You Can Take It with You: How You Live Now Can Determine Your Heavenly Reward

In You CAN Take It With You, Doug Schmidt responds to the tension and struggle many Christians experience between grace and responsible Christian living. Throughout the book, believers are called to self-evaluation and to be found trustworthy of God's rewards through faithful living that honors God. In response to God's grace and reconciliation, the reader is challenged to live the Christian life in a wise and responsible manner in consideration of the potential rewards and degrees of responsibility one will receive from God. Believers are encouraged to seek God's trust by being faithful in the little things and moving forward in the Christian life to eventually reap the benefits God has to offer. This process begins with God's grace and manifests itself in the practice of goodness, growing in the knowledge of God, exercising self control, persevering in the face of loss, discerning the voice of God, demonstrating kindness and compassion, and loving others as we would want to be loved. Schmidt concludes by emphasizing that those persons whom God trusts, though not perfect, accept full responsibility for the times they fall short of honoring God and courageously take the necessary steps to make the needed corrections to prevent the failure from happening again. Schmidt accomplishes his purpose by effectively challenging the reader to reflection and self-evaluation of how he or she lives the Christian life in expectation and anticipation of the rewards to be received from God. Those who seriously read You CAN Take It With You and ask of themselves how trustworthy they are to God will be moved to take greater responsibility for how they live out their faith here on earth and consider the difference it will not only make in the here and now but also in heaven when they receive their final rewards from God.

Doug Schmidt has tackled a difficult topic with clarity and precision. He has sounded a call for Christians to live a life of commitment each day on earth. This book explores a number of key characteristics for Christians such as grace, faith, goodness, knowledge, self-control, perseverance, godliness, kindness and love. I love this quotation on page 178-179: "When it comes to bearing fruit, we must also keep in mind that apart from Jesus we can do nothing. We must abide in him. Abiding in Jesus, according to Michael Breen, simply means to rest in such a way that the Holy Spirit can renew our bodies, minds, and spirits so that we can tackle the new challenges that he has in store for us. The person whom God trusts consistently bears spiritual fruit with the time, resources, and ability that God has provided." This title is thought-provoking and well-done. I recommend it.

Yes, there are a good number of Christian books out there, but far too many of them I find to be rather superficial, even cursory. Far too many fail to ask the tough questions and examine the range of in-depth answers. Such, however, is not true of this book. Doug Schmidt delves deep into how final things are being determined now--by how we are living out our lives now. Thankfully, he avoids the shallow escape-route explanations given by those too lazy to ask the difficult questions, much less provide real answers. For instance, he hazards himself out onto a Protestant limb with the chapter, "Protestant Purgatory." (My favorite chapter in the book, I kept re-reading it, kept looking for new insights--just as I would by re-watching a favorite movie!) This chapter, placed early as to be one of the formative chapters of the book, takes a creative yet risky approach that is superbly explained. Indeed, the author isn't afraid to examine both the degrees of punishment in hell and the degrees of reward in heaven; he isn't afraid to inspect how God goes about disciplining His adult children; he isn't afraid to scrutinize our built-in fear of loss as well as our intimate longing for reward. Peppered throughout are sidebars and quotation columns adding depth to the chapter topics, such as the "Kingdom Spotlight," which insightfully examines the past, present, and future workings of God's eternal kingdom. By scanning the whole of Scripture but also making use of his own fictional account of discussions in a philosophy class, he weaves into this fabric a beautiful common thread that constantly revisits how our relationship with God is not so much based on how much we trust Him but on how much He can trust us--that life is, in essence, a trust-building process.