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Every sin, at its root, is based in something we do not fully believe about God.
Unbelief is no small thing.
“To risk is to willingly place your life in the hand of an unseen God and an unknown future, then to watch him come through. He starts to get real when you live like that.”
I belittle the God of the universe by worrying as if he is not really in control.
But God is clear. The state of our invisible hearts takes precedence over all the good behavior, over all the bad.
he is God, we think he wants some song and dance from us—in other words, behavior modification. He actually just wants us. He longs to set us free. And yes, to accomplish
We aren’t so bothered by what sin and mistakes do to our relationship with God.
I sometimes just want and to have what I want. My actions can be mean and hurtful and I just don't care about the other person. I don't think about my sin at at all let alone ask forgiveness for it.
I think even those of us who appear bright and shiny feel a little twinge of this kind of shame. I think we all do. Even if we call ourselves good, deep down somewhere we know we are not. Darker, more disconcerting things sit just under everything nice about us.
The weight of my sin grounds me. Breaks me. Shows me I need Jesus.
When I get still and hear the loudest thing in me, it is often that I am chasing everyone but God.
Chasing everyone but God...things Like being good at My job, having colleagues like me and think I'm good too, it's. a about performance
But if I let him close anyway, we sit together on days like that, looking over the frantic river that is wearing me out.
Yes, I am in that chase as well
He was incredibly real to me, so I naively but passionately said, “I just don’t want to be normal.
This makes me laugh, I've so felt exactly the same except fear get in the way. What if I'm not normal? Ach!
He calls the shots on what happens to us in this short stint here. He calls them, whether we want to let him or not. Our faith must remain greater than our pain and our fears. We need different eyes, a different mind. One that lifts us above the seen and our short time here, above the fears that invade our lives, above the snapshots in our scrapbooks.
Wake up! This pursuit of me, it may cost you everything you hold dear, everything you love here. It may cost even your life. And until this life gets small, really small, and I get big, really big, you won’t truly follow me. Because loving this life too much will affect your love for me. It also will affect what you are willing to do for me.
With our minutes and days and decades, we build houses and savings accounts and busy calendars full of activity. And in some deeper way, we build our reputations and friendships and invest in our kids and careers. We are looking for this life to matter. No, we are actually looking for ourselves to matter. So we keep so busy, so distracted, so in love with everything but our invisible, patient, jealous God.
Time is almost gone. Our lives are only spent well on him and whatever stories he has written for us. What are we really so afraid of losing? Heaven feels far away, and we forget. But it is real . . . and it is coming.
God is real and he really sent his son in the form of a man to bleed out on assembled pieces of wood, to be the only worthy sacrifice, buying us from our sin, winning us back when we were running from him. And then he came back to life, because he was God.
“He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep
to gain what he cannot lose.”7
All my life I thought I had God’s stamp of approval because my life wasn’t going badly. Now I was faced with the fear that it might actually be the opposite. What if my life was going so beautifully because I wasn’t chasing after God?
I have been unbelievably challenged by this book...even at 2 a.m.
God, overcome me. Please.
Glory is the evidence of God
“It is my growing conviction that my life belongs to others just as much as it belongs to myself and that what is experienced as most unique often proves to be most solidly embedded in the common condition of being human.
Do your everyday and your ordinary. Godliness is found and formed in those places.
I hate pat answers . . .
I’ve been so programmed to perform as a ‘follower of Christ,’ and all God ever wanted was for me to surrender, to set aside the agenda and to follow. How easy, yet how challenging, when the world and even the church told or showed me the ‘agenda’ of what a Christian should be like, act like, look like. It’s so refreshing to live now.”
Our task today is recklessness.
Wherever you are, there are people in need both spiritually and physically. Where does God want to take your plenty and pour it out?
