Dangerously Insightful

Book Review on “Enemies of the Heart”

“Enemies of the Heart” is a deeply insightful book written by Andy Stanley. I recommend this book to anyone wanting to make themselves better. It is easy to read a book dealing with the heart and skip over most of it because your life is great and so is your heart, yet everyone can have a cleaner heart. 

The premise of the book deals with the four things that attack the heart: Guilt, Anger, Greed, and Jealousy. All of these he calls “debts”. When you owe someone money and haven’t paid them back, as you talk to them the debt is all you can think about and probably all they think about. All these heart attacks are debts or “I Owe You’s”:
Guilt - I Owe You
Anger - You Owe Me
Greed - I Owe Me
Jealousy - God Owes Me. 

A few interesting observations Andy makes:
We are often taught from childhood to correct behavior, and not ever taught to examine the source - our heart.

“Greed is supported by a cast of ‘what ifs’. It is fueled by fear that God can’t or won’t come through.”

Unlike the man that had extra and built a bigger barn, we should ask what God wants us to do with our extra. 

If all your money is spoken for before you deposit it into the bank, greed has an all access spot in your heart. 

Celebrate a person’s fortune when you feel jealous. 

“I received this book for free from WaterBrook Multnomah Publishing Group for this review”

Living Smaller

Cool Video about a guy living in a tiny house. Check it out.

http://vitality.yahoo.com/video-second-act-jay-shafer-20910192

Backwards

Those that built the tower of Babel just had it backwards. Instead of bringing Heaven to Earth, they tried to bring Earth to Heaven. Sometimes I might be guilty of the same thing.

God of the Desert

Many smart commentators say Job is outside the city where the lepers, criminals, and outcasts of society are.
On a pile of ashes.
Scraping his skin to release the pressure of boils, he is no doubt crying in agony of pain and the realization of loosing all of his children.
Job feels alone.He tells his friends, “I am a brother of Jackals and a companion of Ostriches.” Job 30:29 Animals that inhabit desolate deserts Job now feels a part of.  
In Job’s suffering, he felt alone and forsaken by his own God.
How will God answer?
“Who has a cleft a channel for the torrents of rain and a way for the thunderbolt, to bring rain on a land where no man is, on the desert in which there is no man, to satisfy the waste and desolate land…” Job 38:25-27
One of the first things God says to desolate desert Job is that He provides in the desert!

Our almighty God is there in our suffering. Our God is the God of the lonely and socially forsaken.
Our God is the God of the Desert! 

“This is why it is so toxic for the gospel when Christians picket and boycott and complain about how bad the world is. This behavior doesn’t help. It makes it worse, It isn’t the kind of voice Jesus wants his followers to have in the world. Why Blame the dark for being Dark? It is far more helpful to ask why the light isn’t as bright as it could be.”

Rob Bell “Velvet Elvis”

An Incredible Story From My Friend’s Trip To Haiti

justingerhardt:

Shared this story in church last night. So awesome.

As soon as he heard about the earthquake in Haiti, my friend Josh got on a plane to the Dominican Republic and found a spot on a truck headed across the border to Port-Au-Prince.

He was trying to get to a small orphanage run by a Christian friend of his named Roberta. Josh has an adopted daughter from Haiti and he’s spent a lot of time helping with Roberta and her kids.

When the earthquake happened, a wall surrounding the orphans’ house collapsed, killing one of the children. Roberta was out of the country and couldn’t get back right away, so the other kids buried their friend in the back yard.

Thankfully, Josh managed to get there a couple of days after the quake to help until Roberta returned. He calmed the kids down, put up some razor wire to secure the property’s perimeter, and took stock of what provisions they had on hand.

Josh said the moment Roberta got back, she walked in, checked on the kids, and asked “How much food do we have?”

“Between us, the kids, and the now-homeless church members sleeping on the property, about a month’s worth,” Josh told her.

“Alright,” she said, “put aside food for two days, and let’s start giving the rest away to the neighbors.”

Now, if that’s not taking Jesus’ words in Luke 6:38 seriously, I don’t know what is:

“Give and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, will be poured into your lap. For with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.”

But here’s the kicker: the next day, Roberta got a call from a friend in the Dominican Republic. “We’ve found a way to get to you with supplies. I’ll be there tomorrow with 4,000 pounds of food and provisions.”

Wow.

I was in Haiti Monday. Sometimes we can’t see or aren’t aware of the blessings that God puts into our lives. There are other times that we see God in a major way.

I left Haiti Monday. The day before a violent earthquake killed a new friend.

I am having trouble thinking God for this blessing: taking me out of Haiti before a violent earthquake. I want to help. I want to be there. Please Continue to Pray.

Lets Party

Psalms 23:5 “You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies,” God invites us to a party. A perfect party. We will be spiritually feasting beside perfect spirits that have lived a redeemed life. The presence of our Almighty God that is this party will make this party a right party.
Thanks to God that he decided to send His son into TIME so we can be led “down the paths of righteousness…”, so that we can be right for the party. 
I pray I will never forget to LIVE FOR THE PARTY.

Joseph

I have been studying Joseph today. What a man. I can’t imagine living with 10 older brothers, and all of them hating you, to the point that they “could not speak peacefully” to you.
I can’t imagine knowing early in life that I was chosen by God to be in a position of power, so much that my brothers and father would bow down to me.

Jesus did not even have that luxury for most of his life.

And then comes the pit, what despair.
Then comes jail in a foreign country for at least 10 years. What shock I would be in.
I was supposed to be great.
Did God not have a plan for me?
I was to be bowed down to!

not jail.

Acts 7:9 tells us that God was with Joseph.
He became second in command. Maybe it took God 10 years in jail to get Joseph ready for second in command caliber leadership. I pray I never forget to let God work in my life on his timetable.

If it takes jail time…amen.

Alive through Suffering

Are you suffering? I have a feeling many of us are not suffering as much as we should be. If you are like me, you feel like often you are not the Christian God wants you to be, but have no reason why. Why does my Christianity feels so empty sometimes?

Am I suffering? 1 Peter 3: 17 “For it is better to suffer for doing good, if that should be God’s will, than doing evil.” Peter makes it sound like we have no choice, we are going to suffer, don’t we all know this is true.

So i suppose a better question is, Am I doing Godly suffering? Am I suffering from the good I do through Christ or from the evil. sin. I want to suffer like Christ… “Since therefore Christ suffered in the flesh, arm yourselves with the same way of thinking, for whoever has suffered in the flesh has ceased from sin, so as to live for the rest of the time in the flesh no longer for human passions but for the will of God.” 1 Peter 4:1-2

I do not know fully how to suffer. I have a good guess why i dont know, My life is to comfortable. Often i am too comfortable to pray, read, meditate, count my blessings, or see good that God is giving me to do. How can I suffer from doing good if I am too comfortable to become close to my own Creator?

“Above all, keep loving one another earnestly…Show hospitatlity to one another without grumbling. As each has received a gift, use to to serve one another, as good stewards of God’s varied grace.” 1 Peter 4:8-10 This is how we start suffering! Peter says you want to start on this road of suffering, do good, show hospitality, love people!

Haruki Murakami, “It’s precisely because of the pain, precisely because we want to overcome that pain, that we can get a feeling, through this process, of really being alive.” (said about long distance running)(Drops Like Stars by Rob Bell)

I am tired of being comfortable. I want to be ALIVE through suffering.