You're Only Human Quotes

“While I understand where they come from, claims that God can’t stand to be in the presence of sin are fundamentally opposed to the gospel and the nature of God. This claim and its many variants are backward: it’s sin that can’t stand the presence of God. To say that God can’t stand the presence of sin makes him out to be like the person I heard of who couldn’t stand the presence of a spider and would demand that someone else deal with it. It gives sin leverage over God. It makes God out to be either finicky and weak or a kind of irritable, narcissistic fusspot who is more concerned that things go smoothly than that his beloved is safe and whole. It makes God out to be the kind of being who doesn’t have a beloved at all, except perhaps himself. It undercuts and denies the divinity of Christ, who, as God incarnate, was present with and to sinners his whole life. It misunderstands the Holy Spirit, who comes to dwell in sinners in order that they might be saints. It can develop from the kind of theology that sees justice only in terms of retribution with little concern for restoration.”
― Kelly M. Kapic, You're Only Human: How Your Limits Reflect God’s Design and Why That’s Good News

“Have you ever felt that your parents, or spouse, or your God loved you, and yet wondered if they actually liked you? Love is so loaded with obligations and duty that it often loses all emotive force, all sense of pleasure and satisfaction. Like can remind us of an aspect of God’s love that we far too easily forget. Forgetting God’s delight and joy in us stunts our ability to enjoy God’s love. Forgiveness—as beautiful and crucial as it is—is not enough. Unless it is understood to come from love and to lead back to love, unless we understand the gospel in terms of God’s fierce delight in us and not merely a wiping away of prior offenses, unless we understand God’s battle for us as a dramatic personal rescue and not merely a cold forensic process, we have ignored most of the Scriptures as well as the needs of the human condition.”
― Kelly M. Kapic, You're Only Human: How Your Limits Reflect God’s Design and Why That’s Good News

“Lament and gratitude are mirror concepts that highlight the same fundamental truth: we are dependent on the God who rescues us. Only when we accept our creaturely finitude will this make sense to us. When things are hard, troubling, and wrong, we lean on God, voicing our fears and frustrations to the Creator and Sustainer. we depend on him to make right what is wrong, to heal what is diseased, to reconcile what is broken, to forgive what sins have been committed. Likewise, when a newborn is put into the embrace of her mother, when a scrumptious meal feeds the body and laughter strengthens the soul, when injustice is corrected, and when our work is done well - in all of this we rejoice and express gratitude, for it reminds us that God is the Giver of all good gifts and that we depend on him for life, breath and our very existence. Many of us have experienced complex moments that are filled with seemingly inconsistent emotion. We might be thankful for a loved one's peaceful passing, while still experiencing the depth of sorrow and loss. we may be overjoyed that our child got into college, while simultaneously feeling a knot in our stomachs as we cannot imagine how we will pay for it. We can be happy for a friend's promotion at the same moment that we feel the pain of being passed over ourselves. God created in us such an intricate web of emotional response that we can experience complexities so rich that they seem beyond all possibility. But don't miss the beauty: Lament and gratitude together not only recognize our dependence on God; they also deepen our sense of his faithfulness.”
― Kelly M. Kapic, You're Only Human: How Your Limits Reflect God’s Design and Why That’s Good News

“Who can have it all? We laugh because it is ludicrous, but even as we chuckle, we plan our next day with the expectation that we can and will excel at our job, spend quality time with our family, renew our bodies through physical fitness, eat healthy meals, do the laundry, and... And in the middle of all this we expect to be joyful, patient, interesting, and kind. Very few of us lay our heads on the pillow at night and feel that we have conquered the day. It just doesn't happen, does it? The cumulative effect of exhaustion and unrealistic expectations paralyzes and wears down our minds, bodies, and relationships. Often we find ourselves feeling that we are failing at everything. Instead of crushing the day, we feel crushed by it.... Trying to 'have it all' - all at once - sets us up for frustration and failure. A healthy view of our finitude allows us to step back, take a breath, and think about the importance of different seasons in life, the rhythms of our bodies and our days, our months, and our years. Appreciating such divinely created rhythms helps us avoid the perpetual frustration and self-condemnation that grow from mistaking our limits for sin.”
― Kelly M. Kapic, You're Only Human: How Your Limits Reflect God’s Design and Why That’s Good News

“Our lives have a definite shape as well as definite limits. We go through seasons, we are not self-sufficient, we depend on God for relief and provision, and we grow weary. A faithful life embraces its rhythms, recognizes its vulnerability, expresses both lament and gratitude, and rests in confidence in our faithful God.”
― Kelly M. Kapic, You're Only Human: How Your Limits Reflect God’s Design and Why That’s Good News

“It is easy for us to grow discouraged when we look at our lives and see how far short we fall of what we would desire. We see both our sin and our finite limits. We wish our ongoing struggles with troublesome attitudes, addictions, and actions would all immediately end. Yet God does not normally change our attitudes, free us from our addictions, and reform our actions instantaneously - although sometimes he does it that quickly. Ordinarily, God changes our lives by persistently picking us up when we fall and slowly but consistently drawing us to the love of the Father, the grace of the Son, and the fellowship of the Spirit. In this process he reconnects us with others, replacing our callousness with compassion, our hatred with love, and our fears with hope.
Do not lose heart: he who began a good work in you will see it to completion.”
― Kelly M. Kapic, You're Only Human: How Your Limits Reflect God’s Design and Why That’s Good News

“Love, community, and growth of character are often - though not always - at odds with efficiency. This is something God has always known and been comfortable with. One of the most inefficient things you can ever do is love another person. Or even a puppy. Loving another creature requires engagement, response, and patience. Loads of patience. Similarly, the artist or author knows all too well that efficiency is often the enemy rather than the friend of creativity and progress. The almighty Creator, however, has always been comfortable prioritizing love and growth over efficiency and checkmarks.”
― Kelly M. Kapic, You're Only Human: How Your Limits Reflect God’s Design and Why That’s Good News

“A community expresses its values in its architecture. With that in mind, some ask, 'Shouldn't a church be as basic as possible, with the cheapest construction allowable so that all the extra money can go to missions and helping the poor? Why would you ever pay to have higher ceilings than necessary? Why spend energy and resources on landscaping - won't asphalt and concrete cover the ground as well? Wouldn't nonessential architectural 'extras' be a form of self-indulgence?' Maybe. The definition of indulgent is 'having or indicating a tendency to be over generous to or lenient with someone.' Is God too generous with the design of his creation? With us? Must we understand indulgent in a negative way? My concern is not so much about the vocabulary of indulgence, which I can happily leave behind. My concern is to get at the underlying truth.
Historian of architecture and social critics have long observed that taking efficiency to be the only criterion in the construction of buildings, especially housing, often has significant unintended consequences. Community housing with no positive aesthetic can actually suck the life out of those who inhabit that space. Beige wall after beige wall, prickly indoor/outdoor carpeting, narrow hallways, low ceilings, few windows, and cold, concrete-covered outsides act like a lead blanket laid over the spirits of the inhabitants: just as beauty feeds the souls of people who see it, the lack of beauty starves us of something that we have difficulty describing, but keenly feel. Where is the life? The beauty? The loving process?
God's highest value is not efficiency, especially considered in any simple or mechanistic sense - it is love. He is more interested in beauty than speed or process; he is more concerned to life our gaze, to provoke song, to stimulate our imaginations than he is to just get things done. God is not wasteful or negligent, but purposeful and wise, patient and intentional as he works. Wouldn't it have been much more efficient for God to create the entire world in a single color? What if everything God made was gray? Or shades of black and white? Someone shaped by the modern industrial mindset might negatively assess God as indulgent, wasteful, and excessive. Why the extravagance of a peacock's feathers, the careful complexity of the orchid, the multilayered nature of the human voice...? Sure, we can offer explanations for each of these, but was it really necessary to have so many colors, so much diversity, so much depth, so much wonder? Why? Because God is not driven by efficiency alone.
Love, beauty, wonder, and worship are God's main goals. Sometimes he is astonishingly efficient in his work. He can quickly turn water to wine. He can make a dead person rise. But often, because he is compelled by love rather than mere production, he takes slower routes.”
― Kelly M. Kapic, You're Only Human: How Your Limits Reflect God’s Design and Why That’s Good News

“The fear of the Lord is the recognition of God's presence, holiness, wisdom, and love. The fear of the Lord is a way of life, living in awareness of the sovereign King who is ever present, ever wise, ever concerned. The fear of the Lord allows us to face stress and the uncertainties of life with confidence, not because everything will turn out as we wanted, but because it puts everything in perspective. In the fear of the Lord we now see everything in the light of God, rather than trying to make space for God within everything.”
― Kelly M. Kapic, You're Only Human: How Your Limits Reflect God’s Design and Why That’s Good News

“We have often tried to make machines that are like humans, but now we expect humans to be more like machines. The one just needs a power source and occasional servicing, while the other requires not simply nutrients, but also sleep, laughter, and love. The differences are profound and undeniable, but under the ever-present gaze of the ticking clock and the blurring of expectations between humans and machines, this harried life has become far more common now than it was in previous centuries.”
― Kelly M. Kapic, You're Only Human: How Your Limits Reflect God’s Design and Why That’s Good News

“Love is a beautiful word. Said in the right context and by the right person, it can still bring goosebumps to the most hardened person, enliven the saddest soul, and calm the angriest heart. Love draws together, unites, and heals. God's love animates the entire gospel story, making it good news for us sinner. Love, true and real love, is cool water for a parched soul, food for the hungry, and welcome for the stranger. God's love makes the world go 'round and sustains it despite human sin and cosmic brokenness. However, we have so often heard of God's love that the word often bounces off us like a marshmallow being thrown around in a game of tag. When it hits us, it feels so light we are not sure if it actually touched us or not. 'Sure, I'm it,' we confess, but not really convinced we were tagged in the first place. We know we are supposed to believe and affirm that God loves us, but if you probe deep enough, you see that the doubts persist.
What about the word like? ...Like often carries with it a sense of preference, inclination, and delight, as when a woodworker looks at the gorgeous table they built and says, 'Oh, I like that, that is really good. I want that in my house.'
Have you ever felt that your parents, or spouse, or your God loved you, and yet wondered if they actually liked you? Love is so loaded with obligations and duty that it often loses all emotive force, all sense of pleasure and satisfaction. Like can remind us of an aspect of God's love that we far too easily forget. Forgetting God's delight and joy in us stunts our ability to enjoy God's love. Forgiveness - as beautiful and crucial as it is - is not enough. Unless it is understood to come from love and to lead back to love, unless we understand the gospel in terms of God's fierce delight in us and not merely a wiping away of prior offenses, unless we understand God's battle for us as a dramatic personal rescue and not merely a cold forensic process, we have ignored most of the Scriptures as well as the needs of the human condition.”
― Kelly M. Kapic, You're Only Human: How Your Limits Reflect God’s Design and Why That’s Good News

“Have you ever heard a gospel presentation that starts out something like the following?

• God is holy and loving.
• You are a sinner
• God hates sin and can't stand to be in sin's presence.
• Don't worry. The cross brings good news because now the Father no longer sees you but instead looks at Christ and his cross.

How many believers have heard some version of this proclaimed by well-meaning ministers and Christian counselors? Sitting there in the unforgiving wooden pews or across the room in a tired leather chair is a tender conscience feeling the weight of sin and failure. The speaker intends to proclaim the good news of Christ's death and to comfort the believer with this presentation. Yes, one's first response to this message can be a sense of promise and profound relief (after all, it is pointing us to Christ and him crucified!). Hearers may be grateful to discover the good news of Christ's death for us and God's complete forgiveness, deeply moved to hear of God's love. But for all that is good and right in this outline, it contains threads of misunderstanding that can distort the hearers' views of God, themselves, and the Christian life.
Some traditions, like my own, place so much emphasis on our identity as 'sinners' that we leave no room for our deeper identity as the ones whom God designed in his own image to experience life in fellowship, or to experience his original delight in us ourselves, with our particular spunk, our personality, our difference. Since a presentation like the previous one often works solely in terms of obligations and our failure to meet them, we absorb the idea that God thinks and acts only in terms of obligations too. Thus, we can misperceive God's love, as we misperceive that of our parents, as consisting largely of self-imposed obligations. Things like joy or delight or approval are just too good to be true. God, like our parents, has to love us (or so we have been told). That's just part of the deal. He is God after all, and there's no way we can ever meet his standards. We are repeatedly told so. Why should we think God likes us? Nothing in the sermon outlined above indicates that there is anything especially likeable about us - far from it! We are told that there is nothing good in us, aren't we? Maybe the best we can hope for is that God will put up with us if we keep our heads down and hang around with Jesus. We imagine God's acceptance like we're attending a party with our older brother, Jesus. Our presence is tolerable to the host because we tagged along with someone that he actually likes, Jesus. In truth, that is how many of us experience 'God's love': mere divine toleration towards us. Some versions attempt to offer comfort to the believer by telling them that since they are covered in Christ's blood, God 'doesn't see' them (since they are sinners) but only sees Christ (because he alone is free from sin). In this version, God really doesn't want to look at you. Or maybe he just can't.
It's entirely understandable (and a symptom of growth) if the listener who has heard versions of this message for years - maybe even decades - at some point gets the courage to ask, 'If God only sees me in Christ, does he even see me? Does he know me? How can you say God loves me? Maybe he just loves his Son?'
Sometimes it's the non-Christian who is the first to ask these awkward questions. Looking at the Christian faith, they ask, 'Do I have to stop being me in order to become a Christian?' Answering this question may be trickier than most people realize. Dismissing such questions as self-absorbed or individualistic is often just a way of avoiding them. Rugged individualism may be the particular temptation of Western culture, but that isn't the same as asking what place particular persons have in the kingdom of God. Jesus, after all, spent quite a lot of time doing just this.”
― Kelly M. Kapic, You're Only Human: How Your Limits Reflect God’s Design and Why That’s Good News

“Our sense that we lack time often leads us to want immediate and radical improvement in ourselves. We discover, to the contrary, that God has purposes in taking his time and that, since process itself is also a good aspect of the created wold, we should learn to honor rather than belittle it.”
― Kelly M. Kapic, You're Only Human: How Your Limits Reflect God’s Design and Why That’s Good News

“To understand this conflict we need to think less in terms of isolated individualism and more in terms of “self-in-relationship, corporately constituted yet still a distinct self.”
― Kelly M. Kapic, You're Only Human: How Your Limits Reflect God's Design and Why That's Good News

“Who am I? The solitary query mocks me. Whoever I am, You know me. I am Yours, O God!”
― Kelly M. Kapic, You're Only Human: How Your Limits Reflect God's Design and Why That's Good News

“Many of us fail to understand that our limitations are a gift from God, and therefore good. This produces in us the burden of trying to be something we are not and cannot be.”
― Kelly M. Kapic, You're Only Human: How Your Limits Reflect God's Design and Why That's Good News

“When I complain about getting older, my wife sometimes laughs and says to me, “You have two options: either you are getting older or you are dead.”
― Kelly M. Kapic, You're Only Human: How Your Limits Reflect God's Design and Why That's Good News

“We sometimes make meditating on Scripture sound too difficult, too sophisticated, too spiritual for those of us who are not supersaints. But meditating is just taking a biblical truth (e.g., “The Lord is near”) and savoring it throughout our day, thinking about it, resting in its assurance, allowing the thought to run over us like a purifying stream on a hot summer day. These truths often take a while to move into our souls, so we must spend time with and rest in them.”
― Kelly M. Kapic, You're Only Human: How Your Limits Reflect God's Design and Why That's Good News

“Go sing hymns outside the windows of the nearest nursing home. Go sit in the woods or by a pond and just be still. Memorize Scripture—better yet, memorize Scripture with friends. Sing. Write poetry, read fiction, journal your prayers to God and send a text to a friend you are thinking about. Countless other examples could be given.”
― Kelly M. Kapic, You're Only Human: How Your Limits Reflect God's Design and Why That's Good News

“Humans don’t mind hardship, in fact they thrive on it; what they mind is not feeling necessary. Modern society has perfected the art of making people not feel necessary.”
― Kelly M. Kapic, You're Only Human: How Your Limits Reflect God's Design and Why That's Good News