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Somehow our spiritual experience makes the wrong things important and we end up distracted from his true life.
You can get so busy working for him that you lose sight of knowing him. Too little of it was motivated by their love for him or his for them. That made everything else they did not just worthless, but destructive actually.”
That is the secret to first love: don’t try to earn it. Know that you are accepted and loved, not for what you can do for God, or somehow hoping that you will be worthy of his acceptance, but because his greatest desire is to have you as one of his children. Jesus came to remove any obstacle that would prevent that from happening.”
“Don’t you realize that the most powerful thing about the gospel is that it liberates us from the concept that God dwells in any building? For a people steeped in the rites of temple worship, this was either great or terrible news. His followers thought it was great. No longer did they have to think of God as cloaked in the recesses of the temple, available only to special people at select times.”
“What’s easier for you to do, pursue a relationship with the Father or your own sense of personal success? That’s the real test. It seems to me you wouldn’t be so desperate if the pursuit had really taught you how to know Father’s love. Instead, you’re so busy seeking everyone’s approval, you don’t realize you already have his.”
“It is your security in that love that will change you, not your struggle to try and earn it.”
My voice faded out as it dawned on me that learning about God and what it means to be a good Christian was not the same as learning to walk with him.
Relationship with him is his gift, freely given. The point of the cross was that he could do for us what we could never do ourselves. The key is not found in how much you love him, but in how much he loves you. It begins in him. Learn that and your relationship will begin to grow.”
We’re not changed by the promises we make to God, but by the promises he makes to us.
We don’t get his love by living up to his standards. We find his love in the most broken places of our lives. As we let him love us there and discover how to love him in return, we’ll find our lives changing in that relationship.”
I’m only trying to help you learn to live in God’s freedom. Until they are looking for the same things you are, people will not understand and you’ll be accused of far worse. You’re trying to live what I said without letting God make it real in you. It won’t work that way. You’ll just end up hurting a lot of people and hurting yourself in the process.”
I had seen some horrible conflicts during my years in real estate, but I’d never seen a group of people treat one another with such hostility and deceit while working so hard to appear sweet and innocent.
Even ‘love’ gets redefined as that which protects the institution and ‘unloving’ as that which does not. It will turn some of the nicest people in the world into raging maniacs and they never stop to think that all the name-calling and accusations are the opposite of love.”
“It’s love with a hook. ‘If you do what we want, we reward you. If not, we punish you.’ It doesn’t turn out to be about love at all. We give our affection only to those who serve our interests and withhold it from those who do not.”
“The problem with church as you know it, Jake, is that it has become nothing more than mutual accommodation of self-need. Everybody needs something out of it. Some need to lead. Some need to be led. Some want to teach, others are happy to be the audience. Rather than become an authentic demonstration of God’s life and love in the world, it ends up being a group of people who have to protect their turf. What you’re seeing is less of God’s life than people’s insecurities that cling to those things they think will best serve their needs.”
just tell the truth and let the chips fall where they may. It seems to me you’re not being asked to choose between Jim or Eliot but between the truth and a lie.”
any friendship that demands that you lie to save it probably wasn’t a friendship to begin with.”
If you want to live this journey, you have to put honesty above personal expedience. It’s easy to try to cover things for the good of the institution, but that’s a step down a path where God does not reside.”
Our dependency is in Jesus alone! He’s the one we need. He’s the one we follow. He’s the one God wants us to trust and rely on for everything. When we put the body of Christ in that place, we make an idol of it, and we end up wrapped in knots over such a situation. Religion survives by telling us we need to fall in line or some horrible fate will befall us.
I couldn’t believe how blind I’d been to all the ways we’d manipulated one another. No wonder I’m exhausted all the time! I’m trying to meet other people’s expectations at the same time I’m trying to manipulate them to meet mine. I had done to others exactly what the pastor was now doing to me.
Until you discover how to trust God for everything in your life, you will constantly seek to control others for the things you think you need.”
“Selfishness will protect yourself at someone else’s expense. Risking job, reputation, and friendships to be true to your conscience doesn’t sound selfish to me.”
“So that’s it,” John replied, leaning back in his chair. “You grew up with the idea that your goodness would actually control the way God treats you. If you do your part, he has to do his.”
If we could control God, he’d turn out like us. Wouldn’t it be better to let him have his way with us so we become like him?”
“For one, you think suffering is a sign of God’s displeasure with you. Didn’t Job make that mistake? Suffering often indicates that God is setting us free from something so that we can follow and embrace him more deeply. Walking in his life will always mean you are going against the grain. Don’t expect your circumstances to conform easily to this journey. They will resist it at every turn. God wants to teach you how to walk with him through these things so that you can know a joy and peace that transcends circumstance.”
happiness is a pretty cheap substitute for being transformed into his image, wouldn’t you say?”
God does not orchestrate our sufferings, he uses them to bring freedom at the deepest core of our being. If you walk with him through it, instead of pushing him away with blame or accusation, you’ll be surprised at what he will do.”
“That’s because it isn’t in your control, Jake, or mine! It’s in his. Healing isn’t magic. As we learn to live in him, we get to cooperate with what he is doing.
I decided I would live the rest of my days assuming that my Father’s love was with me in every circumstance, rather than questioning it.
Other people’s contempt can’t touch you if you’re not playing their game.”
“Institutionalism breeds task-based friendships. As long as you’re on the same task together, you can be friends. When you’re not, people tend to treat you like damaged goods.
“And as long as you need other people to understand you and to approve of what you’re doing, you are owned by anyone willing to lie about you.”
“No one gets away with it, Jake. He’s paying for his failures in ways you can never imagine. Don’t forget sin itself is always its own punishment. It makes him less the man God wants him to be and it destroys others around him, even if they don’t know why.
Those who treat leaders as if they have some special anointing are the most susceptible to being deceived by them. It seems people who assume or who are given the most human authority forget how to say no to their own appetites and desires. It is so easy for any of us to end up serving ourselves when we think we’re serving others by keeping an institution functioning.
Always separate the failure of the system from the hearts of the people in it.
“Any human system will eventually dehumanize the very people it seeks to serve, and those it dehumanizes the most are those who think they lead it.
you’ve learned to measure stability by your circumstances and by your ability to see how things will work out months in advance.”
Anything we do to try and guarantee stability on our own terms will actually rob us of the freedom to simply follow him today. We’ll resort to our own wisdom instead of following his. The greatest freedom God can give you is to trust his ability to take care of you each day.”
I do have enough for today—enough money to take care of our needs, enough fellowship to encourage me onward, and enough grace to endure the rumors of others. It’s when I look further down the road that I get worried. I don’t see how this will work out over time.”
We only need to do what God puts on our hearts to do, and doubting his ability to work beyond us is not the best way to hear him. The great lie of this broken universe is that God cannot be trusted and that we have to take care of ourselves. That’s the lie that snagged Eve. The serpent convinced her that because God had ulterior motives, she couldn’t trust what he said. By not trusting him she did what she thought best for herself. But it backfired, didn’t it? It always does, Jake. Our worst moments result from grabbing for ourselves that which Father has not given us.
Our biggest messes come when we try to do something for God that we’re convinced he can’t do for himself.”
Learning to live by trusting Father is the most difficult part of this journey.
The groupthink that results from believers who act together out of their fears rather than their trust in Father, will lead to even more disastrous results. They’ll mistake their own agenda for God’s wisdom. Because they draw their affirmation from others, they’ll never stop to question it,
And no substitute for God ever suffices. That’s why we obligate people to a meeting rather than equip them to live in him. I’ve found that when people are discover-ing what it means to live in Father, they won’t need commitment to keep them linked. He will be enough to do that.”
Don’t protect yourself at someone else’s expense. You’ll rob Jesus of an opportunity to do something amazing in you both.”
I think you’re finding better principles—ones that reflect more accurately the life of the early believers. But keep in mind that following principles didn’t produce their life together. We can observe what happened as they followed Jesus, but copying that won’t produce the same reality.
“Jesus didn’t leave us with a system; he left us with his Spirit—a guide instead of a map. Principles alone will not satisfy your hunger. That’s why systems always promise a future revival that never comes.
“Just consider that you’ve gotten it backward. No church model will produce God’s life in you. It works the other way around. Our life in God, shared together, expresses itself as the church. It is the overflow of his life in us.
“That’s where religion has done the most damage. By making people dependent on its leaders, it has made God’s people passive in their own spiritual growth. We wait for others to show us how, or even just follow them in hopes that they’re getting it right. Jesus wants this relationship with you and he wants you to be an active part in that process.”
“Does trusting God to do what you think is best really sound like trusting God to you?”
