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God's Amazing, Yet Strange Ways

by Marilyn Haugen

September 27, 2012

@HaugenMarilyn

I’ve been reading in 1 Chronicles how David inquired of the Lord and then did exactly as the Lord told him, even when the instructions were strange and weird. You could say the same thing about Joe Kissack’s story and journey in his book “The Fourth Fisherman”. Kissack tells his story of finding life in Christ and interweaves his own story with his drive to find three Mexican fisherman who were lost a sea for nine months. This is an intriguing story to say the least and will capture your interest.

Kissack is not the best writer in my book but gives us a book easy to read and tells an honest story. With his own story and those of the fisherman, I think there is a lot unsaid. He is telling his own story in a limited way exposing only some of the pain from an abusive father, the need to noticed and be loved by him. A classic story of great success and drive where the world gives Kissack everything, but it doesn’t satisfy him. His own story could have easily been one book, the fisherman another; yet I love how God weaves its together. When God wants to connect His people, there is nothing that can keep those people apart regardless of where they live.

God knew the truth had to told about these fisherman; and used Kissack to tell it. Kissack gives everything to tell it. He chooses to follow the Lord and not the world; unlike the rich ruler in the gospels. We meet Kissack’s wife through his eyes; but I’d love a book by her; a rare woman who stayed with her husband, committed through thick and thin.

For those who wrote a bad review I quote my favorite lines from the book: “Deep down inside the tough exteriors that are worn like armor, each man has a heart that is tender, that knows the truth. For many, the fisherman’s experience is beyond any realm of understanding, and because it doesn’t fit into a compartment we can fathom, we question what is true. When you haven’t experienced the miraculous, it’s hard to get your arms around it. We are pretty wired to the ordinary. That’s sad, because it leads us to dismiss the remarkable, the triumphant, the extraordinary, the supernatural. Those are compartments many of us don’t have. As a result, we deprive ourselves of these dimensions to life.”

I received a copy of this book from WaterBrook Multnomah in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.