slide back in

I feel like I haven't been in the normal swing of things for about a month now. December was a hectic month, and Janelle was in town which further increased its lack of normalcy as a time frame. oneeighty was quickly followed by the youth group taking over church services...and then on the 31st I hopped down to San Diego to spend more time with my fiancee. Crazy times.

But now I'm home and things will ostensibly be returning to the "normal" swing. School's back in session and I can sub again, no particular holidays to mess with youth ministry scheduling, oneeighty's in like two weeks...so yeah, it's back to life. But I feel like life is good. I have a great life actually. Sometimes when I sit back and contemplate the myriad ways God has blessed me I am overcome, or overwhelmed, or something. I can't really explain it.

This past week I read a book by A.W. Tozer called The Pursuit of God. I really appreciated it, you should check it out. There are online versions available even. A few of my favorite quotes include...

"To have found God and still to pursue Him is the soul's paradox of love, scorned indeed by the too easily satisfied religionist, but justified in happy experience by the children of the burning heart."

"The man who has God for his treasure has all things in one."

"God wills that we should push on into His presence and live our whole life there. This is to be known to us in conscious experience. It is more than a doctrine to be held; it is a life to be enjoyed every moment of every day."

"...for millions of Christians...God is no more real than He is to the non-Christian. They go through life trying to love an ideal and be loyal to a mere principle."

"While we are looking at God we do not see ourselves--blessed riddance. The man who has struggled to purify himself and has had nothing but repeated failures will experience real relief when he stops tinkering with his soul and looks away to the perfect One."

"Social religion is perfected when private religion is purified."

"...the only thinkable relation between us is one of full Lordship on His part and complete submission on ours. We owe Him every honor that is in our power to give him. Our everlasting grief lies in giving Him anything less."

"We must of necessity be servant to someone, either to God or to sin."

"The labor of self-love is a heavy one indeed...As long as you set yourself up as a little god to which you must be loyal there will be those who will delight to offer affront to your idol. How then can you hope to have inward peace?"

"...now you feel hurt because the world is saying about you the very things you have been saying about yourself? Only yesterday you were telling God that you were nothing, a mere worm of the dust. Where is your consistency?"

"One of the greatest hindrances to internal peace which the Christian encounters is the common habit of dividing our lives into two areas - the sacred and the secular."

"It is not what a man does that determines whether his work is sacred or secular, it is why he does it."

Okay so that was a lot of quotes. Read through 'em, they're great. And read the book. It's a challenging and refreshing book for those pursuing God.