I’m reading a great book right now called “Loving God” by Charles Colson. He has some great things to say… very convicting. Here are a few of the many thoughts I marked.
“Do we view our faith as a magnificent philosophy or a living truth?”
“Holiness is obeying God.”
Colson relating a story about Mother Teresa:
“A few years ago a brother in the order came to her (Mother Teresa) complaining about a superior whose rules, he felt, were interfering with his ministry. ‘My vocation is to work for lepers,’ he told Mother Teresa. ‘I want to spend myself for the lepers.’
She stared at him a moment, then smiled, ‘Brother,’ she said gently, ‘your vocation is not to work for lepers, your vocation is to belong to Jesus.’
Mother Teresa is not in love with a cause, noble as her cause is. Rather, she loves God and is dedicated to living His life, not her own. This is holiness. It is the complete surrender of self in obedience to the will and service of God. Or as Mother Teresa sums it up, complete ‘acceptance of the will of God.’ “
“It is the nature of man to organize. Probably since the Tower of Babel we have been setting up hierarchies, organizational flow charts, orders of authority, and all the other structural schemes dreamed up through the ages. The more advanced the civilization, the more refined the organizational schemes.
However, though structures are essential to hold society together, they are there to serve, not to be served. The marvels of modern technology have produced a sophistication in systems and structures that encourages what Jacques Ellul, the French historian, calls the “political illusion,” the misguided belief that all problems can be solved by structures – namely, institutions. So for each new problem, a new institution is created.
Unfortunately, this mentality has invaded the church, and we treat it as a structure (and just another one of many in society at that) dependent on charts and manuals and plans and computer print-outs.
But the true church is not held together by any structure man creates; it is not an organization. It is alive, its life breathed into it by a sovereign God. Its heart beats with God’s heart. It is one with Him and moves as His Spirit moves – where He chooses and often against the designs of man.
The life function of this living organism is to love the God who created it – to care for others out of obedience to Christ, to heal those who hurt, to take away fear, to restore community, to belong to one another, to proclaim the Good News while living it out. The church is the invisible made visible.”
(c) 2016 Leighann Marquiss
Comments (2)
Preach it sister! I need to read the book. Sometimes it seems we get so tied up in the organization that we fail to see the reason for it. Thanks for sharing –
Beverly – Ohio
I’m thinking this needs to be another book to add to my reading list.