Restless: Because You Were Made for More

We have to deal with fear because it is possible that it will make us miss the best parts of life.

What if the things that have caused the most hurt in your life became the birthplaces of your deepest passions?

We can do one of two things with suffering: we can absorb it and let it change us, or we can let it crush us. Suffering will change you, or it will crush you.

Faith is the measure to which we believe God is God. And faith is the measure to which we let God be God.

Comparison is often why our important roles shrink to seem so insignificant. Comparison robs us of the joy of obedience.

Great people do not do great things; God does great things through surrendered people.

There is an art to living that is far above the base human instinct of survival. I want to live beautifully.

I think God could untangle your soul, your story, your gifts, your people, your place, and your passions, and begin to weave it into purposes that you haven’t been brave enough to imagine.

Every moment is granted for purposes we can’t see. Every breath is issued for eternal things left undone. We brush against people in check-out lines who will live forever in heaven or hell, and we contain God. Try to tell me your life is insignificant. Try to tell me that anything about this life is insignificant.

We fall apart when we look at our fears and inadequacies and compare ourselves to every other runner. But fix your eyes on a God like Jesus, and you will not quit. You will not shrink back. Not from others, and not from yourself. Risk something. Step out and fail. Be the fool. Build a life that needs our God.

No unique purpose for your life will fill your soul. The only thing that will fulfill and settle your soul is God himself.

If I can accept that I am so sinful and so broken that I am likely to hurt anyone close to me on any given day without even being aware of it, I can willingly pass out grace to those who hurt me.

He will take this hell on earth and someday show us how hell was building heaven.

So if we know no place, no job, no marriage, no child is going to fulfill us perfectly, we can make the choice to quit fighting for happiness in all of it and start to fight for God’s glory in it.

Now let me tell you what I know. Our God is real. Our God is coming. Our God has plans for us. Our lives are short. We must get after it. Because heaven is coming fast. And what we are about to do here is urgent. It’s more urgent than we could ever imagine. We get to play little parts in the epic story of a God who put this whole universe in motion with a word.

IF I FIND IN MYSELF A DESIRE WHICH NO EXPERIENCE IN THIS WORLD CAN SATISFY, THE MOST PROBABLE EXPLANATION IS THAT I WAS MADE FOR ANOTHER WORLD. C. S. LEWIS

if we know no place, no job, no marriage, no child is going to fulfill us perfectly, we can make the choice to quit fighting for happiness in all of it and start to fight for God’s glory in it.

We hold things. We don’t think much about it, but there are hungry people all around us, and God is looking to take the seemingly insignificant little pieces tucked away in our lives to multiply them and feed his people.

Even though every piece of today feels small. I’ll do today, glancing up and remembering a race is completed the same way this book is completed. Step by step. Word by word. Day by day.

Those of us who have been saved have been set apart for a great purpose—and that great purpose is actually not a secret: we are to know God and make him known. So we do not dream independently, and God does not sign off on our dreams. He is the builder of our dreams. We bring him our blank canvases, hand them over, and say, “Whatever you must create to display your glory, do it.

there is beauty and character formed in the mundane. But the most inconspicuous tasks usually are building big things we can’t see yet.

So, if we don’t begin with surrender, we inevitably dream with vanity, with ego, with control.

You bond with people who cry over your rebel children with you.

Because of grace we have nothing to prove. Our confidence is in the security and power God gives us, not in ourselves. To know that you are absolutely treasured, unconditionally, changes you in this way. You feel free, and you want to run with a God who would love you like that. To know that we do not measure up and that we don’t have to because of Jesus, because of grace, means that life gets a whole lot more fun.

Bless the Lord, O my soul.” Perhaps he is teaching us to sing through the pain and joy as he makes something beautiful from it all.

Often we applaud exceptional ministry and miss the everyday ministry that nobody sees.

You have threads of life blowing around, possibly even strangling you—threads that are meant to bind together and become your unique, God-given contribution to a world in great need.

You get to be God whether we like it or not. You get to decide how this goes, and we can only beg at your feet.

This journey is a chance to lay out what you have, what you know, and hand it up to God. I should mention: we have no idea what he will say to do with it, but we begin by laying it out and handing it over.

whatever he does with our lives, he is good and is fighting for us in the most noble ways; he gave his Son’s life to win us back. So might he pour our lives out in difficult ways? Yes. But he is the God of planets and my soul. He gave everything for us. So I will entrust my entire life to no one else. We surrender to a God who surrendered everything for us.