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Kindle Notes & Highlights
by
Ken Wytsma
Life is messy. God is mysterious. And accepting this tension-filled truth, no matter the circumstances, is the pathway to peace.
The secret to understanding where to go in life is found not in navigating our way to safety, but rather simply trusting in God’s leading. Trusting that He is good. Trusting that even if we don’t like where He takes us, He’s taking us there for a reason.
Faith is the art of living forward in obedience, not in the absence of questions like these, but in the face of them.
creative intellect is not faith. On my best days, it is part of my hope and belief in God’s goodness. On my worst days, it is less about faith and more about fantasy. My dreams may or may not have truth in them. Regardless, it is God I should follow in faith, not my imagination.
God requires surrender because that is the only way we can truly find Him. It is only there that trust is made real.
True faith is a radical obedience, a willingness to risk everything—surrender anything—with the belief God can, and will, reward the faithful and make firm our hopes.
One of the scariest and most confusing elements of Abraham’s story is that he was asked to sacrifice the very thing God had promised him—his son. To have faith, he had to believe that God would keep His promise, and he had to obey by destroying that promise. To have faith, we have to be willing to give up the promise itself—to hold the blessings of God more loosely than God Himself.
Conversational prayer that orients us to God—rather than prayer that tries to get God to orient Himself to us—informs our faith and makes it possible.
Availing ourselves of the precious privilege of gaining wisdom and direction from the Creator of the universe involves the work of establishing a focused and intentional pattern of communication with Him. If we desire to know God’s will and feel His presence in the critical moments of our lives, standing at crossroads or enduring dark nights of crisis, then we need to have established a natural and ongoing dialogue.
There is a tension to such discernment and decision making. That which calls us to act rationally can be the voice of God, which we need to obey, or it can be the voice of folly, tempting us to remain safe while ignoring God’s trustworthy call to step out in faith. Sometimes when we step out in faith, it flies in the face of wisdom. The art of distinguishing between the two is developed in the steadfast discipline of continuous communication with God.
We pray and seek God’s will as though He has a specific will for each of us—for each of the seven billion people alive today. I think it’s more accurate to understand Him as having one will that involves separate roles for each of those seven billion people. Rather than seeing myself as the central figure, I need to learn what the whole puzzle looks like so I can find where my little piece fits.
When a child cares about and participates in something the father does, there is a degree of like-mindedness, understanding, or appreciation that otherwise couldn’t be there to the same degree. For example, a son who gets to pack a lunch, grab a fly rod, and go to the river with his dad, who is passionate about fly-fishing, comes to know the heart of his father in a way otherwise not possible. Likewise, when we walk into the world with God, pursuing justice and seeing others and creation through His eyes, we come to know Him better. “For the LORD is a God of justice” (Isaiah 30:18).
Sometimes dreams or overly defined life goals can get in the way of God’s plans. Certainly, God can use goals, and often does, but we always have to hold them in loose hands, recognizing that God could want us to head a different direction, or stop short of reaching a goal, or do something that would make all of our dreams and goals unattainable because of how God chooses to use us.
“For centuries now our culture has cultivated the idea that the skeptical person is always smarter than one who believes. You can be almost as stupid as a cabbage, as long as you doubt.”
In the midst of suffering, answers don’t change the experience: love changes the experience.
We think the burden rests on God to erase our doubt. God knows that the burden rests on us to continue to trust and wait on Him, even in our doubt.
The old phrase “count your blessings” might be trite, but it’s apt. The discipline of remembrance is synonymous with the discipline of praise. I’m not saying we should praise God inauthentically by praying prayers we don’t mean or singing songs we can’t feel. But there is something powerful about disciplining ourselves to remember God’s blessings and reminding ourselves of times when we’ve felt His presence and goodness.
Sometimes the people God uses aren’t the ones we see as most important. They don’t come from where we expect, and they may not look significant.
Instead of asking what God’s will is for my life, I should be asking how I can serve God’s will with my life.
The solution to learning how to live for Christ isn’t more insight or more feeling, but more commitment. It isn’t about knowing more, but obeying more. In the midst of doubt, messiness, and confusion, rather than trying to uncover deep mysteries, we can always return to what we know already—
“Music is the sole domain in which man realizes the present.”
Because we follow and emulate our heroes, we must choose them intentionally. If we choose academic theologians, there will be no end to our trying to understand God. The bigger question might be, where should we begin our journey with God?
At some psychological level, we’re addicted to our approach to information, and it’s hard to resist the temptation to try to subtract by continuing to add.
“Human beings live in the tension between nature and spirit, between knowledge of our mortality and our intimations of transcendent meaning. Our highest hope and calling is to live responsibly in this tension.”
apparently I need to read more Reinhold Niebuhr.... #deep
The death of slow conversation and reflection means the death of interaction and deep exploration. What we are left with when everyone is trading conclusions is simply a choice between two sides of a conversation or argument.
Deep reflection and sustained dialogue lead to conclusions that are owned and understood.
We also grow through those negative aspects of church that we’d rather not acknowledge. We grow in Christ and grow in love by learning to work with challenging, negative people and stepping into leadership when necessary in order to pour time and wisdom into those less mature in their faith. Tilling the soil is useful toward the harvest, and breaking down a muscle makes it stronger. Much of what can be beautiful through community exists first in the messiness of community. When we realize the community is imperfect, we also realize that we are part of the imperfection that damages other
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The lament is an ode to the reality of heartache, a melody carried on in the plea for justice, but always followed with an assertion of God’s ability to deliver. It is a melancholy tune of faith sung from the depths of suffering yet with a deeply entrenched trust in the Divine.
Without lament, the people of God lose their means of voicing injustice, and worship devolves into disingenuous celebration and praise.12
Without a theology of suffering, we will assume something is wrong, broken, or out of balance whenever we face trials. We may then find ourselves wavering, frantically searching for prosperity and blessing that we believe is the Christian experience, rather than obediently moving forward in the steps of the Savior. Our comprehension of suffering as intrinsic to the life of the believer is essential if we are to find our voice among the faithful—among those who know lament.
Ken Wytsma is on point here...+ larger observations on how the church has forgotten the importance of the lament.
We all long for confirmation that God is listening. But often we are praying prayers that are so vague we wouldn’t notice if God answered them or not. Or, we find ourselves so afraid that God isn’t going to answer that we just don’t ask for anything at all.
Pascal is regarded as the founder of probability theory, and Pascal’s Wager is essentially an argument for belief in God in the form of a risk-rewards analysis. The point is that if you bet that God doesn’t exist and you lose, you lose everything (heaven, eternal life). If, on the other hand, you bet on God existing and lose, you lose nothing. It’s a simple win-win argument.
Gpa Arnold used this one often....good album title?
If we talk about living by faith, a large part must seek its ultimate resolution in the promised consummation, not in this life of struggle.
