One of the books I bought for my
sabbatical is Made for More: An Invitation to Life in God’s Image,
by Hannah Anderson. The following are several quotes that caught my
attention.
64-65-
But faith teaches us that we will never be more truly
ourselves than as we are conformed to God’s nature through Christ.
Faith teaches us to forgo a superficial authenticity in order to find
a deeper, more authentic sense of self. Faith teaches us that we are
made to reflect the heart of God... He is calling you to faith. Faith
to believe that He made you to be so much more than your momentary
desires. Faith to believe that He made you to be more than your
brokenness, more than your sin. Faith to believe that authenticity
means faithfulness to the deepest part of His nature. Faith to
believe that you were made for glory.
93- One of the
most powerful things about grace is that it gives us a vision for who
we could be. In the midst of our brokenness, it gives us hope. When
God extends Himself to us, He is not so much expressing a belief in
our ability to change, but in His ability to change us. He is
confirming that we are not beyond redemption; we are not lost causes.
If He was willing to sacrifice Himself for us, He must have a plan to
make us more than we presently are. He must have a plan to bring us
to glory.
120-
Ultimately working imago dei
[in the image of God] means understanding that all work is sacred,
all ground, holy; not because of what the task is but
because of who we are imaging.
[Footnote:] Sometimes, in response to those who dismiss mundane work
as unimportant, we respond by elevating the task or specific calling.
The danger of this is that it simply shifts the reference point from
one type of work to another. Work is holy, not because of what it
accomplishes or whether we value the result, but because of who it
images—God Himself.
153-
I suspect that most of us feel the same way that little Velveteen
Rabbit did. When it comes to finding identity imago dei,
we long to be Real—to finally be who we were made to be—but that
process often takes much longer and hurts much more than we could
have ever predicted. Even as we understand that our identity comes
from God, even as we begin to pursue relationship with Him and
others, even as we submit to the life He has ordained for us, we must
still actually live
that life. We must endure its bumps and scrapes, its joys and
sorrows, its victories and defeats.
155-
You can wait in hope and patience because God is actively pursuing
your transformation... Your being made like Him will
happen because He promises it. And so you can trust Him. You can take
hope. And because you have hope, you can continue on. You can
persevere. You can keep going because this work is His work and He
will do it.
157- As God
transforms you to be more like Him, as your heart mirrors His more
perfectly, you can expect two different things: (1) You should
experience the ability to increasingly live as you were created to
live and (2) You should also feel deeper pain when you do not. And it
is this very pain that confirms that you are in the process of
changing. This pain helps you remember that you are no longer the
person you once were. Even on our worst days, then, even on those
days when you feel so out of sorts that you hardly know yourself, you
must remember that this discomfort, these growing pains assure that
you are made for more.
166- We must
find identity in the one thing that remains the same. We must find
identity in the Great I Am.
Thought provoking and well worth reading.
Made for More © 2014 Hannah Anderson, Moody Publishers. Image courtesy of Amazon.com.
