What is it like to be friends with God? What is it like to believe you are as righteous as Jesus? For some, these questions are as confusing as stoichiometry. But for Bridgeway Church pastor Chad Norris, these questions have forever impacted his identity, pastoral career, and published book, Mama Jane’s Secret.
Released on Feb. 13, 2018, Mama Jane’s Secret is named after Norris’s grandmother and personal hero, whose kindness on earth became a reflection of the Father for him. Norris grew in age and hunger for God, and he quickly learned that the Kingdom was about more than handing out fast passes to Heaven; it was about tapping into a spiritual family that held inheritances available on Earth.
“My life changed when I went from seeing Jesus as a theology to seeing Jesus as my literal big Brother,” Norris writes. “I’m not talking metaphorically. I mean that Jesus is literally my big Brother.”
Rather than providing a step-by-step recipe for friendship, Norris uses personal narrative and scriptural analysis to replace the religious spirit with a family tree. Each chapter scripts onto the reader’s heart a royal title of ‘Son’ and ‘Daughter’ in fresh tattoo ink.
“I think the 21st-century church struggles as much as the 1st-century church did to understand that we are God’s family,” Norris writes. “God is about intimacy.”
At some points, Norris asks his readers tough, point-blank questions to help them decipher signs of a spiritual-orphan spirit. No one is merely ordinary with the most powerful Father of time. No one is exempt from the same power that raised Jesus from the dead. And Norris’s mission is to help you believe it.
His writing is vulnerable, insightful, and emulative of his relatable preaching style. His connection with Father seeps through the pages and has you highlighting- and laughing- throughout each chapter.
“It was one of those awkward stares—” Norris remembers the moment he told his wife he would run a marathon to help himself lose weight. Her gaze was “like the one you get when you are caught going back to the dessert line at Golden Corral for the third time.”
Mama Jane’s Secret is Norris’s second published book, following Signs, Wonders, and Baptist Preacher, which was released in 2013. Both invite the reader into a deeper understanding of their Creator, but if the latter is Norris’s personal journey into the supernatural, Mama Jane’s Secret is a friendship testimony, one that reads like an invitation into the Father’s treehouse: a club into which you already belong.
For more information on Norris’s vision or current Kingdom work, visit his church family’s website here.
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In-Text Image by Kingdom Winds
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