Robert Boyd Munger - My Heart-Christs Home

InterVarsity Press
P.O. Box 1400
Downers Grove, IL 60515-1426
World Wide Web: www.ivpress.com
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2010 by Robert Boyd Munger

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from InterVarsity Press.

InterVarsity Press is the book-publishing division of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship/USA, a movement of students and faculty active on campus at hundreds of universities, colleges and schools of nursing in the United States of America, and a member movement of the International Fellowship of Evangelical Students. For information about local and regional activities, write Public Relations Dept. InterVarsity Christian Fellowship/USA, 6400 Schroeder Rd., P.O. Box 7895, Madison, WI 53707-7895, or visit the IVCF website at www.intervarsity.org.

The Scripture quotations quoted herein are from the Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright 1946, 1952, 1971 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the U.S.A. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Design: Cindy Kiple

ISBN 978-0-8308-6369-3 (digital)
ISBN 978-0-87784-075-6 (print)

Robert Boyd Munger, author of the best-selling book My HeartChrists Home, died February 16, 2001, at age 90. He earned degrees from the University of California at Berkeley, Princeton Theological Seminary and Whitworth College.

Ordained as a United Presbyterian minister, he served as pastor of several congregations, including the First Presbyterian Church of Berkeley, California, where he first preached the sermon My HeartChrists Home. Munger also served for many years as a professor at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, California. His other books include What Jesus Said; New Life to Live; Jesus, Man of His Word and Leading from the Heart.

My HeartChrists Home has been one of the most beloved pieces of Christian literature of our time. With over ten million copies in circulation, it has introduced countless people around the world to what it means to bring every aspect of our lives under the leadership of Jesus Christ.

Its publishing history began in 1951. It appeared as an article in the June issue of HIS, the student magazine of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship/USA (IVCF), having come to the attention of the magazine after Robert Munger had preached it to a group of InterVarsity college students in the Chicago area. Requests to reprint the article were so numerous that the publishing division of IVCF, InterVarsity Press (IVP), decided in 1954 to publish it as a booklet, which sold for ten cents.

Many editions of the booklet have been produced in the fifty years since that time. After it was released by IVP, Revell Publishing Company included it in the book What Jesus Says. In 1963 Decision magazine reprinted a version of it, and beginning in 1972 the Billy Graham Association gave away hundreds of thousands of copies at crusades as follow-up material to those who came forward to make a decision for Christ. IVP asked Dr. Munger to expand the original booklet by adding more rooms and updating the language. This was published in 1992 and is the version you now hold in your hands.

Over the decades, InterVarsity Press has liberally granted permission to hundreds of individuals and organizations to republish all or some of the booklet in magazines, newsletters, books and (more recently) in many electronic formats, including on many websites. There have been slimline editions, large-print editions and Braille editions. Several dramatized versions have been adapted from the booklet and performed in churches. There is also a videotape version of one such adaptation available. In addition, the booklet has been published internationally in twenty-seven editions and sixteen languages.

InterVarsity Press itself has published a hardback, full-color gift edition, a hardback miniature book gift edition, a companion Bible study guide, and a childrens version produced in both a large format and as a bookletthe same format the original was published in.

What has made this message so widely loved? Why has it touched the hearts of so many people all over the globe? At the end of this book, Dr. Munger offers his own musings on this very question. Certainly its simplicity makes it accessible to everyone. The story is clear and straightforward, and it uses an analogy everyone is familiar withones home.

The story is simple but never simplistic, for turning ones life over to another, even to one as trustworthy and attractive as Jesus, is not an easy matter. The author does not minimize or trivialize this difficulty. So the story is also an honest one as well.

Another captivating aspect is that it comes to us in the form of a story, a story about a person, someone we can identify with, someone whose desires and fears are much like our own. The universal quality of the anonymous narrator of the story allows each of us to put ourselves in his place and imagine our own conversations with Jesus.

In this way, Jesus himself becomes very real, concrete and personal. He is not some misty figure from the distant past. Rather he is as real as a friend who sits and chats with us at the kitchen table. His character, his compassion, his grace come through and touch our hearts.

No doubt the most significant reason for the storys widespread ministry is that God, for his own purposes and for his own reasons, has chosen to use it to bless the lives of millions. InterVarsity Press considers itself privileged to be associated with this brief message that has had such a lasting impact. We look forward to what God will do through it in the next fifty years.

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