Borrowed Thoughts to Ponder

One of the books I'm reading right now is Donald Miller's Searching For God Knows What. I read it recently, like a month or two ago but I have to return it to it's owner soon. I didn't feel like I got the full effect the first time so I wanted to get something new out of it, but also for some things to hit me again. The owner doesn't actually know that I have it, so I want to enjoy it once more before returning it, and borrowing another. He will know this time.

Anyway, I thought I would post some quotes from the book, and depending on time (thank you adobe for your updates thus making this time for me to blog), maybe even make a few comments...

1) The paragraph starts out: "If you ask me, the way to tell if a person knows God for real, I mean knows the real God, is that they will fear Him. They wouldn't go around making absurd political assertions and drop God's name like an ace card..."

and ends it with

"It seems like, if you really knew the God who understands the physics of our existence, you would operate a little more cautiously, a little more compassionately, a little less like you are the center of the universe (Miller, 38)."

I think those are some pretty insightful thoughts. I think while so many of us know that and believe it, its nice and necessary to have words put around it. I mean, there are people that just throw us for a loop. Admittedly there are people who make me wonder, "what god are you serving?" and "how do you figure?" May we each fear God and live out our lives with a little more reverence for him and compassion for people.

Thought #2

"What if the motive behind our theology was relational?(Miller, 45)"

Mmmm that's more of a bite than a can chew here, now. I believe, thoroughly, that God, my God, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God of the Old Testament and the New is a relational God. I believe that he desires to be known by us and to have personal, real relationships with us. Donald Miller also writes, " This God, and this spirituality, was very different from the self-help version of Christianity. The God of the Bible seemed to be brokenhearted over the seperation in our relationship and downright obsessed with mending the tear (Miller, 44)."


And finally, thought #3
"...I started wondering if the message God was communicating to mankind, this gospel of Jesus, was a message communicated to the heart as much as to the head; that is, the methodology was as important as the message itself, that the idea could not be presented accurately outside the emotion within which the truths were embedded (Miller, 56)."

Now I have some friends, males in particular, who are quite good at not just separating themselves from their emotions, but just simply being separated from them. I'm not sure what they would have to say about what Miller said, but I like it. I think his ponderings are at least worth some pondering of my own. I'm glad that Jesus came not just to redeem my life but to renew my mind and restore my heart.

Like I said...just some borrowed thoughts to ponder...