I am really enjoying this book. I think its mostly because its by an old, gray haired, grandpa man who "gets it!" Its not just another guy in his 30's going on a rant about how everyone has been doing church wrong and everything has to change. Dr. Crabb has really gotten my attention by posing a bazillion questions in each chapter that really get me thinking about what my true motives are behind going to church, reading the Bible, praying, etc.
Chapter 7 turned out to contain the answer to the prayer I've been praying for weeks. There were a few months earlier this year when I felt totally alone, and like God had totally abandoned me. It made me feel really mad, scared, hurt, and hopeless. All I wanted was to feel God's presence, or just hear one reassuring word, but I got nothing. Now that I have a few months between that time of my life and the present I've been praying and trying to figure out what was actually going on. Was it my fault? Had I done something/was I not doing something? Had God actually forgotten me? I finally found some closure to these questions as Dr. Crabb explained over and over how not "feeling" God right now can help us grow so much more than instant warm fuzzy gratification.
"Real Christians live authentically, with no pretense that in Jesus they're always happy and holy."
"Our faith develops most strongly and God is glorified most fully when we feel only His absence, when every trace of His presence vanishes and our resolve to trust continues."
"Bible-based hope is a rock. God-present experience is more like sand- good to play in but not good to build a life on."
"I suspect a painful thirst to experience God that...permits rest in the security of trusting divine love is more spiritually forming than the experience itself."
"unfelt but trusted hope more reliably sustains a missional lifestyle than the felt experience of satisfaction in Christ."
"A church determined to find a way to experience God now as He will be experienced only in heaven would, I fear, get in the way of knowing God as He longs to be known and can be known in this world."
"Emptiness or loneliness that remains unfilled and is experienced as excruciating soul pain can be transformed by the Holy Spirit into desperately compelling hunger for God that will keep us seeking Him with all our hearts for the rest of our lives."
Last night I actually thanked God for the time of emptiness that I had been so angry about. I can finally see that he was just helping my thirst for him to grow. He was doing the best thing he could to form me spiritually. Now I can rest in confident hope, knowing that this longing I live with will someday be satisfied when I meet El Roi is heaven. And, my happiness, my church attendance or Bible reading does not need to be fueled by a need to feel God today.
No comments:
Post a Comment