that ‘the way to life—to God—is vigorous and requires total attention.’ ”

In the first chapter, Packiam describes in detail the life-changing day he learned of the 2006 allegations involving his church’s senior pastor, Ted Haggard, an event that placed the church in the center of a media firestorm and shook its members and staff to the core.

Packiam confesses to a level of pride he felt before that day came, joking that he and his co-workers were “dropping more names than Old Testament genealogy” before news of the scandal broke.

“Thursday came and everything changed: my unshakable ‘good life’ became a nightmare of uncertainty. Would the church implode? Would everyone leave? Would I have a job next week? Could I ever get hired in ministry again? The songs, the influence, the success, the notoriety—it all became foolishly irrelevant,” he writes.

Packiam describes how the event triggered a time of introspection.

“The more my wife and I searched our own souls, the more we realized we had become passive, complacent, at times even indifferent about our own knowledge of God,” he writes. “We had been lulled to sleep by our own apparent success, numbed into coasting by our spiritual Midas touch.”

In the book, Packiam dissects “rumors” on the nature of God, including “God will give me what I want,” “God can be added to my list of priorities” and “God prefers specialists.”

He uses the lives of biblical characters Job, Jacob and David as examples of those who sought to have a personal relationship with God.

“It’s time to hear the magnificent, divine invitation,” he writes. “It’s time to take God up on His offer and embrace the mystery and majesty of knowing Him for ourselves.”

Packiam observes that no one can take a person’s place as a child of God: “There are a million angels who sing God’s praise, but only I can love God as the child He created and redeemed. Someone else can serve Him and do the things He has given me to do, as important as those things are. But no one else can give Him my love, my worship.”

Beginning May 15, Secondhand Jesus is being promoted through a “Hear It First, Read It First” campaign sponsored by David C. Cook, Integrity Music, HearItFirst.com and Gibson/Epiphone Guitars.

For more information or to order, call 800-323-7543, or visit David C. Cook at bookstores.cookministries.com.

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