Stephen Sorenson > Recent Status Updates

Why is Google the first place we go? Because that's what we trust.
We trust Google more than God. Google > God.
But for Mom, it's God > Google.
(Can someone put "God > Google" on a bumper sticker, stat?)
Our phones have us fooled!

And here's the reason it's so important to pop that bubble: it's only when you finally surrender your control bubble to something or someone much greater than yourself that you get a trust bubble-one that can actually be filled up with something true and substantial.

Did beholding answer all my questions about suffering? No. But did it cement the idea that there is something much greater than me running this whole universe thing? Absolutely.

I was monking.

….Also, he should say a prayer upon his return before he seats himself again. After that only is the life entitled to its nourishment and the body to its rest. Before every action, at the beginning of every undertaking, let the hand make the sign of the cross.?

…. Nor should you ever take nourishment without beginning to do so with a prayer. Likewise, you should not leave the table without discharging your duty of thanks to the Creator. In the night, too, one should rise from his couch two or three times and therewith recall what he has learned by heart from the Scriptures [during the daytime]. On leaving his abode he should arm himself with prayer.

The Apostle indeed admonishes us to pray without ceasing
(1 Thessalonians 5:17), and with the Saints their very sleep should be a prayer. Nevertheless, we must set aside stated hours for the duty of praying. Then, should any occupation keep us away from it, the hour itself will remind us of that duty. As such prayer times everyone knows of the third, sixth and ninth hours, the morning and the evening hours….

"I was wondering. Why so much prayer? What does it do for you to pray so much? I'm just learning about all you do. Could you answer that for me?"
"Oh, why yes," he said. "You see, we believe that everything we do is prayer. We live a life of prayer.

Waiting is what makes space for wondering to happen.

We don't have to wonder about much anymore. And when we do, it's often in anticipation of something bad, right? Like wondering what the doctors are going to say. Like wondering if he or she will say yes. Like wondering if we will get the job. And for many of us, that wondering leads to anxiety. I honestly think it's because we don't know how to wonder anymore.

Reading this very good book and realized I can’t go on without adding some progress updates on very good quotes. This man is funny! I love his writing. Like he said “slayed. It was over. I had found my future spouse. (Insert present-day Carlos thanking God for unanswered prayers.)

I can tell you that you will have your hearts broken more by the people you love than by the people you hate. But you must still dare to love. The rewards are worth far more than the risks.

"You reconcile with the people you can," Fiske said.
"And all you can do with the rest is to bring them to justice. Which you did."

"When you near the end of your life... when you're a lonely old man... you start realizing what your accomplishments are really worth," he said. "The most brilliant clue I ever deciphered, the millions I earned- even the microwavable burrito itself-sometimes I think I'd be willing to trade all of it for a single hug from someone who truly loves me."

Your anguish is his home. Go to him.
"If you knew his heart, you would."

Whatever is crumbling all around you in your life, wherever you feel stuck, this remains, un-deflectable: his heart for you, the real you, is gentle and lowly. So go to him. That place in your life where you feel most defeated, he is there; he lives there, right there, and his heart for you, not on the other side of it but in that darkness, is gentle and lowly.

But there is one thing for us to do. Jesus says it in Matthew 11:28.
"Come to me."

WHAT NOW?
This is a book about the heart of Christ and of God. But what are we to do with this?
The main answer is, nothing. To ask, "Now how do I apply this to my life?" would be a trivialization of the point of this study. If an Eskimo wins a vacation to a sunny place, he doesn't arrive in his hotel room, step out onto the balcony, and wonder how to apply that to his life. He just enjoys it. He just basks.

Ephesians 2:7 is telling you that your death is not an end but a beginning. Not a wall, but a door. Not an exit, but an entrance.

"So that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus" —what does that mean, for those in Christ? It means that one day God is going to walk us through the wardrobe into Narnia, and we will stand there, paralyzed with joy, wonder, astonishment, and relief.

The souls of departed saints with Christ in heaven, shall have Christ as it were unbosomed unto them, manifesting those infinite riches of love towards them, that have been there from eternity.
... They shall eat and drink abundantly, and swim in the ocean of love, and be eternally swallowed up in the infinitely bright, and infinitely mild and sweet beams of divine love.

When communion with God had been one's oxygen, one's meat and drink, throughout ones whole life, without a single moment of interruption by sin—to suddenly bear the unspeakable weight of all our sins? Who could survive that? To lose that depth of communion was to die. The great love at the heart of the universe was being rent in two. The world's Light was going out.

We love until we are betrayed. Jesus continued to the cross despite betrayal. We love until we are forsaken. Jesus loved through forsakenness.
We love up to a limit. Jesus loves to the end.

To say the same truth backward: Jesus didn't die for us once we became strong (5:6); he didn't die for us once we started to overcome our sinfulness (5:8); God did not reconcile us to himself once we became friendly toward him (5:10).
God didn't meet us halfway. He refused to hold back, cautious, assessing our worth. That is not his heart.

The two passages —Psalm 103:11 and Isaiah 55:9—mutually illumine one another. God's ways and thoughts are not our ways and thoughts in that his are thoughts of love and ways of compassion that stretch to a degree beyond our mental horizon.

There is only one other place in the Bible where we have the exact phrase "as high as the heavens are above the earth." In Psalm 103
David prays: "For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his steadfast love toward those who fear him" (v. 11).

It’s as if God is saying in verse 8 that he and we think very differently, whereas in verse 9 he is saying precisely how, namely, his "thoughts" (the Hebrew word doesn't merely mean
"passing mental reflection" but "plans," "devices," "intentions," pur-poses") are higher, grander, enveloped in a compassion for which we fallen sinners have no natural category.

In verse 8 God says his ways and ours are different; in verse 9 he gets more specific and says his thoughts are higher.

So God tells us in plain terms how tiny our natural views of his heart are. His thoughts are not our thoughts. His ways are not our ways. And not because were just a few degrees off. No, "as high as the heavens are above the earth" —a Hebrew way of expressing spatial infinitude— "so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts" (v. 9).

He is telling us that we cannot view his expressions of his mercy with our old eyes.Our very view of God must change. What would we say to a sevenyearold who upon being given a birthday gift by his loving father, immediately scrambled to reach for his piggy bank to try to pay his dad back? How painful to a father's heart.That child needs to change his very view of who his father is and what his father delights to do

…And in context, it means something quite different. It is a statement not of the surprise of God's mysterious providence but of the surprise of God's compassionate heart.