A wild goose chase indeed

I'm a big fan of Mark Batterson. He's the lead pastor over at National Community Church in Washington, DC. Mark is also the writer of one of my favorite books.

I'm so excited because he's coming out with a new book this August called Wild Goose Chase. Here's an excerpt from the book:

When we turn Christianity into a noun, it becomes a turnoff. Christianity was always intended to be a verb. And, more specifically, an action verb. Some of us live as if we expect to hear God say, "Well thought, good and faithful servant!" or "Well said, good and faithful servant!" God isn't going to say either of those things. There is only one commendation: "Well done, good and faithful servant."

It is timely that I read this post on evotional.com this morning (pointed out by Perry Noble) this morning, just as I was thinking mean thoughts about some people.

This mean streak is so frustrating. But I wasn't always like this. I was very timid as a child (believe it or not). As I grew older, though, I had to learn to adapt to the people around me. And while most people were pretty nice, there were also bullies in school I had to stand up to. Witnessing very nice people being pushed around by mean people was also added proof to my theory that niceness is a weakness.

So, growing up, I liked the feeling of intimidating intimidators, of being liked by mean people, and of rescuing victims of intimidators and mean people. I learned to view kindness as a handicap and to take away my kindness filter.

Then I became a Christian. Nearly five years into being one, I'm still unlearning all the terribly wrong notions and attitudes I learned growing up.

Frustrating, really. It's easy to think it. It's easy to say it. But truth is it is very difficult to do. I can only take it one day at a time. Wait, that's not even accurate. I can only take it a minute at a time. Thank God for God's grace that is always sufficient.