A Look at a Book
by Anonymous

BOOK REVIEW: Norman Grubb’s The Key to Everything.

In the past thirty years, I have given away well over one hundred copies of The Key to Everything, a small booklet of sixty–one pages by Norman Grubb. Just yesterday a salesman came by the house and ended up telling me about the concern he had for his troubled son. After we had talked, I gave him a copy of The Key to Everything. He was so excited that instead of taking the time to read it himself, he took it straight to his son. My enthusiasm must have been contagious.

This little booklet has the answers to life’s problems. That is a bold statement (as is the booklet’s title) but hear me out. The author begins by recounting his personal experience of desperation and inadequacy as a young man on the mission field in Africa. The first thing he says he had to learn was that God is "all and in all." But what did that mean? From the verse "God is love" (I John 4:8), he saw that love is a person. "God is love." The same was true with power and everything else in the universe. These were not attributes that God gave to people to use, but rather the person of Himself who was those things.

So, when we receive God through His Son Jesus Christ, we receive the only one who can live the abundant life. Because we are joined to Him and are one spirit with Him (I Cor. 6:17), He lives that abundant life in and by us. We function as one person, yet remain two.

In light of this, Norman says he came to learn that "self–improvement is both a sin and an impossibility." He says "Another (God) is the one who inspires the prayers, imparts faith and thinks the thoughts through our minds and expresses His compassion through our hearts and puts our bodies into action." Every problem becomes an opportunity. Every tough spot becomes a chance to enjoy the luxury of seeing Him deliver us, and we welcome such spots. If Jesus said, "Of myself I can do nothing:’ who are we to think we can?

Norman goes on to say we have to learn to discern between soul and spirit (Heb. 4:12). He has a wonderful explanation of this, emphasizing how crucial to life it is to understand this difference in order to live from our true spirit center rather than from our soul feelings.

He then describes the origin of sin. Lucifer, a created being meant to reflect the light of God, "refused to contain the selfless Self of God, but chose to live for and by himself." Lucifer became the sin spirit, the spirit of self–love, and self–seeking, and all the sins known to man proceed from that.

Norman then speaks of the fall of man in the garden, and the consequences–that the whole human race became children of the Devil. The Bible describes it as "the spirit (Satan) that now works in the children of disobedience." Quite a dilemma! But Norman explains how God had the solution. In the person of His Son, He came to earth and though sinless, He took upon Himself the curse of the broken law and died for us all by His shed blood and was raised for our justification. Secondly, His death on the cross solved our problem by cutting us off from the spirit of Satan who indwelt us. Galatians 2:20 says we died with Christ. So in His death, the sin spirit was cut off from us and we were resurrected with Him unto new LIFE with him. "This is the most tremendous and dynamic event in human history." "The enslaved condition of humanity through the indwelling spirit of self centeredness, with which every man is born, was ended at the cross!" "…and again as our representative, was raised from the dead, and so it is our old spirit (Satan) was replaced by our new spirit, Jesus."

This booklet has been the key to opening many doors for folks and giving them the opportunity to come to know who they are in Jesus Christ. I hope you will order a bunch of them. I am, because I just gave my last two copies away to two new people in our Bible study.