ON WHY GOD "ALLOWS" EVIL IN THE WORLD
"'All evil flows from independence, and independence is your choice. If I were to simply revoke all the choices of independence, the world as you know it would cease to exist and love would have no meaning. This world is not a playground where I keep all my children free from evil. Evil is the chaos of this age that you brought to me, but it will not have the final say. Now it touches everyone I love, those who follow me and those who don't. If I take away the consequences of people's choices, I destroy the possibility of love. Love that is forced is no love at all.'" (p. 207)
ON RELIGIOUS RULES
"'It is true that relationships are a whole lot messier than rules, but rules will never give you answers to the deep questions of the heart, and they will never love you.'
'...I'm realizing how few answers I have...to anything. You know, you've turned me upside down or inside out or something.'
'Mackenzie, religion is about having the right answers, and some of its answers are right. But I am about the process that takes you to the living answer, and once you get to him, he will change you from the inside. There are a lot of smart people who are able to say a lot of right things from their brains because they have been told what the right answers are, but they don't know me at all.'" (p. 215-216)
ON THE TEN COMMANDMENTS
"'Why do you think we came up with the Ten Commandments?'
'...I suppose, at least I have been taught, that it's a set of rules you expected humans to obey in order to live righteously in your good graces.'
'If that were true, which it is not,...then how many do you think lived righteously enough to enter our good graces?'
'Not very many, if people are like me,' Mack observed.
'Actually, only one succeeded--Jesus. He not only obeyed the letter of the Law but fulfilled the spirit of it completely. But understand this, Mackenzie--to do that he had to rest fully and dependently upon me.'
'Then why did you give us those commandments?' asked Mack.
'Actually, we wanted you to give up trying to be righteous on your own. It was a mirror to reveal just how filthy your face gets when you live independently.'
'But as I'm sure you know, there are many,' responded Mack, 'who think they are made righteous by following the rules,'
'But can you clean your face with the same mirror that shows you how dirty you are? There is no mercy or grace in rules, not even for one mistake. That's why Jesus fulfilled all of it for you--so that it no longer has jurisdiction over you. And the Law that once contained impossible demands...actually becomes a promise we fulfill in you.'" (p. 220-221)
GOD WANTS ALL OF YOU
"'You see, Mackenzie, I don't just want a piece of you and a piece of your life. Even if you were able, which you are not, to give me the biggest piece,that is not what I want. I want all of you and all of every part of you and your day.'
Jesus now spoke again. 'Mack, I don't want to be first among a list of values; I want to be at the center of everything. When I live in you, then together we can live through everything that happens to you. Rather than the top of a pyramid, I want to be the center of a mobile, where everything in your life--your friends, family, occupation, thoughts, activities--is connected to me but moves with the wind, in and out and back and forth, in an incredible dance of being.'" (p. 226)
This book has enriched my relationship with Jesus in a very special way. I pray that you will seek out God's Word, first and foremost, but that you will also open your heart to literature that points the way to Christ, the Living Word, and allows you to grow in your relationship with him.
Will you give yourself to the Lord Jesus today? You are his precious child, his treasure, and he is ESPECIALLY FOND OF YOU.
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