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Kindle Notes & Highlights
by
Francis Chan
Read between
October 28, 2018 - January 20, 2019
we still need to be reminded that God is bigger than we think. We need to be awed by His unfathomable love for us.
want you to understand that the only sane response to His love is a wholehearted devotion to Jesus.
the crazy people in this world are those who experience God’s love and remain complacent,
we’ve missed who we are supposed to be,
we’re missing out on all that God wants for the people He loved enough to die for.
grew up believing in God without having a clue ...
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think biblically rather than conventionally,
don’t want to plateau, those who would rather die before their convictions do.
by surrendering yourself totally to God’s purposes, He will bring you the most pleasure in this life and the next.
He wants us to love others so much that we go to extremes to help them. I believe He wants us to be known for giving—of our time, our money, and our abilities—and to start a movement of “giving” churches.
The crux of it all is why we are this way, and it is because we have an inaccurate view of God. We see Him as a benevolent Being who is satisfied when people manage to fit Him into their lives in some small way. We forget that God never had an identity crisis. He knows that He’s great and deserves to be the center of our lives. Jesus came humbly as a servant, but He never begs us to give Him some small part of ourselves. He commands everything from His followers.
The wise man comes to God without saying a word and stands in awe of Him.
through creation, we see His “invisible qualities” and “divine nature.”
“Wow, God is unfathomably big”?
“Who do I think I am?”
“Men are never duly touched and impressed with a conviction of their insignificance, until they have contrasted them...
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His art, His handiwork, and His creation all echo the truth that He is glorious. There is no other like Him. He is the King of Kings, the Beginning and the End, the One who was and is and is to come.
There is an epidemic of spiritual amnesia going around, and none of us is immune. No matter how many fascinating details we learn about God’s creation, no matter how many pictures we see of His galaxies, and no matter how many sunsets we watch, we still forget.
Most of us know that we are supposed to love and fear God; that we are supposed to read our Bibles and pray so that we can get to know Him better; that we are supposed to worship Him with our lives. But actually living it out is challenging.
In our world, where hundreds of things distract us from God, we have to intentionally and consistently remind ourselves of Him.
We are programmed to focus on what we don’t have, bombarded multiple times throughout the day with what we need to buy that will make us feel happier or sexier or more at peace.
Reminded of Joseph when he turns down Potiphars wife
We forget that we already have everything we need in Him.
and the most portentous fact about any man is not what he at a given time may say or do, but what he in his deep heart conceives God to be like.2
Not being able to fully understand God is frustrating, but it is ridiculous for us to think we have the right to limit God to something we are capable of comprehending.
we are in no place to demand that He give an account to us.
All the peoples of the earth are regarded as nothing. He does as he pleases with the powers of heaven and the peoples of the earth. No one can hold back his hand or say to him: “What have you done?”
Can you worship a God who isn’t obligated to explain His actions to you? Could it be your arrogance that makes you think God owes you an explanation?
God is the only Being who is good, and the standards are set by Him. Because God hates sin, He has to punish those guilty of sin. Maybe that’s not an appealing standard. But to put it bluntly, when you get your own universe, you can make your own standards. When we disagree, let’s not assume it’s His reasoning that needs correction.
You and I are not allowed to tell Him how much He can hate it. He can hate and punish it as severely as His justice demands.
God never excuses sin. And He is always consistent with that ethic. Whenever we start to question whether God really hates sin, we have only to think of the cross, where His Son was tortured, mocked, and beaten because of sin. Our sin.
On the average day, we live caught up in ourselves. On the average day, we don’t consider God very much.
When I am consumed by my problems—stressed out about my life, my family, and my job—I actually convey the belief that I think the circumstances are more important than God’s command to always rejoice.
Worry implies that we don’t quite trust that God is big enough, powerful enough, or loving enough to take care of what’s happening in our lives.
Stress says that the things we are involved in are important enough to merit our impatience, our lack of grace toward others, or our tight grip of control.
Basically, these two behaviors communicate that it’s okay to sin and not trust God because the stuff in m...
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“You’re an idiot! How could you think this movie is about you?”
From start to finish, this movie is obviously about God. He is the main character. How is it possible that we live as though it is about us?
I want my two-fifths of a second to be about my making much of God.
Or maybe life is tough right now, and everything feels like a struggle. God has allowed hard things in your life so you can show the world that your God is great and that knowing Him brings peace and joy, even when life is hard.
The point of your life is to point to Him. Whatever you are doing, God wants to be glorified, because this whole thing is His. It is His movie, His world, His gift.
even though God has given us this life—this brief scene in His movie—we still forget we’re not in control.
Isn’t life always fragile? It is never under control.
Turning inward is one way to respond; the other is to acknowledge our lack of control and reach out for God’s help.
in the movie of life, nothing matters except our King and God.
the idea that God loves us.
was a concept I was taught, not something I implicitly knew to be true.
The very fact that a holy, eternal, all-knowing, all-powerful, merciful, fair, and just God loves you and me is nothing short of astonishing.
The irony is that while God doesn’t need us but still wants us, we desperately need God but don’t really want Him most of the time.
“Why would a loving God force me to love Him?” It seemed like a weird question. When I asked the student to clarify what he meant, he responded that God “threatens me with hell and punishment if I don’t begin a relationship with Him.” The easy retort to that statement is that God doesn’t force us to love Him; it’s our choice. But there was a deeper issue going on, and I wasn’t sure how to answer it in the moment. Now that I’ve had time to think about it, I would tell that student that if God is truly the greatest good on this earth, would He be loving us if He didn’t draw us toward what is
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They ask, “How far can I go before it’s considered a sin?” instead of “How can I keep myself pure as a temple of the Holy Spirit?”
