title: Undefended: Discovering God when Your Guard Is Down
author:  Daniel Bush 
description: Reading a Daniel Bush book is always a delight! <i>Undefended: Discovering God When Your Guard Is Down</i> is not the exception. This book is incredibly refreshing and profound--and so practical. Here, you will find real-life "hard places" and the good news that Jesus shows. It's the kind of book one reads often to be reminded that one doesn't need any defense but Jesus because, in his love, grace, and acceptance, there is nothing to defend. In his presence (and thus the presence of others) one is free to laugh and dance with great joy and freedom. This is a book that could change your life.<br />--<b>Steve Brown</b>, radio broadcaster and founder, Key Life Network; professor emeritus of preaching and pastoral ministry, Reformed Theological Seminary; author of <i>Hidden Agendas </i>and <i>Three Free Sins</i><br /><br />Are we willing to let ourselves need God? In <i>Undefended</i> we are let in behind the scenes of one man's wrestling with this question and invited to ask it ourselves. As we do we may just find it's what we've wanted all along.<br />--<b>Mandy Smith</b>, author of <i>The Vulnerable Pastor</i><br /><br /><i>Undefended: Discovering God When Your Guard Is Down</i> is not a book that you will want to read cover to cover in one sitting. Instead, this is a book that you will want to walk through chapter by chapter, and let God speak to you in the depths of your heart, mind, and soul. By weaving together scriptural truths with relevant stories and illustrations that open us to see how we are not <i>Undefended</i>, Daniel Bush has provided us a guide to facilitate a release from the barriers in our lives that keep us from experiencing the full depth and breadth of God's grace.<br />--<b>James F. Kirkley</b>, associate professor, religion and ethics, Shaw University<br /><br />Forged in the fires of dryness, discouragement, and pain, Daniel Bush writes from experience: his defenses burned down, his soul exposed to his own weakness and vulnerability. He writes broken by an acute awareness of unfulfilled needs and the struggle to surrender to his heavenly Father. Although intellectual and astute, <i>Undefended</i> is no academic perusal. It's a story of spiritual awakening, the journey from personal competency and self-determination to broken dependency we all must make.<br /><br />If you're looking for a book of principles for spiritual maturity or steps to Christian joy, look elsewhere. <i>Undefended</i> stubbornly refuses to reduce the Christian life to a set of disciplines or propagate the notion that faith means denying the pains of this life and donning a veneer of niceness and joy. Again and again we're shown that Jesus came to save the sick, broken, and needy, that he meets us in our pain, our fear, our need, our loneliness--and even in our doubt. <br /><br />Christian growth isn't a byproduct of discipline or striving, but surrender to the inevitable reality of our own sinfulness and dependence upon the love and grace of the Father. For those wounded and wearied by life, here is hope that God is present in our life and may be discovered even now if we will only seek Him. An opportunity for a deeper acquaintance with His love is near.<br />--<b>Dr. Jeffrey Pipe</b>, licensed psychologist, Tapestry Associates, Marietta, Georgia<br /><br /><i>Undefended </i>strikes truth after beautiful truth at the bull's-eye of what it means to be human. In an age when vulnerability has arguably become glib, author Daniel Bush provides a refreshing reminder that when we guard our hearts in the love of Christ first, we are then freed to let down our guard to love others more fully. Informed yet accessible, with humor and humility, Bush offers poignant wisdom relevant to any life season, but especially to those times in which we are laid most bare. To me, this book will always be a timely, needed, and reorienting read. In other words, Bush indeed gives a blood transfusion to the anemic advice: "Just trust in God."<br />--<b>Dr. Carolyn Weber</b>, professor, speaker, and author of <i>Surprised by Oxford </i>and <i>Holy Is the Day</i><br /><br />Weary of defending a false self that proves over and over again to be indefensible? Ready to entertain the notion that the real you is on offer in the person of the only "True Self" ever to have lived, who lives even now to live in you, freeing you more and more from "pretense, people-pleasing, playacting, pomposity, self-protection, and phony, pharisaical righteousness"? If so, you are ready for this beguiling read from Daniel Bush. <br />--<b>The Very Rev'd. Dr. Reggie M. Kidd</b>, dean, Cathedral Church of Saint Luke, Orlando, Florida, and professor of New Testament emeritus, Reformed Theological Seminary Orlando
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  He made it home from a war zone.
  
  
  **_But danger remains in the mountains of Montana..._**
  
  
  Navy SEAL Brett Morgan has come home to recover after a disastrous deployment,
  desperate to remember what happened. As he struggles to find his feet as a
  civilian, he intervenes in an armed robbery, saving the life of waitress Anna
  Larkin. But there’s more to Anna’s past than meets the eye and as that past
  circles dangerously closer, Brett will have to draw on all of his combat
  experience to keep them both alive.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Please, God, let the guardrail stop her.
  
  
  Slowing carefully as he approached the curve so as not to go off the road
  himself, he started around the bend.
  
  
  No sign of the homicidal truck. And then he saw that the guardrail on this
  stretch of road was missing. A voice inside his skull started screaming, and
  the sound grew louder and louder as he stopped his truck. He jumped out before
  the wheels barely stopp