Just Continue That Thought...

A thought by Kyle Idleman, (2015-10-01) from his book, The End of Me: Where Real Life in the Upside-Down Ways of Jesus Begins (Kindle Locations 520-521). David C. Cook. Kindle Edition. (Click on the title of the book to go to Amazon.com to buy the book.) Some have set out to remove some of the old-fashion words from some of the new dictionaries and sin is one of those words. But as Kyle says, we can’t wipe it away from our souls.   As David said, “In sin did my mother conceive me.”   We were born with it. Kyle says, “As a culture, we can try to rub out the definition of sin, but the condition isn’t going anywhere. It cracks the whip on just as many slaves— the entire population of the world— as it ever did. If we fail to acknowledge its reality, there can be no mourning. And without mourning there can be no confession. And without confession we miss the richest blessing of God’s forgiveness and grace.” He says, “Without seeing the depths of sin, we’ll never understand t

A thought by Kyle Idleman, (2015-10-01) from his book, The End of Me: Where Real Life in the Upside-Down Ways of Jesus Begins (Kindle Locations 330-331). David C. Cook. Kindle Edition. (Click on the title of the book to go to Amazon.com to buy the book.) Do you hate that?   I mean the dream is just getting good and you wake up.   You try to go back to sleep but you can’t.   Life can be like that.   Everything is going great and then in just a moment it all changes. Kyle says, “Life has a way of waking everybody up at some point. Everybody has that sudden, painful longing for yesterday, when they didn’t know how good they had it, just before the world fell in. When that happens— and if it hasn’t, it will— Jesus says, You are blessed.”   Wait a minute, I am blessed. Over in Matthew 5.4 Jesus says, “Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.”   What is he talking about? Kyle says, “We do everything we can to stay away from suffering in the first place. Bu

A thought by Kyle Idleman, (2015-10-01) from his book, The End of Me: Where Real Life in the Upside-Down Ways of Jesus Begins (Kindle Location 289). David C. Cook. Kindle Edition. (Click on the title of the book to go to Amazon.com to buy the book.) Now this is the key for each one of us to realize.   Kyle says, “You are already broken. The Bible tells us in no uncertain terms, ‘All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God’ (Rom. 3: 23). The real question is whether we can own up to it.” It is so easy for us to talk about those people but we are those people.   Kyle says, “We are the people who ignore the hurts of others, as long as someone takes care of us. We are the people who yell at one another in the car on the way to church, then climb out with sunny smiles to demonstrate it’s all good. We are the people who think God is somehow more impressed with us because we make up our own rules and follow them. We are the people who have gone into deep debt to keep up app