With: Reimagining the Way You Relate to God QUOTES

1 " As much as we might want to control God, history has proven that he is notoriously uncooperative. "

― Skye Jethani , With: Reimagining the Way You Relate to God

2 " By placing all our focus on receiving God's blessings and gifts, we behave just like the arrogant young man in the story [Parable of the Prodigal Son] - we value what God can do for us but not God himself. We seek a relationship with God as a utilitarian means to an end. And although we may praise him with our words, our hearts are set on what we hope to get from him. We become jerks cloaked in religiosity. "

― Skye Jethani , With: Reimagining the Way You Relate to God

3 " But surrender is only possible if we have total assurance that we are safe. We must be convinced that if we let go we will be caught. This assurance only comes when we trust that our heavenly Father desires to be with us and will not let us fall. "

― Skye Jethani , With: Reimagining the Way You Relate to God

4 " My concern is that we are inoculating an entire generation to the Christian faith. Many come with a holy desire to know God, to experience his presence in their lives, to be cared for like sheep entrusted to a meek and gentle shepherd. But this is not what they see or experience. In fact, they may leave the church without ever seeing a beautiful and enthralling vision of LIFE WITH GOD. The lights are never turned on to reveal the beauty that is present just behind the shadows. Instead they are offered a substitute form of Christianity, one that cannot break through the shadows and that never really satisfies the deepest longings of their souls. When their experience of faith leaves them disappointed, they may falsely conclude that Christianity has failed. In reality, to quote G. K. Chesterton, “The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried.”2 Or perhaps it might be more accurately said of our time that Christianity has not been presented and therefore has been left untried. The result is a generation disaffected and inoculated to the true Christian message. "

― Skye Jethani , With: Reimagining the Way You Relate to God

5 " In secular societies, adherence to God’s commands has become a matter of individual conscience, but this has put followers of traditional religions in a quandary. They believe God’s blessings or curses are dictated by obedience to his commands, but they are no longer empowered to impose their religious convictions on the entire community. Instead they must pursue cultural crusades using channels in politics and popular culture to impress their values on the masses. "

― Skye Jethani , With: Reimagining the Way You Relate to God

6 " The LIFE FROM GOD posture is so appealing because it doesn’t ask us to change. What we desire, what we seek, what we do, and how we live—all shaped by consumerism—are not disrupted. Our values and way of life are simply projected onto God and incorporated into a religious system in which we receive divine assistance to meet our desires. In this way LIFE FROM GOD is nothing more than consumerism with a Jesus sticker slapped on the bumper. "

― Skye Jethani , With: Reimagining the Way You Relate to God

7 " Today, according to the New York Times, each person is exposed to thirty-five hundred desire-inducing advertisements every day. Rodney Clapp wrote, “The consumer is schooled in insatiability. He or she is never to be satisfied—at least not for long. The consumer is tutored that people basically consist of unmet needs that can be appeased by commodified goods and experiences. "

― Skye Jethani , With: Reimagining the Way You Relate to God

8 " it is not our circumstances or behaviors or radical decisions that give our lives meaning and hope, but our unity with God himself. "

― Skye Jethani , With: Reimagining the Way You Relate to God

9 " Similarly, there is an eerie correlation between meanness and how absolutely certain a person is about their beliefs. I’m not advocating agnosticism, but humility is in short supply among those seeking to perfectly demarcate truth and error, righteousness and wickedness, as they pursue a life under God. Those who pride themselves on their reverent submission to God’s truth are strangely reluctant to submit to anyone else. The resulting conflict and animosity within Christian communities is difficult to reconcile with Jesus, who declared that the world would know we are his people by our love.4 "

― Skye Jethani , With: Reimagining the Way You Relate to God

10 " And to mitigate our fears, we all seek control over our world. If we can harness and control unpredictable forces, subdue our environment, and rule over our circumstances, then we can alleviate our fears—or so we believe.
Fear and control are the basis for all human religions. From this common beginning the paths diverge dramatically, splinter, multiply, and finally terminate in different places. But each one is an attempt to overcome suffering, fear, and death by exerting control over natural, and sometimes supernatural, forces. "

― Skye Jethani , With: Reimagining the Way You Relate to God

11 " control is an illusion. No amount of control will ever be enough to ensure our safety, and no amount of control will ever remove our fears. "

― Skye Jethani , With: Reimagining the Way You Relate to God

12 " Faith is the opposite of seeking control. It is surrendering control. It embraces the truth that control is an illusion—we never had it and we never will. Rather than trying to overcome our fears by seeking more control, the solution offered by LIFE WITH GOD is precisely the opposite—we overcome fear by surrendering control. But surrender is only possible if we have total assurance that we are safe. We must be convinced that if we let go we will be caught. This assurance only comes when we trust that our heavenly Father desires to be with us and will not let us fall. "

― Skye Jethani , With: Reimagining the Way You Relate to God

13 " In reality, to quote G. K. Chesterton, “The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried.”2 Or perhaps it might be more accurately said of our time that Christianity has not been presented and therefore has been left untried. "

― Skye Jethani , With: Reimagining the Way You Relate to God

14 " A great many of us have come to believe that hope and significance is an external construct—something contingent on our circumstances. As a result, we fail to believe that the Christian life, at least in its fullest and most abundant form, can be lived anywhere. "

― Skye Jethani , With: Reimagining the Way You Relate to God

15 " More than a century of marinating in this stew of products, ads, and desire has transformed the way people see themselves and the world. Although lack of self-control has always plagued humanity, for the first time in history, an economic system has been created that relies on it. If people began suppressing their desires and consuming only what they needed, our economy would collapse. To prevent this, satisfying personal desires has become sacrosanct. "

― Skye Jethani , With: Reimagining the Way You Relate to God

16 " The call to live in continual communion with God means that every person’s life, no matter how mundane, is elevated to sacred heights. "

― Skye Jethani , With: Reimagining the Way You Relate to God

17 " The reason, simply put, is that seeking control is not the solution to the human condition but is part of the problem. "

― Skye Jethani , With: Reimagining the Way You Relate to God

18 " True death is separation from the living God, the creator and sustainer of all life, just as union with him is true life. "

― Skye Jethani , With: Reimagining the Way You Relate to God

19 " If we are with God, then our eternal life begins now and will continue forever. "

― Skye Jethani , With: Reimagining the Way You Relate to God

20 " But as we have already seen, there are two problems with seeking hope and significance through external constructs. First, no matter how well we orchestrate our lives, we cannot prevent the raging sea, the unpredictable chaos of our world, from rushing in. Eventually what has given our lives definition and meaning will be washed away and our hope with it. And second, turning to institutional forms of religion—the kinds promoted by LIFE UNDER, FROM, and FOR GOD—for a sense of order and meaning may work for some people some of the time, but it also threatens to rob us of our dignity when we fail to conform to expectations. "

― Skye Jethani , With: Reimagining the Way You Relate to God