How Does God Change Us?
Things I Highlighted is a bulleted list of particular sentences in a book that stuck out to me. These cannot be viewed as general summaries of books, but rather parts of books that struck me in a way that demanded more of my attention. Typically I share one thing I highlighted from each chapter, so they will appear in the same order they appear in the book. This version of Things I Highlighted will cover How Does God Change Us?, a more concise version of another book (Deeper) that reminds Christians not to look anywhere but Christ himself for real growth.
Chapter 1: Jesus
As you continue to work your way through life, shed once and for all the reduced Jesus and lift your eyes to the real Jesus, the Jesus whose tenderness ever outstrips and embraces your weaknesses, the Christ whose riches are unsearchable. This Christ is one under whose care and instruction you will finally be able to blossom and grow.
Chapter 2: Despair
Repentance is turning from Self. Faith is turning to Jesus. You can't have one without the other. Repentance that does not turn to Jesus is not real repentance; faith that has not first turned from Self is not real faith. If we are traveling the wrong direction, things get fixes as we turn away from the wrong direction and simultaneously begin going the right direction. Both happen together.
Chapter 3: Union
I am united to Christ. I can never be disunited from him. The logic of the New Testament letters is that in order for me to get disunited from Christ, Christ himself would have to be de-resurrected. He'd have to get kicked out of heaven for me to get kicked out of him. We're that safe.
Chapter 4: Embrace
The love of Christ is his settled, unflappable heart of affection for sinners and sufferers—and only sinners and sufferers. When Jesus loves, Jesus is Jesus. He is being true to his own innermost depths. He doesn't have to work himself up to love. He is a gorged river of love, pent up, ready to gush forth upon the most timid request for it. Love is who Jesus most deeply, most naturally is.
Chapter 5: Acquittal
Sanctification is lifelong, gradual growth in grace. Justification, however, is not a process but an event, a moment in time, the verdict of legal acquittal once and for all. Why then are we thinking about justification in a book about sanctification? Here's why: the process of sanctification is, in large part, fed by constant returning, ever more deeply, to the event of justification.
Chapter 6: Honesty
We grow as we own up to being real sinners, not theoretical sinners. All of us, as Christians, acknowledge generally that we are sinners. Rarer is the Christian who opens up to another about exactly how he or she is a sinner. But in this honesty, life blossoms.
Chapter 7: Pain
There is no special technique to mortifying sin. You simply open your Bible and unleash it, letting God surprise you each day with the wonder of his love, proven in Christ and experienced in the Spirit.
Chapter 8: Breathing
Your Bible is going to have the same words tomorrow that it does today. Friends can't provide that—they will move in and out of your life, loyal today but absent tomorrow. Parents and their counsel will die. Your pastor will not always be available to take your call. The counselor who has given you such sage instruction will one day retire, or maybe you'll move out of state. But you can roll out of bed tomorrow morning and, whatever stressors slide uncomfortably across your mental horizon as you groan with the anxieties of the day, your friend the Bible is unfailingly steady.
Chapter 9: Supernaturalized
Every passage contributes to the single, overarching storyline of Scripture, which culminates in Jesus. Just as you wouldn't parachute into the middle of a novel, read a paragraph out of context, and expect to understand all that it means, you cannot expect to understand all that a passage of Scripture means without plotting it in the big arc of the Bible's narrative. And the main story of the Bible is that God sent his Son Jesus to do what Adam and Israel and we ourselves have failed to do—honor God and obey him fully. Every word in the Bible contributes to that message.