anything - week 6

chapter 14 

seeing God

our purpose here

John Piper defines God's glory as "the holiness of God put on display."  p. 130

If we pray anything, we will all, like Christ, be called to give up this life and things we love. We will be called to risk for his glory. Christ never intended those who walked with him to feel comfortable and safe. This was meant to be a risk-it-all pursuit. The glory of God will be made great on this earth, but what a privilege to be part of his plan to restore it.  p. 136

chapter 15

blast off

overcoming doubts

I knew that if God wanted me to do something more, I would need to wait on him to pull it off. I did not want to create something and then wonder if it had been me or God. I would obey as he revealed the next step, and, in the meantime, live as faithfully as I could through the typical stuff.   p. 141

anything - week 5

week 5......

chapter 11

a thousand problems

God rushes in

A.W. Tozer once wrote that if we exalt God to his right place in our lives, "a thousand minor problems will be solved at once." p. 101

We press through the doubts and the fears and we trust because God is trustworthy, and he knows how life is best lived. The more we jump and see our God come alive around us, the more we jump without fear - and the bigger the cliffs get. p. 103

Suffering affects my life for eternity in a positive way. I've never lived that way. I've lived trying to fix everything hurting in me with counseling and a good latte. And while none of that is bad, it never fully worked. I still hurt. What I wasn't told is that it is supposed to hurt. War isn't supposed to feel easy and comfortable and happy.  p. 104

chapter 12

dominoes

no turning back

Somewhere in my life I picked up the idea that if things did not feel right or fall perfectly into place, God was not in them. I thought obeying God should feel pretty easy and convenient. For instance, if God was calling you to Africa, then he would have a buyer for your house in two weeks; if not, then he likely isn't in it. Okay, maybe not that extreme, but if obeying seemed too uncomfortable, I likely would have decided that it wasn't from God. Where did I get that?
In Scripture God promises we will have trouble in this world.   p. 107 (my favorite from this week)

Mary....

Mary never sought her own comfort.
She lived entitled to nothing.
She expected suffering rather than being surprised by it.
She waited and responded to God rather than trying to control any outcome.
She submitted to her husband's leadership over and over again.
She received whatever the Lord had for her with joy.......  p. 110

As I looked at Mary, I saw a girl who surely did not feel worthy or able to bear and raise the son of God, but she did not focus on that. She submitted and focused on the eternal plans of God, and when she did that, she was just in awe that she got to be part of them. The cost and her inadequacy paled in light of God's plan for humanity. She just was in awe that God would have plans for her simple, short life here.  p. 111

God did not seem too worried about what the people in Scripture thought about their callings; he handed them out even if they felt reluctant or unsure about their assignments. Moses and Jonah and Esther all wished their callings away. But in their obedience, God was changing the world and building his stories.   p. 112

I beg you - all of us - to fall. Fall into obedience that will shape the glory of God in our generation. We don't want to get to heaven and realized we missed it, that God rerouted around us...Besides, I have this feeling these things God has for us may be the best things in life. I don't want to miss them.  p. 114

chapter 13

spreading insanity

lots of yes

I had made following Christ all about a bunch of rules and principles. But the relationship I'd heard about all that time growing up, this was it. God in me. Leaning into him for self-control when my nine year old talks back, for guidance on where to use God's gifts in me, for words when I am fleshing out this book he led me to write, and for patience as the consequences of obeying flooded our lives. Without the Spirit of God to lead our anythings, we will only be do-gooders with our own agendas.
p. 121

God's priorities are beautiful, and they trickle down into invisible spaces....into neighborhoods and families and friends and strangers. He will call us to pour our lives into the cracks around us, and sometimes into cracks far from our doorsteps. But wherever he calls us, we pour, not wishing for a larger crack or a more noticeable one, or even the one we were expecting.   p. 122

anything - week 4

God is really messing with me in this book.....we are at the half way point in our study this week...

chapter 8

crashing curtains

waking up

I was still limiting God by my understanding of how life should work - safe and comfy and not so costly. (p. 76)

I had a constant, nagging feeling that God was real and this life wasn't a game; it wasn't about my comfort or my curtains or how much everyone liked me and approved of me. Heaven was coming, God's voice was clear, and I needed to quit pretending everything was lovely. (p. 81)

chapter 9

new eyes

real change

...surrender is usually dying to self on a daily basis and most often found in the mundane. Lunches had to be made, conflict with some friends had to be resolved, and toilets still needed scrubbing. (p. 86)

chapter 10

big God

praying anything

I wanted to be right with God at the end of my life rather than right with all of the people in it. ( p. 92)

anything - week 3

 chapter 6

scrapbooks

abandoning fear

The idea that we would actually hand it all over to God and say, "Go. Build it. Do whatever you want with all I have"....it is terrifying. What if God has planned any of these as part of the story?
singleness
struggle
adoption
a difficult husband
infertility
moving from the town we love
an apartment instead of a house
cancer
disapproval
death
dangerous overseas missions
financial hardship

What if he lets me suffer? What if he asks me to sacrifice? What if none of my dreams come true? The very thought of doing anything demands everything. We have to face our fears. If we believe he is real, if we believe he has an eternal heart, we have to face the fact that a God like that may mess with our temporary comfort and fictional scrapbooks. (p. 52-53)

There is no escaping it. He is God, and if our suffering brings him the most glory, let it be. Easy to preach, difficult to live. (p. 56)

God is an anchor in the midst of the difficult chaos of this world. The chaos will be resolved. It will. As Oswald Chambers said, "Faith is deliberate confidence in the character of God whose ways you may not understand at the time." (p. 58)

Jennie Allen, author of Anything, shares a story about a girl named Rachel who has endured great suffering in her life.  Jennie heard her testimony and share these thoughts she can't forget Rachel saying:

Then she said a line I will never forget: "You have to thank God for the seemingly good and the seemingly bad because really, you don't know the difference." The hardest things in her life brought her the deepest relationships. The hardest things have become the things that define the most beautiful things about her. The hardest things in her life have given her more of God. (p. 59)
**my favorite part of this week's reading

"I trust God." The beauty of that statement on this day makes me cry. God, give us enough faith for whatever the stories of our lives will hold, even on the worst days. (p. 61)

chapter 7

eighty years

abandoning this life

Wake up! This pursuit of me, it may cost you everything you hold dear, everything you love here. It may cost even your life. And until this life gets small, really small, and I get big, really big you won't truly follow me. Because loving this life too much will affect your love for me. It also will affect what you are willing to do for me. (p. 69)

As I stand back and look at myself as I was, sitting in the counselor's office whining and crying after years of chasing things that were supposed to work for me, that were supposed to make me happy here, that God was supposed to do, I see that my ache was actually his mercy showing me that everything I loved other than him was never going to work. It was never supposed to work. (p. 71)

anything - week 2

completed week 2 of our anything bible study this week!! this book is really challenging me and is written in such a conversational tone by jennie allen that it convicts you like a friend telling you something you really need to hear. i love how she weaves God's truth and God's word into many of her examples.

the memory verse for this week:

chapter 4

giant people 

abandoning people

the king's heart is a stream of water in the hand of the LORD, he turns it wherever he will (prov. 21:1)

i can let other people down. if God is for me....the God of the universe for me...who could be against me? whom else do i fear? (p. 38)

i did wonder sometimes, when i closed my eyes and let it get scary quiet, if i was missing the best things, the things that matter most, because i was afraid. he knows we keep chasing other loves until we love him most. we keep spinning. we keep searching, restless. we keep missing all he has for us. he'll always feel far away, drowned out by other louder rivers, until every other thing fades away and he becomes the only thing. (p. 39)

chapter 5

normal drug

abandoning entitlement

as real life and responsibilities pressed in, i felt God being pressed out. (p. 42)

had our hearts become demanding? if God did not give us and our kids a safe and comfortable life, was he holding out on us? (p. 43)

money and a good latte protect us from a lot of things. it is too easy in this country for blessings to become rights, for stuff and money to become what calls the shots in our lives. and before we know it, God's gifts have replaced God himself. (p. 44) - my favorite quote this week

little deaths always feel like big deaths until you let go. after you let go you wonder, what was the big deal? (p. 45)

but God often seems unconcerned with helping us maintain same, simple lives where everything fits and works. i don't know what God's plans are for you, but i do know that we don't hear from him until certain things die. he doesn't compete. and when we does speak, it typically costs something.......it doesn't make sense to use, but since this life, these few years, are not the climax from God's perspective, he's okay with throwing a little wrench into the short plans we have to be normal here. (p. 47)

love this narnia analogy!!!

the chronicles of narnia books so move me. nothing else i have read draws out such a display of two existing universes running side by side like these stories do. c.s. lewis drew these universes, narnia and our world, as realities that carry on simultaneously. the great hero in the stories is aslan, the lion who represents christ, but in the lion, the witch, and the wardrobe the human heroine is the youngest of the pevensie children, lucy. she is the heroine simply because she believes. God is calling us to this alternate universe, as lucy was - to push through the fur coats in the closet to get to narnia and aslan. he wants to press us through our doubts so we can see the other eternal story going on, of which we are actually a crucial part. (p. 48)

not that he minds helping us; he wants us to need him. but from his perspective in eternity, i imagine he is thinking, if she would just lift her head a little and look up and out, her problems would get smaller and forever with me would get bigger. (p. 48)

anything - week 1

this summer, i'm joining an awesome group of ladies online through good morning girls to study God's Word and read the book anything by jennie allen.

we've just finished our first week and i thought i'd use my blog to post some of my favorite parts of the book and our weekly verse from our study.

chapter 1 - plastic god

abandoning unbelief

p. 5 every sin at its root, is based in something we do not fully believe about God.

p. 7 unbelief is no small thing. it lays the foundation for all the places we struggle, and ultimately faith in Christ is what will separate those who belong to God from those who do not.

p. 9....many people who study the Bible never find God. many people who go to church never really know him. the only exercise that works 100 percent of the time to draw one close to the real God is risk....."to risk is to willingly place your life in the hand of an unseen God and an unknown future, then to watch him come through. he starts to get real when you live like that."

p. 10 stepping out wholly dependent on God to come through, stepping away from what is secure and comfortable exposes the holes in our faith.

chapter 2 - least good

abandoning pretending

p. 14 on a core level, are we really as "good" as we think we are?

p. 15 though some of my behavior came from a pretty sincere place, the truth has always been that without God's intervention, I am selfish and prideful every minute of every day.....there is something to humility that is costly...something resembling humiliation...an outright declaration of the wreck we are without God rather than composing a beautiful existence that barely needs a savior.

p. 17 it physically hurts to see our pride, to see our sin, to quit playing good, to feel broken and to need God. and it hurts even more to let others see it. so we run from falling; we choose large fig leaves to cover up with and not God. we run from that vulnerable feeling that we may not measure up, all while aching to measure up.

p. 18 there is something so beautiful about people aware of their sin and their need for God. that is beautiful to God. he can work with that, enter into that. jesus' first command after nearly every encounter with a needy person was for them to repent. he promised these broken people hope and healing. he promised to make a way for them.....they thought they were fine without jesus. they did not need him.

p. 19 pretending to be good halts God's movement in our life.

p. 21 we don't want to fall. we like to see great testimonies of God's grace, but we don't want to be the testimony.  (hands down my favorite quote from this week)

chapter 3 missing buttons

abandoning shame

p. 27 when we are saved, spiritual things begin working inside us and disrupting that way we used to think and live. sin becomes distasteful because it fights with who we are. God becomes our chief desire. these are marks that we are believers. unless there is some craving for God and some distaste for sin in us, we should question if we are believers. we are children of a living God who wants us out of bondage, out of sin, out of the weight of shame.

p. 28 true grace threatens our control. but it gives us something too!

p. 31 but when God calls us to something that feels backward, it is usually his path to our freedom. the path out of shame is to see our sin and turn from it toward our God. and there we find peace and a God who can say, "I can take care of this...Actually it's already been taken care of."