Blue Like Jazz
Rick says that I will love God because he first loved me. I will obey God because I love God. But if I cannot accept God's love, I cannot love Him in return, and I cannot obey Him. Self-discipline will never make us feel righteous or clean; accepting God's love will. The ability to accept God's unconditional grace and ferocious love is all the fuel we need to obey Him in return. Accepting God's kindness and free love is something the devil does not want us to do. If we hear, in our inner ear, a voice saying we are failures, we a losers, we will never amount to anything, this is the voice of Satan trying to convince the bride that the groom does not love her. This is not the voice of God. God woos us with kindness, He changes our character with the passion of His love.
This is from the book Blue Like Jazz by Donald Miller. I am currently reading this book and it is AMAZING! I love it. And it is really making me think deeply about God and my relationship with Him. Blue Like Jazz is all about what struggles Donald Miller has had with Christianity - trying to make sense of God, trying to make sense of faith, dealing with guilt and sin and redemption and God's grace, realizing his selfishness, and that faith in God and being a Christian can be very uncliche. Christians have their share of stereotypes and images: they are narrow-minded, politically conservative, and hypocritical. As a Christian sometimes I feel trapped, like I have to be like that or that people automatically label me as that when they find that I am a Christian. But I don't want to be cliche and regular when it comes to my belief. I want to be revolutionary. I want my life to be profound. This is Donald Miller's explanation of the book's title: "I never liked jazz music because it doesn't resolve. But sometimes you have to watch somebody love something before you can love it yourself....I used to not like God because God didn't resolve..." I want to be somebody loving that something and maybe other people will be able to love it themselves after they have interacted with me.
I love Blue Like Jazz because Donald Miller is so not cliche. He lives in Portland, Oregon (if you don't know, Oregon is known for being full of hippies and liberals), he's gone through many stages in his life and many experiences, all of which he draws from to come to very profound thoughts, like the ones this entry started with. Miller grew up going to church, has sinned plenty (all the "bad" stuff - alcohol, drugs, etc), swung back to being a fundamentalist Christian, and lots of other stages I have yet to read about (I'm only on page 87). Through all these stages he struggled with different and issues and God has brought him profound wisdom and resolution. The conclusions he comes to are always refreshing and simple and so interestingly true. They resonate with me and it makes me think more deeply about the way I view the world and Christianity. It makes me think more deeply about the way I live Christianity. This book is unlike other Christian books in that Donald Miller tells you all these stories and what they taught him. He is so real and simple yet profound. Thank you to Justin for recommending it and Stewart for letting me borrow it. And thank you God for loving me so ferociously.
This is from the book Blue Like Jazz by Donald Miller. I am currently reading this book and it is AMAZING! I love it. And it is really making me think deeply about God and my relationship with Him. Blue Like Jazz is all about what struggles Donald Miller has had with Christianity - trying to make sense of God, trying to make sense of faith, dealing with guilt and sin and redemption and God's grace, realizing his selfishness, and that faith in God and being a Christian can be very uncliche. Christians have their share of stereotypes and images: they are narrow-minded, politically conservative, and hypocritical. As a Christian sometimes I feel trapped, like I have to be like that or that people automatically label me as that when they find that I am a Christian. But I don't want to be cliche and regular when it comes to my belief. I want to be revolutionary. I want my life to be profound. This is Donald Miller's explanation of the book's title: "I never liked jazz music because it doesn't resolve. But sometimes you have to watch somebody love something before you can love it yourself....I used to not like God because God didn't resolve..." I want to be somebody loving that something and maybe other people will be able to love it themselves after they have interacted with me.
I love Blue Like Jazz because Donald Miller is so not cliche. He lives in Portland, Oregon (if you don't know, Oregon is known for being full of hippies and liberals), he's gone through many stages in his life and many experiences, all of which he draws from to come to very profound thoughts, like the ones this entry started with. Miller grew up going to church, has sinned plenty (all the "bad" stuff - alcohol, drugs, etc), swung back to being a fundamentalist Christian, and lots of other stages I have yet to read about (I'm only on page 87). Through all these stages he struggled with different and issues and God has brought him profound wisdom and resolution. The conclusions he comes to are always refreshing and simple and so interestingly true. They resonate with me and it makes me think more deeply about the way I view the world and Christianity. It makes me think more deeply about the way I live Christianity. This book is unlike other Christian books in that Donald Miller tells you all these stories and what they taught him. He is so real and simple yet profound. Thank you to Justin for recommending it and Stewart for letting me borrow it. And thank you God for loving me so ferociously.