Some quotes from the book:
People
who are desperate for spirituality very seldom worry about the mess
they make on their way to be with Jesus.
Messy
Spirituality is the scandalous assertion that following Christ is
anything but tidy and neat, balanced and orderly. Far from it.
Spirituality is complex, complicated, and perplexing—the
disorderly, sloppy, chaotic look of authentic faith in the real
world.
Life
with Jesus is meant to be lived, not smothered, dissected, inspected,
or condemned.
Followers
of Christ are odd. Oddness is important because it is the quality
that adds color, texture, variety, beauty to the human condition.
Christ doesn't make us the same. What he does is affirm our
differentness. Oddness is important because the most dangerous
world in Western culture is sameness. Sameness is a virus that
infects members of industrialized nations and causes an allergic
reaction to anyone who is different. This virus affects the
decision-making part of our brains, resulting in an obsession with
making the identical choices everyone else is making.
Sameness
is a disease with disastrous consequences.---differences are ignored,
uniqueness is not listened to, our gifts are cancelled out. Life,
passion, and joy are snuffed out. Sameness is the result of sin and
does much more than infect us with lust and greed; it flattens the
human race, franchises us, attempts to make us all homogenous.
Sameness is the cemetery where our distinctiveness is buried. In a
sea of sameness, no one has an identity. But Christians do have an
identity. We're aliens! We are the odd ones, the strange ones, the
misfits, the outsiders, the incompatibles. Oddness is a gift from
God and sits dormant until God's Spirit gives it life and shape.
Spiritual
growth is more than a procedure; it's a wild search for God in the
tangled jungle of our souls, a search which involves a volatile mix
of messy reality, wild freedom, frustrating stuckness, in creasing
slowness, and a healthy dose of gratitude.
-Michael
Yaconelli
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