So many believe that it is love that grows, but it is the knowing that grows, and love simply expands to contain it.
- Love is just the skin of knowing.
- The way of the cross is where mercy triumphs over justice because of love.
The darkness hides the true size of fears and lies and regrets.
- The truth is they are more shadow than reality, so they seem bigger in the dark.
- When the light shines into the places where they live inside you, you start to see them for what they are.
Put simply, these terrors are tools that many use to prop up their illusions of security and control. People are afraid of uncertainty, afraid of the future.
- Institutional structures and ideologies are all an effort to create some sense of certainty and security where there isn’t any.
- Systems cannot provide you security, only God can.”
Jesus doesn’t have an agenda. Just the opposite, He came to give us life to the fullest, His life.
- It’s extremely hard to rescue someone unless he is willing to trust you.
- This whole thing is a process, not an event. All God wants from us is to trust Him with what little we can and grow in loving people around us with the same love He shares with us.
- It’s not our job to change people, or to convince them. We are free to love without an agenda.
Just because God works incredible good out of unspeakable tragedies doesn’t mean He orchestrates the tragedies.
- Don’t ever assume that Him using something means He caused it or that He needed it to accomplish His purposes.
- That will only lead you to false notions about Him.
- Grace doesn’t depend on suffering to exist, but where there is suffering you will find grace in many facets and colors.
Jesus came to show people who God is and most folks believe the qualities he portrayed were unique to him.
- People still play them off like good cop/bad cap most of the time.
- When they want people to do what they think is right, they need a stern God.
- When they need forgiveness, they run to Jesus.”
God doesn’t wonder what we will do or what choices we will make. He already knows.
- Let’s say, for example, God is trying to teach us how not to hide inside lies, and let’s say that He knows it will take us forty-seven situations and events before we will hear clearly enough to agree with and change.
- So, when we don’t hear God the first time, He is not frustrated or disappointed, He’s thrilled. Only forty-six more time to go!
- And that first time will be a building block to construct a bridge of healing that one day – that today – we will walk across.
“It’s not about feeling guilty. Guilt will never help you find freedom in God.
- The best guilt can do is make you try harder to conform to some ethic on the outside. God is about the inside.
Maybe you are a survivor. No shame in that. Life hurt you. But lies are one of the easiest places of survivors to run.
- They give you a sense of safety, a place where you have to depend only on yourself.
- But it’s a dark place.
- Emotions Scare, you lie to protect yourself
Re-source: Reconcile
make (one account) consistent with another, especially by allowing for transactions begun but not yet completed
People are tenacious when it comes to the treasure of their imaginary independence.
- They hoard and hold their sickness with a firm grip.
- They find identity and worth in their brokenness and guard it with every ounce of strength they have.
- No wonder grace has such little attraction.
- In that sense you have tried to lock the door of your heart from the inside.
- True love never forces.
- Nobody knows what horrors God has saved the world from because people can’t see what never happened.
- All evil flows from independence, and independence is our choice.
- If we were to simply revoke all the choices of independence, the world as we know it would cease to exist and love would have no meaning.
- This world is not a playground where God keeps all his children free from evil.
- Evil is the chaos of this age that we brought to God, but it will not have the final say.
- Now it touches everyone God loves, those who follow Him and those who don’t.
- If God takes away the consequences of people’s choices, He destroys the possibility of love.
- Love that is forced is no love at all.
We have such a small view of what it means to be human. We are incredible, whether we understand that or not. We are of what it means to be human. We are wonderful beyond imagination.
- Just because you make horrendous and destructive choices does not mean we deserve less respect for what we inherently are – the pinnacle of God’s creation and the center of His affection.
- Don’t forget that in the midst of all our pain and heartache, we are surrounded by beauty, the wonder of creation, art, our music and culture, the sounds of laughter and love, of whispered hopes and celebrations, of new life and transformation, of reconciliation and forgiveness.
- These also are the results of your choices, and every choice matters, even the hidden ones.
What exactly did Jesus accomplish by dying? Just the substance of everything that love purposed from before the foundations of creation.
- Creation and history are all about Jesus.
- He is the very center of our purpose, and in him we are now fully human, so our purpose and our destiny are forever linked.
- You might say that we have put all our eggs in the one human basket.
- “Through his death and resurrection, I am now fully reconciled to the world.”
Reconciliation is a two-way street, and God has done His part, totally, completely, finally.
- It is not the nature of love to force a relationship, but it is the nature of love to open the way.
“God is a verb.” – Buchminster Fuller
craving and resource from “The Shack” by WM. Paul Young
