Searching For God Knows What

Searching For God Knows What - Donald Miller

I loved this book. Soaked it in. Miller's conversational style made it a very readable book, and kept me wanting more.

The main theme that I got from the book is that faith in God is not about a formula, but a relationship.
....What if what we really want in life is relational? Now this changes things quite a bit, because if the gospel of Jesus is just some formula I obey in order to get taken off the naughty list and put on a nice list, then it doesn't meet the deep need of the human condition, it doesn't interact with the great desire of my soul, and it has nothing to do with the hidden (or rather, obvious) language we are all speaking. But if it is more, if it is a story about humanity falling away from the community that named it, and an attempt to bring humanity back to that community, and if it is more than a basic series of ideas, but rather speaks directly into this basic human need we are feeling, then the gospel of Jesus is the most relevant message in the history of humankind.
....What if the gospel of Jesus was an invitation to know God?
....But if the gospel of Jesus is relational; this is, if our brokenness will be fixed, not by our understanding of theology, but by God telling us who we are, then this would require a kind of intimacy of which only heaven knows.
....God's love, God's voice and presence, would instill in our souls with such affirmation we would need nothing more and would cause us to love other people so much we would be willing to die for them.
....God wired us so that He told us who we were, and outside of that relationship, the relationship that said we were loved and valued and beautiful, we didn't have any worth at all.
....What if a person isn't supposed to be alone, isn't supposed to have glory on his own, but rather get glory from the God who loves him?
....The way they are wired will be fulfilled, that they will be told who they are by God and God's glory will shine through them, giving them value and worth and a feeling they are loved.
....We will be fulfilled when we are finally with God and, in His companionship, we know who we are? What if when we are with God, we feel that we have glory, we feel His love for us, and know, in a way infinitely more satisfying than a parent's love or a lover's love, that we matter?
....Morality became a code, rather than a manifestation of a love for Christ.
....What we need here, truly, is faith in a Being, not a list of ideas.
....If we trust in a formula, if we trust in steps, we are not trusting in God. Formulas, while helping us organize our faith, also tempt us to trust in them rather than in God.
....Christ's death, again, was not a technicality by which we are covered with grace, but rather a passionate and inconceivable act of kindness and altruism and love stemming from God's desire to be reunited with His creation.

It made me think deeper about how Jesus related to people, and how we relate to people. Jesus didn't shove religion down people's throats. He didn't come to enforce the law and hate people who didn't abide by it. He came to love. He came to show God's love to people. If we are to be His hands and feet, that is what we are to do. LOVE.
....He never sat down and wrote a mission statement. Instead, He accumulated friends and allowed them to write about Him, talk about Him, testify about Him.
....Jesus built our faith system entirely on relationships.
....He seemed to want people to be together, to live together and love one another and link arms.
(at the part I wrote "Hippie Jesus :) " in the margin. Really, He loved the earth, He loved the people around Him. He took care of people. He didn't hate. I'm sure He recycled....)
....If we know God, we will love our brother.

Made me think about church.. and pastoring..  and culture...
....Is Jesus acting in our hearts to reach out to the person who isn't like us -- the oppressed, the poor, the unchurched -- and to humble ourselves, give of our money, build our communities in love, give our time, our creativity, get on our knees before our enemies in humility, treating them as Scripture says, as people who are more important than we are?
...How odd would it seem to have been one of the members of the early church, shepherded by Paul or Peter, and to come forward a thousand years to see people standing in line or sitting quietly in a large building that looked like a schoolroom or movie theater, to take communion. How different would it seem from the way they did it, sitting around somebody's living room table, grabbing a hunk of bread and holding their own glass of wine, exchanging stories about Christ, perhaps laughing, perhaps crying, consoling each other, telling one another that the Person who has exploded into their hearts was indeed the Son of God, their Bridegoom, come to tell them who they were, come to mend the broken relationship, come to marry them in a spiritual union more beautiful, more intimate than anything they could know on earth.
....if what we were really doing in evangelical circles, then, had more to do with redeeming ourselves to culture than it did with showing Jesus to a hurting world. 
....justifying ourselves to culture, as if culture had some kind of authority to redeem us in the first place.
....love's manifestation as service to the people in the church, working itself out in love for others.

Made me think about my journey, and transformation, and surrender and pain...
....All you must do to engage God is be willing to leave everything behind, be willing to walk away from your identity, and embrace joyfully the trials and tribulations, the torture and perhaps martyrdom that will come upon you for being a child of God in a broken world working on its own redemption in empty pursuits.
....Imagine how much a man's life would be changed if he trusted that he was loved by God?
....This kind of life could take place only within a relationship with God, the One who takes care of our needs, the One who really has the power to tell us who we are, if we would only trust Him.
....There is a certain freedom in getting our feelings of redemption from God and not other people.
....Why not get your glory from God? Why not accept your feelings of redemption because of His pleasure in you, not the fickle and empty favor of man? And only then will you know who you are, and only then will you have true, uninhibited relationships with others.
....Jesus says, after all, to know Him we must follow Him, we must cling to Him and imitate Him, and many places in Scripture the idea is presented that if we know Him, we will obey Him.
....the first thing that God wanted to communicate to mankind was that life is hard, and there is pain, great pain in life, and yet the answer to this pain, or the cure for this pain, is not given in explanation; rather God offers to this pain or this life experience, Himself. Not steps, not an understanding, not a philosophy, but Himself.
....so from the beginning, from the very first story told in Scripture, God presents life, as it is, without escape, with only Himself to cling to.
....Christ asking that we "follow" Him....a clinging to Him or imitation of Him, Christ, in short, asks us to give everything....all our false ideas about who God is, all our trust in something other than God to redeem us. In so doing, we die to our broken natures in exchange for His perfect nature, and find a unification with Him that will allow God to see us as one.
....The strength is all His, and the gift is all ours
....In His presence we will not hate ourselves, second-guess ourselves, or compare ourselves to others; but rather, our lives will be filled with the gratitude of His presence.
....God whispering in my ear that I no longer had to perform in a circus, I no longer had to defend myself in the sinking lifeboat, that God had come to earth, made Himself human, taken the world's sin upon Himself, and was crucified for me, so that His glory could shine through me, and I could be made whole.