my father.

    After God rocked me with the whole renewing my relationship with Him as His daughter thing as I wrote about previously, one of my friends who knew about it gave me a book to read called Come to Papa by Gary Wiens. It's super hard to find time for pleasure reading here, but so far SO good.

Some things that have stuck out:

• Ephesians 1:17 "I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of him..." (it goes on wonderfully)
• We can (and should) ask God to give us the Spirit to know the Father of glory more!
• God's glory: the weightiness/heaviness of His beauty, majesty, and power (p. 10) - this is what we should seek to know! Also, this is in us if we are saved in Him!

• This quote: "The presence of the Lord is addictive, and we were designed to be captured by this addiction. We were never created to live bored, dissipated lives or be satisfied with the inferior pleasures of temporary things. We were created to live an exhilarated existence, intoxicated with the beauty and goodness of God. We were meant to be captured by His heart, in love with the One who is madly in love with us" (p. 12).

 ^^ My thoughts: The Christian life isn't boring! We have been given the ability to know the source of every pleasure that exists in its purest and most glorious and fulfilling of forms. And He longs for us to know His love not just as head knowledge, but personally and experientially!

 More of Gary Wiens's thoughts:

    Jesus is to me as he was merciful and kind to Zacchaeus, gentle but pointed with me as he was with Peter and his disciples, he feels toward the unclean places in my life as he did with the leprous beggar in Mark 1 - willing to heal things that separate me from Him and from the rest of His people, he will deal with my shame mercifully and without condemnation as he did with the woman caught in adultery in John 8, and as he confronted and rebuked Pharisees and legalistic leaders this is also how he feels about my attitudes of superiority and elitism that keep me from being compassionate toward broken people (p. 18).

    Jesus is God in man form. We can learn about God's character and the way he relates to us by seeing how Jesus related with these people! SO much more could be said about this... what an awesome way to read the gospels, looking for how Jesus shows us how God sees us and wants to relate to us through his interactions with people!


Not sure the proper way to cite a book on a blog, but I'll do it like I would for a paper... :)

Wiens, Gary. Come to Papa: Encountering the Father That Jesus Knew. Grandview, MO: Burning Hearts Ministries, 2003. Print.