A Look at a Book
by Breda Sunderland

BOOK REVIEW:
Who Am I?
by Norman Grubb

Who can resist a book that promises “a fool-proof workable key to daily living”? That is what Norman Grubb delivers in Who Am I?, which was first published in 1974 and re-printed by Zerubbabel Press in 1997.

I distinctly remember reading Who Am I? for the first time in Summer 1996. Not long a Christian, I then grasped that the truth Norman teaches in this book could transform my life. Six years later, after re-visiting the book numerous times, I know that Who Am I? contains the “total answer” which Norman sought to the great existential questions.

Who am I? I am a person; God is the Person. I express my personhood by my freedom of choice. When you and I were born again we chose our “slave master”—Jesus Christ. Thereafter, what remains is the obedience of faith. Norman spells out that, as there is no “independent” I that can be obedient, faith is effortless (Chapter 4): “faith…is recognizing that He is there with the supply before there is the need.”

Who am I? I am spirit, and spirit is the only reality. When desperation drives us to surrender our lives to Jesus Christ, He who is Love always meets us at the level of our need. After the new birth we learn “to function as sons of the fourth (spirit) dimension in the environment of the third (physical) dimension” or as I’ve also heard this revelation expressed: “We are not physical beings on a spiritual journey; rather we are spiritual beings on a physical journey.” And Who Am I? is a wonderful roadmap (Norman’s comparison) for the journey.

Who am I? I am a vessel. I am simply a container which after the new birth contains the Holy Spirit. Norman explains how it almost always takes a crisis subsequent to the new birth in order for us to realize the simple truth of our union relationship. I love how Norman images us as being “cornered…to bring us to our final awakening.” Have you been “cornered” yet? I have and “praise God, Christ lives as me.” That which Norman writes in Chapter 18, “Be Yourself” is very liberating. Doesn’t the Spirit leap within you when you read:

“So this means at last that we accept ourselves…. We are meant to be precisely what we are…including what I have been in the past which I may regret…in all this I totally accept myself as being God’s precious person and He meaning me to be what I now am…. He has taken me all the way, including my ‘lost’ years.”

Who am I? I am His bodybuilder (another of Norman’s graphic comparisons). I’m an “other lover”—not so by self-effort (Norman warns us to “do nothing that stems from self-effort”)—simply by BEING:

“He knows exactly how He will reach others by you in your special life’s situation.” (Chapter 26)

If you haven’t read Who Am I? I urge you to discover the treasure it contains; if you have, why not revisit it, and in Norman’s own words “see ever greater depths of the ultimate of revelation”?

Breda is vice-principal of a local second- level school in Ireland. She lives in Athy, County Kildare, with her children Maria (11) and Niall (10).