Crazy Love

The staff here at camp is reading a book called Crazy Love: Overwhelmed by a Relentless God by Francis Chan. They are reading it right now because the summer staff will be reading it during their devotions. Robert kept telling me that I needed to read it, and tonight I decided to read a couple of chapters. All I can say is WOW. I am still processing, but I can see that God is going to use this book to change lives this summer. The camp has kind of been in a rut for the past several years, and we have all been praying for something big, and I think it's happening. I have seen more unity in the past few months than I have ever seen since I've been here, and now He's bringing peoples' focus onto Him (including our own). It's amazing.
Check out the website CrazyLoveBook.com. Amazing.

Francis Chan has written another book titled The Forgotten God: Reversing Our Tragic Neglect of the Holy Spirit. It comes out in September. I will definitely be buying this book. The amazing thing about it is that I am currently studying Acts, and this is exactly what I have gotten out of it so far (well, one of many things). Isn't it amazing how God works??

Here is a comment from someone on Amazon:
There are two ways of critiquing the church. We can critique out of love or out of disgust. Chan is committed to critiquing the church as an act of love. In a recent interview, when asked about the emergent church, he said this: "As a pastor I hear a lot of emergent leaders talk about what is wrong with the church. It comes across as someone who doesn't love the church. I'm a pastor first and foremost, and I'm trying to offer a solution or a model of what church should look like. I'm going back to scripture and seeing what the church was in its simplest form and trying to recreate that in my own church. I'm not coming up with anything new. I'm calling people to go back to the way it was. I'm not bashing the church. I'm loving it." And his love for the church is obvious throughout this book. 

This semester God has been teaching me so much, and I am finally working through this anxiety that I have dealt with for years. I am actually working through it; not trying to cover it up or just get over it. Praise God for loving me so much even though I don't deserve it. I will write a blog about this sometime. J