Crazy Love by Francis Chan

  

Crazy Love is one of those books that I've been hearing about since it came out in 2008. I finally decided about two years ago that I probably needed to read it... eventually. After putting it off for a while, I finally bought it in January, putting it on my shelf with other books "to be read as time permits". I started it on Tuesday, and I finished it today.

Wow.

I wish I had not waited so long to read it.

And generally, I don't get very excited about reading man's words, I would much rather encourage someone to spend the time reading the Bible. But this book got me excited.

Francis covers many different aspects of the Christian's life, always bringing it back to God; He should be the reason for everything that we do.

The book starts with showing who God is. Not who we "think" God is, but who He actually is. That the earth is His story, and He deserves all of the glory. When we realize and accept this, it will change the way we view everything.

Living a Christian life is not a halfhearted "I'm a Christian", it is a life transformed by passion for the One that created us. One that will follow Him wherever He leads.

These are some of my favorite quotes from the book... but I would encourage you to borrow (you are more than welcome to borrow my copy, if you'd like!) or buy the book and read it in its entirety yourself.

There is an epidemic of spiritual amnesia going around, and none of us is immune. No matter how many fascinating details we learn about God’s creation, no matter how many pictures we see of His galaxies, and no matter how many sunsets we watch, we still forget.

  Most of us know that we are supposed to love and fear God; that we are supposed to read our Bibles and pray so that we can get to know Him better; that we are supposed to worship Him with our lives. But actually living it out is challenging.

  It confuses us when loving God is hard. Should it be easy to love a God so wonderful? When we love God because we feel we should love Him, instead of genuinely loving out of our true selves, we have forgotten who God really is. Our amnesia is flaring up again. pg. 29

  God is all-powerful. Colossians 1:16  tells us us that everything was created for God: For by Him all things were created that are in heaven and that are on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers. All things were created through Him and for Him.

  Don’t we live instead as though God is created for us to do our bidding, to bless us, and to take care of our loved ones?

  ...Can you worship a God who isn’t obligated to explain His actions to you? Could it be your arrogance that makes you think God owes you an explanation?

  Do you really believe that compared to God, “all the peoples of the earth are regarded as nothing,” [Daniel 4:35], including you? pg. 34 & 35

  On the average day, we live caught up in ourselves. On the average day, we don’t consider God very much. On the average day, we forget that our life truly is a vapor.

  But there is nothing normal about today. Just think about everything that must function properly just for you to survive. For example, your kidneys. The only people who really think about their kidneys are people whose kidneys don’t work correctly. The majority of us take for granted our kidneys, liver, lungs, and other internal organs that we’re dependent upon to continue living.

  ...Frederick Buechner writes, “Intellectually we all know that we will die, but we do not really know it in the sense that the knowledge becomes a part of us. We do not really know it in the sense of living as though it were true. On the contrary, we tend to live as though our lives would go on forever.” pg. 39 & 40

  Most Christians have been taught in church or by their parents to set aside a daily time for prayer and Scripture reading. It’s what we are supposed to do, and so for a long time it’s what I valiantly attempted. When I didn’t, I felt guilty.

  Over time I realized that when we love God, we naturally run to Him --- frequently and zealously. Jesus didn’t command that we have a regular time with him each day. Rather, He tells us to “love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.” He called this the “first and greatest commandment” (Matt. 22:37-38). The results are intimate prayer and study of His Word. Our motivation changes from guilt to love.

  This is how God longs for us to respond to His extravagant, unending love: not with a cursory “quiet time” plagued by guilt, but with true love expressed through our lives. pg. 56-57

  So God assesses our lives based on how we love. But the word love is so overused and worn out. What does God mean by love? He tells us,

Love suffers long and is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself, is not puffed up; does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil; does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

Love never fails....faith, hope, love, these three; but the greatest of these is love.  

1 Corinthians 13:4-8, 13

  But even those words have grown tired and overly familiar, haven’t they?

  I was challenged to do a little exercise with these verses, one that was profoundly convicting. Take the phrase Love is patient and substitute your name for the word love. (For me, "Francis is patient...." Do it for every phrase in the passage.

  By the end, don't you feel like a liar? If I'm meant to represent what love is, then I often fail to love people well.

  Following Christ isn't something that can be done halfheartedly or on the side. It is not a label we can display when it is useful. It must be central to everything we do and are." pg. 94

  How many of us would really leave our families, our jobs, our education, our friends, our connections, our familiar surroundings, and our homes if Jesus asked us to? If He just showed up and said, “Follow me”? No explanation. No directions.

  You could follow Him straight up a hill to be crucified. Maybe He would lead you to another country, and you would never see your family again. Or perhaps you would stay put, but He would ask you to spend your time helping people who will never love you back and never show gratitude for what you gave up.

  Consider this carefully --- have you ever done so? Or was your decision to follow Christ flippant, based solely on feelings and emotion, made without counting the cost?

 ... Most of our thoughts are centered on the money we want to make, the school we want to attend, the body we aspire to have, the spouse we want to marry, the kind of person we want to become... But the fact is that nothing should concern us more than our relationship with God; it’s about eternity, and nothing compares with that. God is not someone who can be tacked on to our lives. pg. 95 & 96

  I wrote this book because much of our talk doesn’t match our lives. We say things like, “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me, “ and “Trust in the Lord with all your heart.” Then we live and plan like we don’t believe God even exists. We try to set our lives up so everything will be fine even if God doesn’t come through. But true faith means holding nothing back. It means putting every hope in God’s fidelity to His promises. pg. 168