Sunday, November 29, 2009

More than living a good life

Some cool quotes from Tim Keller


“Jesus’s teaching consistently attracted the irreligious while offending the Bible-believing, religious people of his day. However, in the main, our churches today do not have this effect. The kind of outsiders Jesus attracted are not attracted to contemporary churches, even our most avant-garde ones. We tend to draw conservative, buttoned-down, moralistic people. The licentious and liberated or the broken and marginal avoid church. That can only mean one thing. If the preaching of our ministers and the practice of our parishioners do not have the same effect on people that Jesus had, then we must not be declaring the same message that Jesus did.”


"Christianity not only leads its members to believe people of other faiths have goodness and wisdom to offer, it also leads them to expect that many will live lives morally superior to their own. Most people in our culture believe that, if there is a God, we can relate to him and go to heaven through leading a good life. Let’s call this the “moral improvement” view. Christianity teaches the very opposite. In the Christian understanding, Jesus does not tell us how to live so we can merit salvation. Rather, he comes to forgive and save us through his life and death in our place. God’s grace does not come to people who morally outperform others, but to those who admit their failure to perform and who acknowledge their need for a Savior."


“The Bible’s purpose is not so much to show you how to live a good life. The Bible’s purpose is to show you how God’s grace breaks into your life against your will and saves you from the sin and brokenness otherwise you would never be able to overcome… religion is ‘if you obey, then you will be accepted’. But the Gospel is, ‘if you are absolutely accepted, and sure you’re accepted, only then will you ever begin to obey’. Those are two utterly different things. Every page of the Bible shows the difference.”


- Tim Keller


The Gospel thru Jesus shows us a God far more Holy than any conservative religious Moralist can bear and yet more merciful and gracious than any Humanist can conceive.

Saturday, November 14, 2009

"The insignificances of daily life are the importances & tests of eternity, because they prove what spirit really posses us! It is in our most unguarded moments that we really show and see what we are"

- Andrew Murray


"People loved to have lived a great life & story, but few people like the work it takes to make it happen. But joy costs pain."

"There is a force resisting beautiful things in the world, & too many of us are giving in"

"The greatest trick of the Devil is not to get us into some sort of evil. But rather to get us comfortable and into wasting time. If he can sink a mans mind into habit, he can prevent a mans heart from engaging God and the world around him."

-Donald Miller

I turned 25 a little over a week ago. 25 years on this earth. Every breath and every day has been a gift. I am thankful for where I am. Thankful for who I have become and who I am becoming. Never when I was younger did I imagine I would be playing in a Rock band for a living and be married to a girl like Melissa. I am happy, content, and proud of where I am at.

But then there is also a restlessness. A restlessness knowing that I am not truly who I wish I was. Not restless in the since that I wish I had more money or a better job. But a restlessness in knowing I could be a better me. That I could live the insignificances of daily life in a deeper way. I could be kinder to people & I could love others better. I wish I did not waist time as I do & I wish I prayed more. I wish i thought about others more than myself & that i was a better husband. I wish I was more joyful and I wish I really thought of everyday as gift. I could go on forever....

I am not saying these things because I feel sorry for myself. Its just that I have been stepping back and examining my life some lately, and realizing there is so much more I want from me. Life is so short. It could be over tomorrow. I have lived 25 years. Lived some of it really really well and yet also wasted alot of it. I desperately want more. I desperately want to live life to the fullest.

25 years. I hope that I get 25 more. I hope and pray that I can live them well. That I can live them even better than my first 25. The older I get the more I realize how little I really have figured out. My greatest enemy is and always will be ME. I am always trapped in my own self interest.

James 4:14 "Yet you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes."


"ME is a most exacting personage, requiring the best seat and the highest place for itself, & feeling grievously wounded if its claim is not recognized. Most of our quarrels (among people) arise from the clamoring of this gigantic ME. How few of us understand the true secret of life.....that is taking our seats in the lowest of rooms. "

- Hannah Whitall Smith