"So You Don't Want to Go to Church Anymore". I saw this book title and thought I have to get this. How many of us have not wanted to go to church anymore? I have quit in my past and some days I just want to quit. Dan Kimball wrote a book "They Love Jesus not the Church" I feel like that sometimes. So I buy the book off of Amazon, get the book, and discover it is a book about a minister. Wow! So I am hooked and begin to read and it is messing with me. It is a thought provoking book and sometimes hits a little too close to home. It is provocative and almost hyperbolic or maybe he is just that radical but it is about a minister who is struggling with his faith and he meets the apostle John. It is based off of Jesus saying "If I want this one to remain alive until I return then what is it to you." So John is trying to help him find God but in the meantime causes nothing but turmoil in his life. Here is a little of my favorite section so far (only on chapter 5)."You are so caught up in a system of reward and punishment that you're missing the simple relationship he (God) wants to have with you."
"How are we going to know how God feels about us if we don't live up to his standards?"
"That is where you have it backwards. We don't get his love by living up to his standards. We find his love in the most broken place of our lives. As we let him love us there and discover how to love in return, we'll find our lives changing in that relationship."
"How can that be? Don't we have to walk away from sin to know him?"
"Walking toward him is walking away from sin. The better you know him the freeer from it you will be. But you can't walk away from sin. Not on your own strength! Everything he wants to do in you will get done as your learn to live in his love. Every act of sin results from your mistrust of his love and intentions for you. We sin to fill up broken places, to try to fight for what we think is best for us, or by reacting to our guilt and shame. Once you discover how much he loves you, all that changes. As you grow in trusting him, you will find yourself increasingly free from sin."
"It sounds so easy when you say it. But learning to live that way would be the opposite of everything I've been taught."
"That's why it is called good news."
Posts
1 comment:
I read that one and another called "He Loves Me" by Wayne Jacobsen. You and I are reading all of the same books...kind of weird. I agree with most of the stuff in that book as it calls us to a clearer meaning and purpose when we are a church. I don't want to be "that guy" though who sits in the back and has everythinig figured out in an esoteric fashion. We'll see.
Post a Comment