On to my next Donald Miller Book - Searching for God Knows What. I started reading this tonight, Sunday night after I had the opportunity to share a message at our little church service today. I was sharing about how sharing with others about God is something that comes naturally if you have fallen in love with Him, if you have experienced His grace and known the depth of His love for you. I talked about how this is what life in Christ is really about, not religious ceremony and showmanship.
In his book, The Pursuit of God, A.W. Tozer writes, “To have found God and still pursue Him is the soul’s paradox of love, scorned indeed by the too-easily-satisfied religionist, but justified in happy experience by the children of the burning heart.”
The question is, will we be people with a passion for God and for others, or one more “Church” – busy acting out what we think the Christian Religion should look like? Children of the burning heart have a passion for God and for people and understand that it is all about relationships and not at all about religion.
In the opening chapter of Miller's book he writes:
"So the difference between Christian faith and all other forms of spirituality is that Christian faith offers a relational dynamic with God, why are we cloaking this relational dynamic with formulas?" A little later in the chapter he goes on to say,"I stopped looking for the formulas and tried to understand what God was trying to say. When I did that, I realized the gospel of Jesus, I mean the essence of God's message to mankind, wasn't a bunch of hoops we needed to jump through to get saved, and it wasn't a series of ideas we had to agree with either, rather, it was an invitation, and invitation to know God. . . . The truth is there a million steps, and we don't even know what the steps are, and worse, at any given moment we may not be willing or even able to take them; and still worse, they are different for you and me and they are always changing. I have come to believe the sooner we find this truth beautiful, the sooner we will fall in love with the God who keeps shaking things up, keeps changing the path, keeps rocking the boat to test our faith in Him, teaching us not to rely on easy answers, bullet points, magic mantras, or genies in lamps, but rather on His guidance, His existence, His Mercy, and His love."
It is this kind of realization that the God of all creation desires not our religious service, but our relational love that changes our lives. It is out of the overflow of this love that we find ourselves "Children of the burning heart" unable to less than share this discovery, this love, this amazing God with others.
In his book, The Pursuit of God, A.W. Tozer writes, “To have found God and still pursue Him is the soul’s paradox of love, scorned indeed by the too-easily-satisfied religionist, but justified in happy experience by the children of the burning heart.”
The question is, will we be people with a passion for God and for others, or one more “Church” – busy acting out what we think the Christian Religion should look like? Children of the burning heart have a passion for God and for people and understand that it is all about relationships and not at all about religion.
In the opening chapter of Miller's book he writes:
"So the difference between Christian faith and all other forms of spirituality is that Christian faith offers a relational dynamic with God, why are we cloaking this relational dynamic with formulas?" A little later in the chapter he goes on to say,"I stopped looking for the formulas and tried to understand what God was trying to say. When I did that, I realized the gospel of Jesus, I mean the essence of God's message to mankind, wasn't a bunch of hoops we needed to jump through to get saved, and it wasn't a series of ideas we had to agree with either, rather, it was an invitation, and invitation to know God. . . . The truth is there a million steps, and we don't even know what the steps are, and worse, at any given moment we may not be willing or even able to take them; and still worse, they are different for you and me and they are always changing. I have come to believe the sooner we find this truth beautiful, the sooner we will fall in love with the God who keeps shaking things up, keeps changing the path, keeps rocking the boat to test our faith in Him, teaching us not to rely on easy answers, bullet points, magic mantras, or genies in lamps, but rather on His guidance, His existence, His Mercy, and His love."
It is this kind of realization that the God of all creation desires not our religious service, but our relational love that changes our lives. It is out of the overflow of this love that we find ourselves "Children of the burning heart" unable to less than share this discovery, this love, this amazing God with others.