I struggle with reading. I love it and I wish I didn’t struggle with it, but for some reason I struggle with it. Being the way I’m wired as someone that is ADD I find it hard to just sit and read. I gotta be doing something, but I desperately need to.
I have to.
It’s important to have these times of sitting and reading. I want to talk with you all today about pushing ourselves outside ourselves. For the longest time I have loved the phrase “A Holy Discontent.” A great read on this topic is Bill Hybels book, “A Holy Discontent.” (I know I just told you to do something I struggle to do, keep listening). For a scriptural connection let’s begin to think about how Paul said this life is us running a race. Pressing onto a goal.
So what is that goal?
Well for me it has to be to continually grow in Christ, to always press forward seeking Holiness. If that is your goal then Holy Discontent is a phrase you need to be familiar with. Let me explain it this way:
Never stop learning. Ever. Ever. Ever.
Make sense?
The grace and love of our Lord Jesus Christ is something that is meant to be experienced, eaten, and shared with a community over and over again. That is what we call growth. So, back to my original point: What are you reading?
If you aren’t reading anything I would invite you to join me in reading what I am reading:
I have read the prologue and chapter 1 and I am hooked. Rachel Held Evans has been a voice of great conviction for the Christian community for several years now and one I would encourage you to read or at least be aware of. Here is what it said on the back of the book about Searching for Sunday:
For a generation that has largely said, “count me out,” church represents a complicated relationship of both longing and apathy. There’s a history there – a past full of confusion and hurt, but a past that often is impossible to abandon. In Searching for Sunday, Rachel Held Evans exposes her own thorny relationship with the church, articulating the concerns, frustrations, and hopes of many of her peers. Through a series of stories told around the church’s sacraments – baptism, confession, and communion, among others – Evans offers the beginnings of a road map back to church and the resurrection that awaits when we are willing to give up and begin again.
I would encourage you to press on to holiness, to the goal that Christ gives us with this new life in whatever way that you choose. If you join me in this book I will be posting occasionally my thoughts on the book. This is a book that has topics that we need to talk about, even and especially if it makes us uncomfortable.
My prayer for you is that you will press on to holiness and you will embrace Christ, for in that embrace we see what life is really about.
Grace and Peace,
Bradley Alexander