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 1097-1098). David C. Cook. Kindle Edition. (Click on the title of the book to go to Amazon.com to buy the book.) What Kyle is talking about here is prayer and his whole thought is, “God simply wants us to talk with him. Talk is simple communication, and it doesn’t need to be dressed up.” Earlier he said, “Jesus saw things differently. He said that when we talk to God, we simply need to be who we are— to be authentic and to talk to him as we would talk to someone we love.” But that can be so difficult for us.   Kyle says, “Many of us have struck spiritual poses in our prayers. We have a hard time being ourselves. Praying before others, we have a tendency to talk more to the people in the room than to God. Even in private prayer, sincerity doesn’t come easily. We talk to God as if he requires formal language, as we would talk to so

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 752). David C. Cook. Kindle Edition. (Click on the title of the book to go to Amazon.com to buy the book.) That is why we work so hard at it.   That is how all of us on the outside are judged.   But Kyle says, “God looks on the heart, the true measure of who we are.” He goes on, “Here’s the great danger of performance-based faith. Once we begin to receive those rounds of public applause for all our wonderful accomplishments, we start to believe the charade. We replace the heart with the hands.” He continues, “Bible-time Pharisees were so good with rules and pious acts that they became legends in their own minds. Yet it wasn’t real. The Messiah stood before them, invisible to their eyes. The needs of the hungry and the sick, all around them, didn’t register. The things they cared about didn’t intersect with the things God cares abo

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