Today (well, what's left of it), I've got 3 quotes.. Three different men. Three different venues. But I don't think individually they hold water.. Only in triangular fashion do they dove tail into each other to create an honest and uplifting "quote to live by"..
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"God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life."
- 4 spiritual laws booklet composed by Bill Bright.
"God loves you and has a difficult plan for your life." - Mark Galli
"Life wouldn't be so hard, if we didn't expect it to be so easy."
-Dan Allan
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The first quote I've said many times in my past 7 years involvement with Cru (formerly Campus Crusade for Christ). The four spiritual laws are like the laws of nature - we can't see gravity, but we know it exists.. right? So, the first spiritual law is this "God loves you.. and has a wonderful plan for your life".. however..
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The second quote comes from a book entitled "Jesus: Mean and Wild".. (worthwhile read, as our "Jesus of the 20th century" is quite watered down..) Mark Galli takes a good look at what a realistic Jesus of Nazareth might have been like.. and challenges the "daisy's and roses" paradigm of God's plan for us - Jeremiah 29:11 does say "plans for hope and a future.. to prosper and not to harm".. but what does that mean in light of Joseph being sold into slavery, and thrown unjustly into jail? What if God's difficult = for our good?
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Which leads me to the last quote, one that resonated deeply with me while I was on my first Summer Project in San Diego California, experiencing what I felt like was an unjust situation of my father being unemployed for 9 months.. Dan's comment shook me to the core, and woke up that concept of "difficult does not = bad/easy does not = good"..
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So there you have it.. mis-match the quotes up and you get "God loves you, and has a wonderfully difficult plan for your life. It won't seem hard though, if you don't expect it to be a walk in the park. Expect life to be hard, and it'll be wonderful!"
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Soli Deo Gloria
:D
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