I Want to be a God Gazer , livre ebook

Lion Hudson - Malcolm Duncan

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126 pages

English

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It is so easy to rush through life, rarely stopping in the moments when a yearning for more comes to the surface. Here, Malcolm Duncan uses his poem, God Gazer, to entreat us to stop and look into God and to let Him look into us. This is a call to return to our primary calling: to seek and discover God. We see that to be world changers we must learn to gaze into God; that we can have an impact, but only as we look into Him and let ourselves be changed. Once we have seen Him, our passion becomes that others will see Him, connect to the Source, and see their own lives transformed. Reflective, engaging and inspiring, this book will help readers connect with the beauty, mystery and wonder of God.

Sujets

Philosophie et théologie

Christian theology

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Publié par	Lion Hudson
Date de parution	18 juillet 2014
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9780857214829
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0500€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

A passionate call for a faith that goes beyond the nominal, the normal and the nice If you re tired of the brand of Christianity that hides behind a veneer of respectability and rarely goes more than skin deep, read and heed this invitation to a heartfelt encounter with God, with his people and with your community.
- Gerard Kelly , author of The Prodigal Evangelical
Malcolm has managed that most difficult of things - to write a book which is both realistic and readable, and yet which carries great spiritual wisdom.
- Revd Dr Alison Morgan , ReSource, author of The Wild Gospel and The Word on the Wind
Also by Malcolm Duncan:
Kingdom Come
Risk Takers
Unbelievable
40 Days with Jesus
I WANT TO BE A GOD GAZER
Yearning for intimacy with the Saviour
Malcolm Duncan

Oxford UK, and Grand Rapids, USA
Text copyright 2015 Malcolm Duncan This edition copyright 2015 Lion Hudson
The right of Malcolm Duncan to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
Published by Monarch Books an imprint of Lion Hudson plc Wilkinson House, Jordan Hill Road, Oxford OX2 8DR, England Email: monarch@lionhudson.com www.lionhudson.com/monarch
ISBN 978 0 85721 481 2 e-ISBN 978 0 85721 482 9
Acknowledgments Unless otherwise indicated, Scripture quotations are taken from NRSV Anglicised, The New Revised Standard Version of the Bible copyright 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of Churches in the USA. Used by permission. All Rights Reserved. Scripture quotations marked NIV taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version Anglicised. Copyright 1979, 1984, 2011 Biblica, formerly International Bible Society. Used by permission of Hodder & Stoughton Ltd, an Hachette UK company. All rights reserved. NIV is a registered trademark of Biblica. UK trademark number 1448790. Scripture quotations marked NLT are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright 1996, 2004, 2007 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved. Scripture quotations marked The Message are taken from The Message. Copyright by Eugene H. Peterson 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 2000, 2001, 2002. Used by permission of NavPress Publishing Group. Scripture quotations marked ESV are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version (ESV ) copyright 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. All rights reserved.
p. 136: Extract from Reflections on the Psalms: The Celebrated Musings on One of the Most Intriguing Books of the Bible by C.S. Lewis, copyright C.S. Lewis Pte Ltd. 1964. Reprinted by permission of the C. S. Lewis company.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Cover image: Michael Prince/Corbis
Contents

Rumours of God and Whispers of Hope

God Gazer

1 I Want to be a God Gazer

2 Not a Cheap Food Grazer

3 Trailblazers for the Ordinary Life

4 Beyond the Halcyon Ways

5 Beyond the Trappings of Success

6 Becoming Fluent

7 Until My Thirst is Sated

8 Not Just a Speaker but a Seeker

9 God, Gaze Through Me

10 I Want My Life to Be Releasing

11 A Drainpipe Without Blockages

12 Not Just a Furniture Re-Arranger

13 A Morning Many Winters Ago

Conclusion: God Gazer, Life Giver, World Changer

Keep in touch
Rumours of God and Whispers of Hope

There are many of us who know that the rumours of God s death are greatly exaggerated. God just won t go away. Despite the best efforts of many, the idea of God lives on. Like a word whispered deep in the caverns of the human heart, the idea of God echoes around the chambers of our lives. God s continued vitality is seen in deep and intuitive yearnings placed within the psyches of all people to discover what it means to be authentically alive. Sometimes we call it a search for reality. Sometimes we describe it as finding our true meaning or discovering our genuine purpose. Sometimes we describe it as trying to understand why we are here. The words we use are not the most important thing. It is the sentiment behind them that matters, and that sentiment is the search for significance, for meaning; the quest for the purpose of life itself.
No matter how hard we try, we just don t seem to be able to rid ourselves of the niggling notion that God exists. Like an almost unnoticeable speck of sand placed in the shell of our experiences, the possibility of his existence seems to lie in patient anticipation within each one of us. Most often we know the yearning is present because of a simple grit-like thought in the oysters of our individual consciousness that goes something like this: There has to be more to life than this.
I knew God was real long before I believed he was personal. As a young boy, growing up in a family that was largely irreligious but had a deep sense of right and wrong, I think the rumour of God was shaping me long before I realized its significance. I caught glimpses of him in my life, but did not understand him. Perhaps it was because I was too young, or too naive. Perhaps it was because his existence seemed so alien to me in the midst of my circumstances. Perhaps it was because I grew up in the culture of Northern Ireland where the religious notions of God had a profound and often negative impact on our culture. I can remember lying in bed at night and wondering what God was like. I don t think I ever thought there was no God, but I was not at all certain what God meant. My glimpses of him kept my searching alive, but they did not change my life. I may have glimpsed him many times as I grew up, but I rarely gave him my attention for very long. Perhaps you are like I was?
We occasionally catch a glimpse of what could be a beautiful pearl hidden within the recesses of our thinking. It may be sparked by a moment of family beauty, such as a birth or a wedding. Perhaps it is an important personal landmark in the life of someone we love? We watch a sunrise, or stand alone in the night and look up at the star-speckled sky, and something within us yearns to understand the purpose of it all. Intuitively, we know that the source of our wonder is God, but we have not been sure what God is like because we have not yet come into a personal relationship with him. The beauty we behold and the aliveness of the moment are invitations to wonder at life itself because they come from Life himself. We know it; we just don t always know what to do with such an existential moment.
We know that these encounters are gateways into the shadow of something imprinted within humanity itself. We have guessed that they are the whisper of a voice we have a memory of hearing, but we are not sure where or when. These moments of wonderment are part of a movement that fits into the symphony of life. We realize that God is the Conductor of the music, but we sometimes struggle to hear the notes. We can sometimes feel like we are standing on a stage, trying to remember our lines, and the Prompter is standing offstage with the script in his hands. He is speaking to us, trying to help us without removing our dignity and our humanity and our choice. We know it s God; we just can t always hear him very well. We are familiar enough with his voice to recognize it, but not so familiar with it that we can decipher clearly what he is saying. The impact is that we find ourselves asking the greatest questions imaginable: How do I encounter God? , How can I hear him? , and What can I do to meet him?
Whispers of hope
The yearning for a deeper encounter with him surfaces at startling moments in our lives. These moments are whispers of hope. They are pivots of destiny upon which the balance of our future lies. These are unmoving signposts that can set the direction of our journey amidst the storms of life - moments such as when we walk away from the funeral of a friend or a loved one. In the unexpected pauses of reflection that accompany such occasions we are confronted with our own mortality, somehow gripped again by this yearning . Perhaps Jung was right when he argued that the moments at which we are most profoundly confronted with both the inevitability of death and the deep questions of life occur as we watch the last breath leave the body of someone we love or as we see their earthly remains taken from us. Our latent belief in God becomes a desperation for his presence. We know we need him. We pray intuitively. It s funny that for so many people, the first thing they do in a moment of deep sadness and grief is pray. Why is that? The whisper in our souls is finding its own expression in our lives. We know we want God.
Then again, our longing for God lies heavy upon us as we welcome a life into the world. This little person, full of possibility and hope, looks at us with eyes like lasers that pierce the deepest chambers of our soul, searching out our significance, scouring our souls to see where we fit . Once again Life is encountering us, but we do not know what to do with it.
There are many such pivots and whispers in our lives. Some of them are positive and some of them are negative, but they bring alive in us what we know is there - a hunger for God. They can be the realization that the great change we hoped for didn t deliver on its promises to transform us, or they can be the discovery that the great accomplishment that was supposed to sound the depths of being alive actually ended up as nothing more than a tinkling cymbal and didn t reverberate deeply within us at all. We have encountered God enough to accept that he exists, but we have not encountered him enough to change our lives.