Ep 75 | a personal reflection on the God who is Father

I forgot this significant line from my notes, but it can begin this podcast description: 

"There is pleasing God and then there is pleasing God. Pleasing out of fear of disappointment and pleasing out of love and joy. I’ve done both in my lifetime with my earthly dad and my Heavenly one." 

For the last few years, the Lord has been doing some reframing of what it means to be a child of His. Today's episode is a glimpse of that reframing. 

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I also read a lot of quotes. Here are a few:

"Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, "Do it again"; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead.For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, "Do it again" to the sun; and every evening, "Do it again" to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we." G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy

Jeremiah Burroughs defines Christian contentment: “…a pleasant, internal, peaceful, and gracious state of mind, which freely submits to and delights in God’s wise and fatherly decisions in every condition.”

“The early stages of faith are reaching upward, like the eaglets for their food when the mother-bird is overhead. It is an older faith that learns to swing out into nothingness and drop down full weight on God—the broken-up nest of former ‘experiences’ left behind—nothing between us and the abyss but God Himself. Trained faith is a triumphant gladness in having nothing but God—no rest, no foothold—nothing but Himself. A triumphant gladness in swinging out into that abyss, rejoicing in every fresh emergency that is going to prove Him true. ‘The Lord alone’—that is trained faith.” Lilias Trotter 

"No one will have an excuse on the judgment day that the way of salvation was too hard. God will simply say, “All you had to do was become like a little child (Matthew 18:3), and trust me to take care of you. Was that hard? Was it too hard to lean on me, to rest in my promises, to rely on the finished work of Christ? Was it too hard to accept a free gift? To cherish the pearl of forgiveness? To love the Savior who died for you?” It is free! It is free! It is free! Own up to your need and rest in him!" John Piper

"May your expectations all be frustrated, May all of your plans be thwarted, May all of your desires be withered into nothingness, That you may experience the powerlessness and poverty of a child and can sing and dance in the love of God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit." John Ortberg

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