Salty: The Deconstruction of a Good Christian
About The Book
“Growing up, I wanted to desire God. But I never desired him like I desired popularity, pizza or People magazine. . . . It was infinitely easier to play the part of the good Christian than to actually live like one.
Hollylu Jostes was a good Christian. From the outside, she was everything Proverbs 31 required. But inside her foundation was fundamentally flawed. She wanted God but not at the cost of everything. She wanted to be “in the fold” and saved from damnation without it affecting her decisions on any given day. In the club but not a Gold Star member. This is the problem with lukewarm faith—it kills you before you feel it killing you.
Weary of claiming a faith that promised supernatural and transformational power, yet living with fear, anxiety, and doubt, Hollylu was at the ultimate fork in the road: reject her faith or stop thinking so deeply about it. The third option wasn’t even on her radar: total commitment to God.
Salty: The Deconstruction of a Good Christian will take you on Hollylu’s journey as she examines her faith in relation to her everyday life. Her refreshingly candid story—full of feisty exchanges with God—will inspire you to live as salt of the earth and as an agent of change, fully surrendered and transformed by Jesus.
About The Author
Hollylu Jostes
Hollylu Jostes is an author, speaker, teacher, speech pathologist, wife, mother, reforming control freak, and coffee junkie. She has a master of science and has worked in the medical field for three decades. With a minor in biblical studies, she has written and taught women’s Bible studies for twenty years. Hollylu lives in the Pacific Northwest with her husband, Michael, who is her rock. They have two grown-ish children, Annalee and Teddy, who live in different zip codes but are still on the Netflix account. Hollylu is solidly behind her crew—mostly because she loves them, but also for coffee and tech support.
Quotes from... Salty: The Deconstruction of a Good Christian
If the devoted, lifelong followers of Christ—those tasked by God to be like salt—comprise 20 percent of our communities, why are we not the most unstoppable force of goodness in the world today?
But no matter what I tried, I couldn’t get that internal change the Bible talked about.
When we aren’t growing internally with Christ, the gap between what we profess to believe and what we experience will ever widen until we just sort of shrivel up.
When we accept a form of Christianity that doesn’t make internal transformation an absolute requirement, we strip ourselves of the power of God.
Because while I had fully accepted Jesus’s offer as my ticket to escape sin and enter heaven, I hadn’t accepted the notion that God wanted all of me—every single cell, every thought, every wish.
It wasn’t about working harder, it was about surrendering more.
I was God’s warrior, which was infinitely more interesting than my previous form of doing faith.
He worked at a level I couldn’t access on my own, and the softening reaped benefits all over the place with the people I cared about most.
We must embrace an understanding of the Gospel that places emphasis not only on the amazing forgiveness of sins, but also on our commitment to enslave ourselves to Christ.
Until I shifted my thinking—until I learned to un-see passive grace—I wasn’t able to see active grace.