Wide Awake by Erwin McManus Chapter 6 Highlights

A few weeks ago I made a post about an online "book club" idea (see the post here).  The following post is mostly everything that I stood out to me in the sixth chapter.  You can see my notes from Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3, Chapter 4, and Chapter 5 here. I will continue to make posts for each chapter as I read through the book.  I would love to hear what those of you reading this book thought after reading each chapter so definitely leave comments! Even if you aren't reading through the book, feel free to read the quotes and comment on any that might strike up some thoughts or emotions in you!

Create: The Activist

• The Creator as the ultimate act of creativity, has created you and me to be creative. (pg. 154)
• For them (artists) the boundaries are the parameters, not the limitations. (pg. 155)
• He (God) is the One who takes the zero and from it creates the infinite. And by the way, in case you've been wondering, you are incapable of this. That may be your primary source of frustration in your life. You're trying to create out of nothing. (pg. 156)
• ...our lives are to be more than cheap imitations of another's. That wouldn't even be living; that wouldn't even be existing--that would be torment. All of us long to find our own unique path. Even those who are deeply devoted to Jesus strive to imitate Christ without becoming an imitation. (pg. 157)
• The world, as Paul describes it, will rob you of your uniqueness. If you conform to it, you will lose your soul. You will lose yourself. To conform to Christ is to allow the One who created you to shape your character. It is here that God begins to reclaim, redirect, and unleash your creative potential. To conform to Christ is not to surrender your creative potential but to fully actualize it. (pg. 157)
• --if there is any creativity in us, it is because the creator God put it within us. We have been told that only God is creative, and all we are supposed to do is obey. No wonder people outside the faith see us as controlling and dogmatic. (pg. 157)
• You at your best are not in competition with God but in concert with God. (pg. 157-158)
• Every choice you make has momentum long past the action. Good choices create a better world and a better future. Destructive choices bring pain and tragedy. Either way, you are creating a future for yourself and the people affected by your life. (pg. 159)
• You are responsible for your actions and the consequences of your actions. (pg. 159)
• When Jesus gave us insight into the kingdom of God, he focused not so much on what God would do for us but instead on what he will expect from us. (pg. 160)
• We often convince ourselves that the fastest way to get somewhere in life is the shortest distance between two places. There are times and circumstances where what you did on the way to the destination is all that matters. (pg. 163)
• What Jesus is pressing us to acknowledge here is that some things are in our control. We are responsible to be prepared. We need to live our lives with the knowledge that one day Jesus will come back and evaluate our lives and take into measure the opportunities given to us. There are things that are not only in our control, but also for which we are responsible and will be held accountable. (pg. 163)
• "Life is short. Stay awake for it." (pg. 164)
• Often, the person who has the most luck is the person who won't quit. (pg. 164)
• When we fail, when we blow it, when we fall short because we were unprepared for an opportunity, we blow it off and say, "Well, that must have been the Lord's will." That's a Christianized way of blaming God for our own problems. (pg. 165)
• You Giving your best will honor God. (pg. 166)
• Do now whatever you must to be prepared for the future you desire. (pg. 166)
• You can't be a light if you don't have any oil for your lamp. (pg. 168) (referencing the parable of the ten virgins waiting to meet the bridegroom in Matthew 25:1-12)
• ...what God has entrusted to us, he holds us accountable for. (pg. 170)
• You have no control over how you live, only how well you live. You alone are the steward of your life, and you must choose what you will do with the talent God has given you. (pg. 170)
• We may all be created equal, but we aren't created the same. There are people out there more talented that we are. And yes, it's irritating and at times discouraging. Yet someone less talented can accomplish more than a person with superior talent by working harder. On the other hand, a more talented person might give less effort and still succeed more than the rest of us. Life is anything but fair. (pg. 171)
• Talent you don't use is talent you have abused. To waste what God has put in you is a dishonor to God and a disservice to humanity. (pg. 172)
• God is the source of all creativity, of all beauty, of all that is good in the world. (pg. 172)
• If you don't believe that you're part of the creative process, then just sit at the table tonight and wait until God brings you dinner. (pg. 173)
• ...Your potential will only be fully expressed in relationship to the creative God who made you creative. (pg. 173)
• It would be tragic if only those with the worst of intentions believed they could affect the future of humanity. What would happen if those who believed in love, hope, peace, and the value of human spirit also believed they could effect change in the world? (pg. 173)
• ...you can actually do whatever you want with your life. You've been created by God to choose. I think a lot of us want to abdicate our life responsibility, even our free will. You get to decide what you do today and what you do tomorrow, but you will be accountable for your choices. (pg. 174)
• You may say, "I don't know what career God wants me to have." Do you know what a good starting point is? Quit blaming everything on God. Quit blaming your inability to make a decision. Quit blaming your indecisiveness on God. How about just owning up to the fact that you're afraid to make a choice. (pg. 174)
• We're absolutely afraid of God. We think if we risk and then fail, then God is going to punish us....God, though isn't looking at failure but faithfulness. He's not waiting for you to fail so he can punish you or succeed so he can pillage you. He wants to celebrate your life. (pg. 175)
• God finds no pleasure in the punishment of the wicked. He doesn't find any pleasure punishing the people many of us would love to punish. In the same way, he is not waiting for you to blow it so he can tell you how badly you have done. (pg. 175)
• God does not measure success the way we do. (pg. 175)
• Every time God created, it was good. (pg. 178)
• You want to know what your role is in the creative process? You are created by God to expand the good....Most of us understand that we're not created to be evil, but we act as if we were created to be neutral....God designed you to be an expression of his goodness. (pg. 178)
• God loves when his children reflect his character. (pg. 179)
• Jesus makes clear that the righteous people in his parable didn't help the poor try to earn God's love or earn a place in God's kingdom. Their service to others was a genuine reflection of their hearts. (pg. 179)
• This is your life and no one else's--so own it. It's your responsibility to maximize your capacity, to take an inventory of who you are and to understand how God has designed you, to harness all the talent and skills God has placed in you, and to recognize that you will not be measured against anyone else's life but your own. (pg. 179)
• You will only expand the good when your life is fueled by love and proved by action. It's not enough to feel empathy for others; you have to take some kind of action that reflects the heart of God as you serve the world. (pg. 180)
• Even while we are meeting the needs of others, God has a wonderful way of meeting our needs. When your dreams include the good of others, don't be surprised when God brings your dreams to pass. (pg. 181)
• God did not create you to be neutral; God did not create you to be a puppet; God did not create you to simply walk through life passively concluding, Whatever God's going to do, God's going to do. You can't create out of nothing, but don't underestimate the amazing potential that resides within you. (pg. 184)
• When you become an activist you become proactive. To create you must act. (pg. 185)

Wide Awake by Erwin McManus Chapter 5 Highlights

A few weeks ago I made a post about an online "book club" idea (see the post here).  The following post is mostly everything that I stood out to me in the fifth chapter.  You can see my notes from Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3, and Chapter 4 here. I will continue to make posts for each chapter as I read through the book.  I would love to hear what those of you reading this book thought after reading each chapter so definitely leave comments! Even if you aren't reading through the book, feel free to read the quotes and comment on any that might strike up some thoughts or emotions in you!

Focus: The Seer

• For some of us, the problem isn't that we don't have any dreams; it's that we have way too many dreams or that all we have are dreams. We just live in our dreams rather than actually live out our dreams. (pg. 124)
• ...we simply find ourselves fickle in our passions, desires, and dreams. There's so much we want to do, so many possibilities, so many things that burn within us that we end up in danger of choosing a lesser life than the one God desires for us. We end up falling into the category of dreamer, which is often a polite way of saying "idealist who never actually does anything." (pg. 124-125)
• I don't know if you have people who know you and invest in your life and journey, but a roomful of people like that brings a lot of insight and clarity into your life. (pg. 126)
• We live in a world that tells us we should know something about everything. You should be a generalist, not a specialist....The Renaissance person knows about everything. The problem, of course, is you can't know everything, so you learn a little bit about a lot of things. (pg. 127)
• You've been trained to believe that lack of focus is the key to success. (pg. 128)
• ...the tough choices aren't between good and evil, but between all the equally good options out there that are simply not the right paths for you. You have to allow even beautiful dreams to die when they are not supposed to be yours. (pg. 128)
• The more you can lock in to who God has created you to be--your unique gifts, talents, passions, intelligence, all the stuff God has poured into you--the more you'll begin to understand your unique place in human history. (pg. 129)
• When you're about to drown in a storm, you're really open to God and to whatever he might want to say to you. (pg. 130)
• ...why we lose our focus in life. We get distracted by our surroundings and circumstances and everything happening around us, and they pull our attention away from where we are supposed to be going. The nemesis of focus is distraction. (pg. 131)
• He (Peter) still lost sight of where God was leading him and allowed his circumstances to pull him off course. When Peter took his eyes off Jesus, his life potential was diminished, and he began drowning in his inadequacy. As talented as you may be, you cannot walk the road God has prepared for you without him. To follow him is to live in his strength. (pg. 132)
• When Peter took his eyes off Jesus, he was overwhelmed not by the storm but by his fear. (pg. 133)
• We justify our loss of focus with the excuse that God is invisible. You can't see or hear him; it's easier to trust in the world you can see and feel. But Peter had God visible, physical, tangible, right in front of him, and even that didn't make the difference. Part of what costs us the life we are created to live is that we don't lock in. We lose focus because we become distracted by our circumstances. (pg. 133)
• If you resolve to live the life of your dreams, if you refuse to settle for a life other than the one God created you to live, you're going to see the waves and the wind. And it's going to terrify you and you're going to begin to sink. You have to decide to focus and lock in on the direction God has called you to live your life. This first step in getting focused could be described as concentration. Concentration is directing all of our energies and resources to a specific task, idea, and direction. So to focus, you have to make this adjustment--to concentrate all of your energy and resources on where you are going. Set your eyes on where God is calling you and don't look back (and certainly don't look around). (pg. 135-136)
• When Jesus calls us to come, he is calling us out into a future we cannot walk without him. (pg. 136)
• Somehow everything Jesus needed to do, he did. (pg. 138)
• If you don't have a purpose for your life, there are plenty of people who will be happy to give you theirs. (pg. 139)
• What sometimes is hard for us to accept is that Jesus Christ, when he came into the world, didn't come to do everything in that moment. He came to do the most important things. He came to do what no one else could do on our behalf. Jesus came into this world and offered his life as a sacrifice for us so that through his death on the cross, we enter into relationship with God himself. (pg. 140)
• The tragedy is if you try to be everything and do everything, you may so diffuse your effect that you will not optimize who God made you to be and what he created you to accomplish. (pg. 141)
• Self-awareness is one of the most critical characteristics of personal effectiveness and productivity. Do you know who you are? (pg. 141)
• What Jesus was doing at the age of twelve was becoming the person that could handle what he needed to do at the age of thirty-two--and especially at the age of thirty-three. (pg. 143)
• After learning the hard way, I keep reminding myself, if I have to make a decision before I'm ready, just say no. I've made my worst decisions when I was put on the spot. (pg. 144)
• Life comes at you fast and hard, with multiple options and opportunities and with endless variety and variations. If you do not know who you are and who you are becoming, if you do not have your hot center fueled by your core values, you will over and over again make wrong choices. Life rarely sends you a warning shot. (pg. 144-145)
• Clarity comes from knowing who you are and what really matters to you. (pg. 145)
• We often think of God's will more as a tightrope than a compass. (pg. 145)
• It's amazing how negative emotions and attitudes like bitterness, jealousy, hatred, unforgiveness, fear, or arrogance can skew your view of the world, blind you to the potential of your life, and turn your dreams into a nightmare. (pg. 148)
• Sin and guilt and shame are not where God wants you to focus your life. He wants you to focus on the unique nature of your creation--that you're created in the image and likeness of God, that you have infinite value to God, and were designed by God to live a life beyond your wildest imagination. (pg. 148)

Wide Awake by Erwin McManus: Chapter 4 Highlights

In case you don't remember, a few weeks ago I made a post about an online "book club" idea (see the post here).  The following post is basically everything that I thought was interesting in the third chapter.  You can see my notes from Chapter 1, Chapter 2, and Chapter 3 here. I will continue to make posts for each chapter as I read through the book.  I would love to hear what those of you reading this book thought after reading each chapter so definitely leave comments! Even if you aren't reading through the book, feel free to read the quotes and comment on any that might strike up some thoughts or emotions in you!

Expect: The Believer

• They have a leak when it comes to hope. They seem incapable of holding on to a positive view of life. (pg. 91)
• The optimistic never see failure as personal, permanent, or pervasive, but others are constricted, paralyzed, or controlled by failures. (pg. 92)
• One of the most important characteristics of people who achieve the extraordinary is they live a life of expectation--they expect the good to happen; they internalize optimism. (pg. 92)
• "You need to persevere so that when you have done the will of God, you will receive what he has promised. For, 'In just a little while, he who is coming will come and will not delay.' And, 'But my righteous one will live by faith. And I take no pleasure in the one who shrinks back.'" (pg. 94)
• Of all the things that may change about you when you connect to God, here is one that should fill you with confidence--if you have lived your life running away, this is not who you are any longer. Where once we ran from problems, failures, hardship, danger, and challenges, we are now among those who thrive in the midst of them. (pg. 95)
• You recognize that the greatness within you can only emerge if you are willing to face your greatest challenges. (pg. 95)
• If you are in a relationship with the God who created you, no matter who you've been or what you've done or how many times you've messed up or failed or quit, you are no longer that person, no longer a part of the tribe that shrinks back. (pg. 95)
• What we really want God to do is be the calming presence in our life. We want God to bring some peace and stability. But soon you're saying, "Wait a minute, nobody told me that a relationship with God is like skiing downhill in the Swiss Alps as a beginner with no lessons!" (pg. 96)
• The way God changes your life is by changing you. (pg. 97)
• Wherever you made your mess, that's where you get to start cleaning it up. (pg. 97)
• "Transformation is the ability to get up in the morning and look in the mirror and like the person you are becoming." (pg. 98)
• Failure can become a state of being, as can despair. (pg. 99)
• We are called to emulate the lives of women and men who kept leaning into their future. (pg. 99)
• When you begin to live a life that integrates faith and hope, you begin to internalize optimism. (pg. 100)
• Faith is not the Christian version of a wish. It is not about speaking something into reality. Faith is different. Faith is about substance. It's about knowing what has not happened will certainly happen. Not because you will make it happen but because God has promised it will be so. (pg. 100)
• Faith is about conviction, while hope is about confidence. Faith grounds us in the certainty of God's faithfulness, and hope pulls us into the mystery of God's future. (pg. 100)
•  People talk about faith as if it's a magical ingredient that impresses God and gives him a great idea of what he should do with our life. (pg.101)
• A lot of us think that faith is about impressing God with our ideas or coming up with these huge plans. (pg.102)
• God isn't lacking in vision. But there does seem to be a shortage of people willing to dream as big as God. Faith isn't about convincing God to go big but posturing ourselves to join God in a life bigger than we are and bigger than our dreams. (pg. 103)
• Faith is about confidence in God's character, that he is good and true and beautiful. (pg. 103)
• If nothing can stop God, then who can stop you when you are pursuing him and living for his purpose? (pg. 103)
• Faith pushes you to pursue a God-sized dream, and hope pulls and inspires you to never quit until it is a reality. (pg. 104)
• ...Abraham...had security and certainty, and God said, "I want you to give up everything you have, everything you know, and relinquish your security and certainty. I want you to expect more. And I want you to go with me on a journey to a place you have no idea where it is, no idea what it's going to be like, and I want you to move from being a settler to becoming a stranger and a wanderer." (pg. 105)
• I wonder if for many of us, the only thing stopping us from living the life God created us to live--the live of our dreams--is to let go of a life so good that it betrays the great. (pg. 106)
• We have confused comfort with peace, belief with faith, safety with wisdom, wealth with blessing, and existence with life. (pg. 106)
• The great challenge for many of us is that there will be times in our lives when God will say, "I  have done all of this for you. i have provided for you tremendously, but I want you now to give that up for the life you were created to live. There's more than this." It is very likely that the life God has given you as a gift today is the very thing he will ask of you as a sacrifice tomorrow. (pg. 108)
• Sometimes God does so much in our lives that when he wants to work in a new way we resist, ironically, because we have become so attached to all he has brought to us. What can happen is that the things God has blessed us with become an anchor that keeps us grounded ashore rather than launching us out into his dream for us. (pg. 109-110)
• The unknown with God is always better than the known without him. (pg. 110)
• He (God) never intended all of our lives to be the same. God's promise is not that everything will go well for us but that our lives will be well lived. (pg. 112)
• A life of expectation sometimes brings great public success, but sometimes God glorifies himself and finds the greatest honor from our lives when we are willing to fail in the eyes of others simply by doing what is right even if it means losing our perceived value to the world. (pg. 112)
• God is not limited to your success and failure. God is glorified when you simply live your life for the right things, whether you succeed or fail. (pg. 113)
• Are you a prisoner to the opinion of others, or are you willing to allow God to create the life of your dreams? Would you choose success in the eyes of others or failure that brings your life its greatest meaning? (pg. 113)
• A life of expectation isn't so much about what you expect out of life but what you put into it. The former is about feeling entitled; the latter about living fully engaged. (pg. 113)
• ...how long you live does not reflect how well you live. The real question is, were you alive when you died? (pg. 114)
• Abel was murdered, but Cain could not kill his dreams. It was Cain who, though he remained alive, was trapped in a nightmare. (pg. 115)
• To live wide awake is not about finding a way around the suffering or difficulties of life. It is stepping into the life God has for you. (pg. 115)
• Some of us need to move past looking to God for only the forgiveness of our sins, and begin to live lives that pursue God and to live in his pleasure. (pg. 115-116)
• Enoch walked with God, and then he was no more. God took him away. Be careful getting too close to God; you may not be here tomorrow. (pg. 116)
• Your faith, your religion or spirituality, is not supposed to serve as a way to get God off your back. It's not supposed to be a way to leverage your bets so that maybe you can get to heaven when you die. It's not supposed to be just about some way to relieve your guilt and shame. Dreaming with your eyes open is about living life to the fullest and enjoying God and having him enjoy you. It's about getting God into your soul, your heart, and your head, and letting him show you the dreams and plans he has for your life. When an infinite God comes to dwell in a finite being, dangerously beautiful things begin to happen. It is here where you become indomitable. The fire within you becomes an eternal flame that cannot be put out. (pg. 116-117)
• ...what can you do when your life is filled with expectation and you are delusional enough to believe that you have the power to change things? (pg. 118)
• ...research reveals that the people most rooted or grounded in reality are those who could be considered depressed. Reality is really overrated; it makes you a pessimist. To be an optimist you must be a dreamer. You must awaken the hero within you that sees beyond the problem to the promise. I call this hero the Believer. (pg. 118-119)
• Maybe our marriages would get better if we kept pursuing our spouses. (pg. 119)
• Little by little we begin to live in fear. We begin to be haunted by doubt. We begin to settle for less. (pg. 119)
• Others need to see to believe. You see because you believe. (pg. 119)

Fwd: Jon Acuff - Blog

Reposting this from Jon Acuff's blog...hope you like...

Begin forwarded message:

From: "Jon Acuff's Blog" <jonacuff@gmail.com>
Date: July 9, 2012 6:07:01 PM EDT
To: jcrombie213@gmail.com
Subject: Jon Acuff - Blog

Jon Acuff - Blog

---

Lucky breaks. Posted: 09 Jul 2012 04:00 AM PDT "Lucky breaks" are what people on the sidelines always accuse people in the game of catching. Want to catch your own lucky break? Suit up. Get in the game. Get your nose bloodied, your hands dirtied. People on the sidelines never catch a lucky break. They catch foul balls. Is it easier to yell about what you could do or could be or could accomplish someday from the sidelines? Yes. Will any of it happen if you stay there? No. Complain all you want about people who catch "lucky breaks," but the truth is painfully simple. Every touchdown in history, every home run in the last 100 years, every goal scored in every single game of every single sport, happened on the field, not the sidelines. So either play or don't, but don't for a second act like there's any confusion about where lucky breaks occur and who has access to them.

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