Book Review: Compelled by Love by Heidi Baker

Mary Poplin recommended Heidi Baker to me, and so I looked up her book online and bought it this week. Heidi Baker is often called the “Mother Teresa of Mozambique,” and now I know why. According to Mary, Heidi actually grew up in an affluent part of So. Cal, Dana Point, but has dedicated her life to living in the poorest of poor neighborhoods.  This book is her testimonial reflections on the Beatitudes, but I don’t know how to describe, without giving too much away, how amazing it is. 

Suffice to say, she actually lives out the Beatitudes, and each chapter is filled with accounts of miracles.   I’m not talking minor miracles like finding parking spaces during Christmastime at the mall.  I’m talking blind-seeing, deaf-hearing, food-multiplying, dead-being-raised kinds of miracles.  It is a short and easy book, 150 pages, big font.  Yet I cannot help but come back to it, over and over this week.  Ok, here are just two examples:

She talks about how she was compelled by God to witness to “Jane,” a woman in London who had been so abused that she was extremely hostile, and tried to beat Heidi to death.  During this time, a homeless man who she had been feeding (at times he would just spit in her face), saw the whole thing.  But because Heidi refused to let him call the police, and just kept loving Jane, telling her how much she is beautiful to Jesus, right when Jane was about to kill her, the homeless man dragged her away and said, “You’ve been telling me about Jesus’ love for 2 years, but tonight I finally saw it.  I want Jesus, too.”  Then, two weeks later, Jane also came to her and became a follower of Jesus.  I thought as I read this book, if I have the same Jesus in me, then who can’t I love?  I don’t even have anyone attacking me.  Christ love compels me.

Second– I would like to share some of the miraculous testimonies but I don’t want to spoil any of them, so I will just share this quote from the chapter on hunger and thirsting for righteousness:  “Even the poor do not like stale bread.  We cannot live on yesterday’s manna or old revelation.  Often in religious circles people are offered stale bread to eat, but no one wants it.  So we must press into His presence and be filled with His real, fresh food every day or we will grow stale.”  Amen!  Last year for a period of time, when I was really hearing from the Lord, I prayed every day, “Give us this day my daily bread, Lord, I need fresh manna!”   It’s been a while even since I prayed that because I hadn’t noticed how stale I was getting; it kind of crept in. Now, daily, I will also beg Him for fresh bread.

She says “Attending a conference is not enough.  You must eat and drink until you are dripping Jesus.  You must be so full of Him that you start leaking Jesus.  You must eat  alot– more than just twice a year.  You must eat enough for a nation. . . In order to function and make it through ond day, I have to spend hours every day alone with my Jesus.  I must have His presence or I cannot survive.  I am often on my face in His presence.  So I stay hidden in His heart, soaking in the secret place.”  She goes on to say, “Learn to eat and drink from the Word.  Fill your hunger and thirst with the Word.  Jesus is the Word– the Bread of LIfe.  See him in the Word, in the poor, and in the face of the hungry ones on the street.”  Amen!  I was rekindled in my heart to spend that precious, secret time with Him.  This sounded just like Paul in Ephesians:  “I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through His Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith.”  I believe this is the same process, eating the Bread of Life = strengthening our inner being, building up the inner man, so that Jesus shines, literally bursts, out from our hearts.   This is our only option as a church.  Otherwise, we find our hearts instead becoming hard, which then causes darkened understanding, separation from the life of God.  (Eph. 4:18)

I hope by this book review you don’t feel like I just introspectively got depressed that she is so spiritual and I am a blind, naked, poor mess.  That was not the only thing I took away from this book, and I hope you don’t, either.  Instead, the main point was  I felt overwhelmed at how much God is REAL, He is ALIVE, He loves us, He longs for us, He hungers and thirsts for us, and I can enter into His presence, and a life with Jesus is worth any sacrifice.  Life with Jesus is the most joyful life, because He is the most joyful person, “Thou hast annointed me with the oil of joy,” and “who for the joy set before Him, endured the cross.”

Next time, another fantastic book called Rules of Engagement, by Derek Prince.