Crazy Love

Here are some sentences and paragraphs that I found the most thought-provoking from reading the book "Crazy Love" by Francis Chan

Jesus asks us to give up what we think is so necessary and valuable in exchange for what really matters.

Mark Buchanan writes "Physical sickness we usually defy, soul sickness we often resign ourselves to."

Replace your name in 1 Corinthians 13: 4-8 ... are you embodying love?

Life is a never-ending downward escalator. In order to grow, we have to turn around and sprint up the escalator - putting up with perturbed looks from everyone else who is gradually moving downwards.

Taking the words of Christ literally and seriously is rarely considered. That's for the "radicals" who are "unbalanced and who go "overboard", Most of us want a blanaced life that we can control, that is safe and that doesn't involve suffering.

Remember the story where Jesus fed thousands of people with one boy's small lunch? In that story, Jesus gave the loaves to the His disciples and then the disciples passed them out to the crowd. Imagine if the disciples had simply held on to the food Jesus gave them, continually thanking Him for providing lunch for them. That would've been stupid when there was enough food to feed the thousands who were gathered and hungry.
But that is exactly what we  do when we fail to give freely and joyfully. We are loaded down with too many good things, more than we could ever need, while others are desperate for a small loaf. The good things we cling to are more than money; we hoard our recources, our gifts, our time, our families, our friends. As we being to practice regular giving, we see how ludicrous it is to hold on to the abudance God has given us and merely repear the words thank you.


"Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength" Deut 6:4
In Moses' time, the heart was understood to be the seat of a person's emotions, the very center of his being, the place where decision are maade. The soul was considered the basis for a person's traits and qualities, or his personality. Strength refers to physical, mental, and spiritual strength. So within this command to love God, every fiber of humanity is addressed.


Have you ever been in really good physical shape? If you aren't at the same level of fitness today you prob know it didn't "just happen". You stopped discipling your body.
It is the same with joy in our lives. We tend to think of joy as something that ebbs and flows depending on life's  circumstances. But we don't just lose joy, as thought one day we have it and the next it's gone, oh darn. Joy is something that we have to choose and then work for. It needs to be cultivated.

Oswald Chambers writes "Never make a principle out of your experience; let God be as original with other people as He is with you."

A friend of [Francis Chan] once said that Christians are like manure: spread them out and they help everything grow better, but keep them in one big pile and they stink horribly. Which are you? The kind that reeks, around which people walk a wide swath? Or the kind that trusts God enough to let Him spread you out?