"When I fed them, they were satisfied; when they were satisfied they became proud; then they forgot me." Hosea 13:6.
Been thinking a lot about how even as Christians, we tend to shy away from living lives of radical faith. How I have been setting my eyes on the small things and feeling satisfied by them. You can probably even tell by how small and trivial my posts are. hmm... i've been reading a book that's been giving me lots of food for thought.
"What scares me most are the people who are lukewarm and just don't care. I think that if I did a poll of the readers of this book, many of you would say, 'Yeah, I am definitely lukewarm at times, but i'm not really at a place to give more to God.' Many of us believe we have as much of God as we want right now, a reasonable portion of God among all the other things in our lives. Most of our thoughts are centered on the money we want to make, the school we want to attend, the body we aspire to have, the spouse we want to marry, the kind of person we want to become... But the fact is that nothing should concern us more than our relationship with God; it's about eternity and nothing compares with that. God is not someone who can be tacked on to our lives....
When we put it plainly like this--as a direct choice between God and our stuff--most of us hope we would choose God. But we need to realize that how we spend our time, what our money goes toward, and where we will invest our energy is equivalent to choosing or rejecting Him....
True faith means holding nothing back; it bets everything on the hope of eternity.
I know that this whole swimming-upstream, pursuing-Christ, taking-up-your-cross, counting-the-cost thing isn't easy. It's so hard, in fact, that Jesus said the road is narrow and few will actually find it... and fewer still among those who are rich. Like the parable of the sower, don't assume you are the good soil; don't assume you are one of the few on the narrow way."
~ Francis Chan, Crazy Love, p. 96-98
When we put it plainly like this--as a direct choice between God and our stuff--most of us hope we would choose God. But we need to realize that how we spend our time, what our money goes toward, and where we will invest our energy is equivalent to choosing or rejecting Him....
True faith means holding nothing back; it bets everything on the hope of eternity.
I know that this whole swimming-upstream, pursuing-Christ, taking-up-your-cross, counting-the-cost thing isn't easy. It's so hard, in fact, that Jesus said the road is narrow and few will actually find it... and fewer still among those who are rich. Like the parable of the sower, don't assume you are the good soil; don't assume you are one of the few on the narrow way."
~ Francis Chan, Crazy Love, p. 96-98
2 commentaires:
hey, I'm totally reading this book right now too! ^_^
very challenging. :)
Oh friend, we ARE the same person.
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