Booknotes: This Beautiful Mess

I've been reading This Beautiful Mess by Rick Mckinley. So far it's been great. Here's are some quotes of note.

You can study God expertly in His parts and miss Him entirely in His Being.

Isn't this the truth. I resemble that remark occasionally.

Interestingly, in the ... New Testament, writers don't appear to have any need to rehash or defend Jesus' teachings. They simply accept them as true and set about to proclaim what He proclaimed.

Is this true? I think sometimes they do defend Jesus' teachings. They certainly frame them by putting them in their own timelines, etc...

We have taken His free salvation insurance like those folks on the hillsides ate His free lunches. Then we go home. We carry with us a nice Jesus with a cool title. But all the same, we go home king-less.

 This is painfully true. We don't treat Jesus like a King. We don't even treat him like a homeboy (to use someone else's terminology. We treat him more like the abused and taken for granted parent. We show up when we need something and spend the rest of our time complaining about how lame he is. Okay, so we don't complain using those words, but what do our lives say?

I became a Christ follower, the sad truth is that I transferred Christ into my kingdom, into the context of my life. My kingdom consisted of my desires and aspirations— the future I hoped for,

How have your dreams and hopes changed because of Jesus? If the answer is "not too much" then you are guilty of this. I am sometimes.

Jesus did not want to help me be a better king. Neither did He want to be king of my kingdom at all. Really, I was a lot like those patriotic crowds in Palestine who wanted Him to be king of their country. I was simply trying to get God to endorse my agenda.

Great stuff to ponder. I highly recommend this book.