Flashbang. How I Got Over Myself

These thoughts are from Flashbang: How I Got Over Myself by Mark Steele.

"I must swallow my pride.
Forget what I believe I deserve.
And get over myself.
Resist the world's freedoms.
Embrace God's parameters.
Allow myself to be accountable and restricted.
Choose to go without every little thing I want.
Strengthen my character.
Determine where I am incorrect.
Humble myself.
Stop manipulating God's way to look like my preferences
and choose His plan-His way- for every detail.

If I can just deal with life and allow God to use those dealings
to transform me into the right person-the explosive person,
the person with gun powder in my veins-
then the noise I make will be worth hearing.
The fire that is seen in my life will scorch the room.
The substance of my life will pierce the hearts of those around me.
And where I stand, I will always leave a mark."


"It should take a sacrifice on many levels to accomplish God's task because this task is supposed to change me, and change does not occur where circumstances are predictable and comfortable."


"recently I did the [read the Bible through in a year] plan

Impressive. How long did it take you?

2 years, 8 months

Forget what I said about impressive

I was looking for the common theme that connected all the books together because I've always been a little nonplussed by the genealogy chapters where they list 367 unpronounceable names in one sitting

you don't enjoy those?

Not a big fan. No.

So, did you come up with anything?

In fact- I did.

And?

Every book of the Bible doe have on central theme in common, and it was a vastly important lesson for me.

The tension is mounting.

Never forget God.

Okay, Now, I'm intrigued.

Well think about it. Why would those genealogies be there in the first place? It means that history is extremely important to God. How we got to where we are-how we learned what we learned-and how God made it all happen. God gets the people in the Bible out of scrape after scrape and tragedy after tragedy because- let's face it- a lot of those guys made some pretty bad choices.
But the grandest mistake of all is that after God would help them, rescue them, or change them, they would have a tendency to eventually forget. So God appears as fire and smoke to remind them. he has them build a tabernacle. He sends tablets of stone down from the mountain. He puts a ram in a bush and a star in the east and a rainbow in the sky and a child in an animal trough and sends prophets and psalmists and judges and angels and dreams and goes to the great lengths necessary so that we are constantly reminded that He loves us and does not want us to FORGET that He loves us because when we forget that he loves us- bad things happen.

why do bad things happen?

Because when we forget that He is God, we have a tendency to believe that we are.

oh.