Everybody Always 1...simple faith
I am part of a small group that is reading the book Everybody Always by Bob Goff together. The drop title is "becoming love in a world full of setbacks and difficult people." This week's assignment was chapters 1-3.
I want to repeat the introductory thought to the dedication page. I think it summarizes a great deal of my own journey in recent years.
I've spent my whole life trying to make my faith easy. The truth is, it's not. From what I have been reading, if we do it right, it will actually kill all the earlier versions of us. What I am trying to do now is make my faith simple.
What I think of when I read the word "easy" in this context is comfortable. Comfort for me is believing that I appear virtuous, competent, different, and a little better than the next guy. For me for years that was easy. I can stay separate from the main flow of culture. I don't need to be into the latest thing. I don't need to be wealthy. The challenges that "becoming love" have presented in my life have been doing things with others. This has meant that I have to make space for others opinions, preferences, understanding, and capabilities. Sometimes this has been good. Other times it has frustrated me with the "quality" of the outcome of our efforts. People don't even have to like the "quality" of the outcome of my work by the way, I just have this innate confidence that my standards are better. That is where it is hard for me to "become love."
One of the thoughts that has become engraved in my psyche over the past years is the sense that God just seems to keep tearing up who I am and re-making me. Over and over. I resonate strongly with the statement that faith "will actually kill all the earlier versions of" me.
I still value what I see as quality and I don't think that is always a bad thing. Even while I have sometimes been fighting against my desire for "quality", I have come to realize that those who I serve as pastor also desire that I value "quality." They want me to have an opinion, to share it, and to do things well. The simple faith I seek is one that has one standard and that is the love that I see in the character of God. The simple faith that I seek is one that is to have love serve as the standard that determines when my performance is beneficial for the beloved and when it is an unloving distraction.
If I think that I can produce "quality" when left to myself I might be mistaken. But, I know that God can do this and, even so, God invites me to cooperate in exercising dominion over creation (to summarize with a description from the book of Genesis). It does me well to realize that the love that I see in the character of God is a love that has to accommodate me in order to invite me into cooperation with God.
Bob Goff, Everybody Always: becoming love in a world full of setbacks and difficult people (Nelson Books, 2018)
This post is part of an effort that I am making at digesting resources for easier application.
I want to repeat the introductory thought to the dedication page. I think it summarizes a great deal of my own journey in recent years.
I've spent my whole life trying to make my faith easy. The truth is, it's not. From what I have been reading, if we do it right, it will actually kill all the earlier versions of us. What I am trying to do now is make my faith simple.
What I think of when I read the word "easy" in this context is comfortable. Comfort for me is believing that I appear virtuous, competent, different, and a little better than the next guy. For me for years that was easy. I can stay separate from the main flow of culture. I don't need to be into the latest thing. I don't need to be wealthy. The challenges that "becoming love" have presented in my life have been doing things with others. This has meant that I have to make space for others opinions, preferences, understanding, and capabilities. Sometimes this has been good. Other times it has frustrated me with the "quality" of the outcome of our efforts. People don't even have to like the "quality" of the outcome of my work by the way, I just have this innate confidence that my standards are better. That is where it is hard for me to "become love."
One of the thoughts that has become engraved in my psyche over the past years is the sense that God just seems to keep tearing up who I am and re-making me. Over and over. I resonate strongly with the statement that faith "will actually kill all the earlier versions of" me.
I still value what I see as quality and I don't think that is always a bad thing. Even while I have sometimes been fighting against my desire for "quality", I have come to realize that those who I serve as pastor also desire that I value "quality." They want me to have an opinion, to share it, and to do things well. The simple faith I seek is one that has one standard and that is the love that I see in the character of God. The simple faith that I seek is one that is to have love serve as the standard that determines when my performance is beneficial for the beloved and when it is an unloving distraction.
If I think that I can produce "quality" when left to myself I might be mistaken. But, I know that God can do this and, even so, God invites me to cooperate in exercising dominion over creation (to summarize with a description from the book of Genesis). It does me well to realize that the love that I see in the character of God is a love that has to accommodate me in order to invite me into cooperation with God.
Bob Goff, Everybody Always: becoming love in a world full of setbacks and difficult people (Nelson Books, 2018)
This post is part of an effort that I am making at digesting resources for easier application.
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