The act of striving itself is not sufficient to suggest that one is actually striving, for without an objective that is defined by the bigness of God and freed from the smallness of us we are only toddling about.
God is second to none, so when I walk with Him my fear should be second to everything to the point that it is present in nothing.
Honor is where I unashamedly declare that every success is the work of my God, where flattery is pretending that every success is the work of my hands. And while pursing honor will insure the death of flattery, pursuing flattery will insure the death of everything.
Most of the maps that I create go from the nowhere of where I am to the nowhere of what I think is a somewhere. For without God, my nowhere and my somewhere will not take me anywhere.
We squander our souls by giving them over to what makes them feel good rather than surrendering them to what makes them grow strong.
I am not ashamed of my God. But I am deeply ashamed of the fact that we have created a gospel that is far more of ‘us’ and far less of God. And more of ‘us’ is not anything that any of us need, but more of God is everything that we all need.
Do we dare embrace an authentic faith stripped bare of everything that we have spoken into it and ripped entirely clean of everything that we have built upon it? And are we willing to embrace something that inexpressibly potent, that unashamedly demanding, and that shockingly unfamiliar? Yet maybe the better question is, do we dare to not do that?
God so loved the world that he gave his son to that world, that those who put their confidence in him would not lead a miserable, failing existence, but have eternal life, which is the kind of life God has.
Choose this day whom you will serve. As for me and my house we will serve the Lord.
I expend my days relentlessly attempting to design my life in a manner that is designed to meet the needs in my life. Yet, God did not design life to do that. Rather, He designed life to direct us to Him so that He could do that.
Writing the story of my life limits the whole of its storyline to this single, solitary vantage point from which I survey the world. So, why wouldn’t I want it written by the God who not only sits at every vantage point in all of existence, but Who was also the One that brought everyone of them into existence?
I spend a whole lot of time in a whole lot of places that don’t do me a whole lot of good, when God has spent a whole lot of time inviting me to spend the whole of eternity with Him.
My faith is not some pathetic emotional escape from a reality that I am unable to cope with. Rather, my faith is the power to change that reality by changing me so that I can change it. And from that, I don’t need any escape nor do I want one.
If I’ve created this road, it’s likely that my agendas define it. And although I believe the ascent to be lofty, it’s anything but the ‘higher road’ that I pretend it to be. However, if God’s truth’s define it, there is no road that is higher and there’s no pretending that it’s not.
The gospel does not imply that Jesus has risen and nothing else matters, but rather Jesus has risen and now everything matters. We can now live above the line of despair because the gospel is true.
I cannot give you what you need because I am not enough of what you need. But I can point you to the God Who is everything that you need. And if you go to where I point you, you will need nothing. And is that not the point?
The Gospel of Jesus Christ stilted rigid by our traditions, held a suffering captive to our denominational creeds, and parsed thin by our need to control our faith rather than submit to it is not compelling to anyone…except the ones who are so enamored with what they’ve created that they’ve forgotten that they created it.
Treasures are hidden away in quiet places. They speak in soft tones and often become silenced as we approach. They don’t beg to be found, but embrace us if we do happen to find them. They are the product of completely ordinary circumstances unfolding in wonderfully extraordinary ways. They are found hidden in the nooks and crannies of our existence; all around us if we quit allowing our attention to be captivated by that which is noisy and listen for that which is quiet and still.
The first step in effectively fighting the battle is to get out of God’s way. The second step is to stay out of His way. And the third step is to never get in God’s way again so that the first and second step become completely irrelevant.