i highly recommend...

you read this book.

it reveals the deep, hidden nature of our hearts... and it can be quite heartbreaking... but also very freeing. anyway, i highly, highly recommend you read this book.

it is so true that my heart is such an idol factory... betraying the God that has saved me and loved me tenderly. tim keller has been so gifted by God to explain the truths of the Bible and expose the true nature of our hearts. i love the way that he takes the different characters of the Bible who God so sovereignly put together in scripture, and relates their struggles, sins, and redemption with our own lives.

here is a snippet from the end of the book... he weaves the story of Jacob and Rachel and Leah throughout the book. Here, Keller is talking about the night Jacob wrestles with God.

"Jacob realized who he was wrestling with - God himself! When he realized this and saw the sun coming up, Jacob did the most astonishing thing he had ever done. He did not do the rational thing, which would have been to cry out 'Let me go! Let me go! I don't want to die!' Instead, he did the very opposite. He held on tight and said, 'I will not let you go until you bless me!'

Jacob was saying something like this.

'What an idiot I've been! Here is what I've been looking for all my life. The blessing of God! I looked for it in the approval of my father. I looked for it in the beauty of Rachel. But it was in you. Now, I won't let you go until you bless me. Nothing else matters. I don't care if I die in the process, because if I don't have God's blessing, I've got nothing. Nothing else will do."

- Tim Keller

i was also very interested to see that Keller quoted the president of Wake Forest who spoke these words just last spring...

"Nathan Hatch, president of Wake Forest University, admitted what many educators have seen for years, that a disproportionate number of young adults have been trying to cram into the fields of finance, consulting, corporate law, and specialized medicine because of the high salaries and aura of success that these professions now bring. Students were doing so with little reference to the larger questions of meaning and purpose, said Hatch. That is, they choose professions not in answer to the question, 'What job helps people to flourish?' but 'What job will help me to flourish?' As a result, there is a high degree of frustration expressed over unfulfilling work."

isn't it so true? i know that it is for me. what in my life helps me to flourish? we are so about our glory instead of God's... about serving these idols because they will bring us identity. but, that's not truth at all. Jesus was all about God's glory. often, even in our seeming efforts for others, it can really be about us. am i receiving acclaim for this action? and it always leaves us frustrated... because the truth of the matter it's not about us.

that's what this book addresses.

and let me tell you... that is what i struggle with every day!

i guess it all goes back to...

"For me to live is Christ and to die is gain." - Philippians 1:21