Searching for God Knows What

My small group just got done reading the book Searching for God Knows What by Donald Miller and it was another great read. Here is some of what I found most interesting:

• After my friend told me 'reality is like fine wine, it doesn't appeal to children,' I started reading the Bible very differently. I stopped looking for the formulas and tried to understand what God was trying to say. When I did that, I realized God's message to mankind wasn't a bunch of hoops to jump thru to get saved and it wasn't a series of ideas we had to agree with; rather an invitation to know God.
• The problem with God-impostors is that they worship a very small god to validate their identities. This god falls apart as soon as you touch him.
• Man is wired so we get his glory from God. God's love is so pure that Adam & Eve felt no insecurity at all. But when that relationship was broken, they knew it instantly. All of the insecurity rose the instant they realized they were alone.
• What God must have felt, arriving on the scene just after the Fall, knowing all He had made was ruined. Meeting Adam & Eve's eyes for the first time. They are shaking, feeling the trustworthiness of their first love and wondering if He would love them again. Hearing Him speak for the first time as the One who had been betrayed. "Who told you that you were naked?"
• If you declare war against someone else you either have to handcuff them or kill them to win. But if you want them to be forgiven by Christ and live eternally in heaven with Jesus you have to love them. Declaring war in the name of an agenda, in the name of God, is what militant Muslims are doing in the Middle East, and we don't want that here.
• When we read the Bible for other reasons than text to explain God, it becomes a puzzle by which we test our knowledge against our friends, and the views by which we distinguish superiors from inferiors. Its is as though we believe when we die, Alex Trebeck will be standing at the gates of heaven leading us in a mad round of religious Jeopardy.
• Fasting is mourning Him, baptism is identifying with Him, Communion is remembering him.

I love the different viewpoint presented in the book. I never thought of what God must have felt like after the fall, or that God didn't design the Bible specifically for modern day America. But for everyone (yes, everyone) around the world to have a relationship with him. To give us the opportunity to live within the context we were designed and to know His love.

Pretty awesome, I have to say.