Just Continue That Thought...

A thought by Daniel Fusco, from his book,  Crazy Happy   (p. 56). The Crown Publishing Group, Kindle Edition.  (Click on the book title to go to Amazon to buy the book.) Yes, He can. Daniel says, " That redemption leads to an outcome we would never expect. He’s always in the business of resurrecting and redeeming even the small details of our lives. And what we experience of God’s comfort now is just a foretaste, a precursor of Jesus’s return, when he will set everything right." He goes on, "The key for us is to make sure we don’t let our hearts get hard in the midst of all the brokenness we see, experience, and endure. It can be incredibly overwhelming! And don’t get me wrong, Jesus never condemns us for struggling. He knows we are human. He promises to pour the water of his Spirit over the hard places of our hearts and renew us when we simply invite him to do so. "Now, here’s where this gets really fun. As we suffer and as we mourn, God comforts us, and the fruit

  A thought by Daniel Fusco, from his book,  Crazy Happy   (p. 53). The Crown Publishing Group, Kindle Edition.  (Click on the book title to go to Amazon to buy the book.) It really can. Daniel says, " If you think about it, the greatest tragedy in history was the cross of Jesus Christ. And God also leveraged Jesus’s finished work on the cross to become the greatest triumph in history. "Although the disciples wept at the death of Jesus, their joy was unspeakable at his resurrection. But for the disciples, their joy hinged on accepting the fact that Jesus was who he said he was when he appeared to them after his resurrection." He goes on, "Some of us are still living in the tragedies we’ve experienced and are unwilling to receive the comfort of Jesus. I lived that way for a long time. When my mother passed away, I was in that spot. I didn’t understand, and her death felt wrong in every possible way. But what I didn’t realize was that God was seeking to do a restorati

A thought by Daniel Fusco, from his book,  Crazy Happy   (p. 51). The Crown Publishing Group, Kindle Edition.  (Click on the book title to go to Amazon to buy the book.) And I like that. Looking sad. Daniel says,   "Thankfully, God’s plan doesn’t stop with mourning. He’s not interested in us walking around sad and grief-stricken all the time. He’s not trying to lead us into lives of despair and misery. The blessing Jesus promises for those who mourn is that they will be comforted." He continues, "If you’re like me, you might be a little confused right now, because if our poverty leads to mourning, and mourning leads to comfort, what exactly is the point? "Here’s a truth bomb for you: we love the outcome, but God loves the process. You see, Jesus is revealing part of God’s ongoing plan of redemption for the world—that even in our present reality, God is beginning to leverage the brokenness of the world and bring beauty from ashes, joy from sadness. His ongoing redemp

  A thought by Daniel Fusco, from his book,  Crazy Happy   (p. 48). The Crown Publishing Group, Kindle Edition.  (Click on the book title to go to Amazon to buy the book.) Yes it is! Daniel says, " My parents told me about the days not long after the first images of the Vietnam War popped up on TV sets. The images of bodies and violence coming back home were so provocative that they created an almost instantaneous anti-war movement in America. It’s one thing to have a war at a distance; it’s another to see it in your living room." He goes on, "Fast-forward about fifty years, and the amount of violence the average American sees in a day from news and entertainment sources is so intense that we don’t even bat an eye at it anymore. Not to mention we have smartphones in our pockets 24/7 with those images. It’s as if we’re so used to the fact that everything’s jacked up that we hardly register it anymore. It doesn’t increase our heart rate even a little bit. That’s a problem

A thought by Daniel Fusco, from his book,  Crazy Happy   (p. 38). The Crown Publishing Group, Kindle Edition.  (Click on the book title to go to Amazon to buy the book.) Maybe someone came to your mind. Daniels asks, " Why don’t you love them? Maybe they have hurt you and you think they don’t care about others the way you do. Maybe they don’t live lives that honor God. Maybe you can’t fathom how they could vote the way they did. Or you can’t believe they would watch that movie. Or that they would go to church only once per month. Or they would be attracted to that person. And the list goes on." He goes on, "When we start to look at the people we struggle to love with poverty of spirit, we realize the problem isn’t them; the problem is us. My problem is me. Your problem is you. The issue is in the posture of our hearts, because when we forget where we’ve come from, we lose the ability to meet people where they are. "Humility teaches us we’re all the same, just with

A thought by Daniel Fusco, from his book,  Crazy Happy   (p. 35). The Crown Publishing Group, Kindle Edition.  (Click on the book title to go to Amazon to buy the book.) And we need to see this. I can't believe they would do that. Daniel says, "Pharisees in the church today are those who at some point gave their lives to Jesus and want to follow the Word but have lost God’s heart for people. They’ve forgotten where they came from—or never really knew it in the first place. Instead of saying, 'I need Jesus,' they start to look at other people and say, 'They need Jesus. I can’t believe someone would do that.'" He goes on, "If this is you, be careful. Whenever we find ourselves in the 'I can’t believe they…' party, we’ve walked away from poverty of spirit. We may be in Christ, but we’re missing out on the beautiful life and sabotaging our own happiness. "We live in a day where people who don’t know Jesus don’t feel much love from people who

A thought by Daniel Fusco, from his book,  Crazy Happy   (p. 33). The Crown Publishing Group, Kindle Edition.  (Click on the book title to go to Amazon to buy the book.) Our ashes Being humble is so important to God. He rewards it. Daniel earlier said, " What God sees as beautiful is somebody willing to say, 'I bring nothing to my relationship with God except my own brokenness and sinfulness.' That feels kind of depressing to acknowledge, doesn’t it?" He goes on, "Jesus drives smack-dab, head-on into a massive collision with our culture. The famous preacher Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones said about being poor in spirit, 'It means a complete absence of pride, a complete absence of self-assurance and of self-reliance. It means a consciousness that we are nothing in the presence of God.' "In his book Mere Christianity , C. S. Lewis put it this way:     "Do not imagine that if you meet a really humble man he will be what most people call 'humble'