Each year on Facebook, a group of men and women read a book to start the new year.
This year we are diving into Francis Chan’s book “Crazy Love”
Here is my thoughts from the first chapter:
Chapter 1 –
In the preface of the book Francis writes: The core problem isn’t the fact that we’re lukewarm, halfhearted, and stagnant Christians. The crux of it all is why we are this way, and it is because we have an inaccurate view of God.
This is so true in my life. He uses the analogy of our mind as a soda pop can and GOD as the size of the ocean, with us trying to fit God into our Soda pop can brain and defining him by the little bit of Him that could fit in the can.
For the first chapter of the book, the part that hit me the most, is just how darn selfish I am. Reading this with my wife Kayelani, I had to apologize for the way I live my life and the way I think about God. Thinking about God as what he would do “for us” or “bless us”. Praying to Him to bless people in my life.
God owes me nothing.
I am not special.
I am not better then anyone else
We are all sinners in front of a just God, and as the writer points out in his video “God won’t judge us on a curve”
The point of the book that grabbed my attention the most was the verse in Daniel 4:35 where it says “All the people of the earth are regarded as nothing. He does as he pleases with the powers of heaven and the peoples of the earth. No one can hold back his hand or say to him: “what have you done?”
God does not have to be accountable to anyone. “God just is”
My thought for today is to take a moment and just stop. Stop planning, Stop creating, Stop Doing, and just think about the magic of our world. Everything we see in creation is evidence, pointing us to God.
The real beauty in all of this is even though God owes me nothing, He gave his one-and-only Son(who He LOVED) to die in my place for the Sin I committed in my life.
That is the part that is remarkable.
Even though “God Owes Us Nothing” He gave us His everything, and calls us to Himself, and invites us to spend eternity with Him.
That is incredible.