Two Quotes I’m Liking Lately

First, I’m doing The Purpose Driven Life again, this time with a neighbor. It’s only been a decade since I did it last, which is pretty impressive considering it only came out seven years ago. 😉

God doesn’t owe you an explanation or reason for everything he asks you to do. Understanding can wait, but obedience can’t. Instant obedience will teach you more about God than a lifetime of Bible discussions. In fact, you will never understand some commands until you obey them first. Obedience unlocks understanding.

Obedience has been on my mind a lot recently. Could have something to do with having a three-year old. 😉 But I’m searching my heart for anything disobedient, and seeking to make decisions I know I should without waiting for full understanding.

The other quote came from a divorce book I’ve been reading called …And Marries Another by Craig S. Keener.

If all of us who love Jesus can become sharers in his pain–feel the pain of his body torn by racism, divided by unshared wealth and unalleviated poverty, rent by secondary doctrines which may be worth believing but not worth breaking fellowship over–if we can feel his pain, the pain of a love so great it drove him to the Cross to reconcile an alienated world to himself–then we will have the pain of the ultimate rejection. Because as Hosea so eloquently witnessed, the pain of a broken marriage is but a shadow of God’s pain, the testimony that no one has wounded any of us as much as all of us have wounded God, that he pleads day and night for our hearts, our lives–and so many of his people give him so little, absorbed by all their other loves. If WHATEVER pain we experience helps us to feel the pain of others, if his comfort to us enables us to comfort others, then it will have been enough.

Carla Stewart, over at Carla’s Writing Cafe, says The Familiar Stranger is “a love story … of astonishing grace.” Check out the whole review!