Today I finished reading “Soul Cravings” by Erwin Raphael McManus. It’s a wonderful book, full of tidbits of incisive wisdom and heart-expanding inspiration. I highly recommend it.

Here are some of my favorite parts of the book. Please pass these word treasures along to friends in need of fresh inspiration. Let’s all be fully ourselves: alive in dreams, spirited in hope, and enraptured in love of God and people.

“This is the story of God: he pursues you with his love and pursues you with his love, and you have perhaps not said yes. And even if you reject his love, he pursues you ever still. It was not enough to send an angel or a prophet or any other, for in issues of love, you must go yourself. And so God has come.” (intimacy: entry 11)

“If those you are the religious elite are closest to God, why is it that they are so rarely closest to love?” (intimacy: entry 13)

“You will spend your life working through relationships trying to understand your need for love, your inadequacies in love, your desperation for love, and all the time you might miss the signs that your heart is giving you, that you’re searching for God.” (intimacy: entry 13)

“If James Dean was the rebel without a cause, Jesus was the rebel with one.” (intimacy: entry 15)

“Honesty is the only context in which intimacy can develop.” (intimacy: entry 15)

“While it may seem that you’re selling out to admit you need people, the irony is that you’ll never really know yourself until you’re in a healthy community.” (intimacy: entry 16)

“We thrive when we are optimistic about the future.” (destiny: entry 1)

“Bottom line: we cannot live the life of our dreams without an irrational sense of destiny.” (destiny: entry 1)

“Have you noticed, by the way, that those with great ambitions have a disproportionate effect on the future? The future is not simply entered into; it is created. To create we must dream, then act.” (destiny: entry 6)

“We think it’s God’s job to fix everything. Sincere people have deferred their responsibility while waiting on God to do something, but it has created a spirituality that lacks initiative and engagement. This goes against the nature of the human spirit, and it goes against the way God has created us. We might actually conclude God is apathetic and indifferent just because we are. God created us to engage, solve problems, meet needs, do something with our lives. He made us to get involved and expects us to act. That’s why someone like Mother Teresa helps us believe in God. Human compassion reflects God and moves us toward God.” (destiny: entry 6)

“When you give up on hope, you become paralyzed in the present and begin to live in the past.” (destiny: entry 16)

“Only God can take you where you were born to go. There are a lot of roads you can choose, but one path chooses you.” (destiny: entry 18)

“The more proactive you become in pursuing your destiny, the more responsibility you will take for your life. When you choose to become, you become an enemy of the status quo. To become is to change and to bring change.” (destiny: entry 18)

“Faith is simply the word for trust when used in relation to God.” (meaning: entry 10)

“Truth does not exist in a vacuum. Trust exists because God can be trusted.” (meaning: entry 14)

“When you conclude you can’t trust anyone, you’ll find yourself quickly concluding that there is no truth.” (meaning: entry 15)

“Economics is nothing more than the agreement of value” (meaning: entry 16)

“The more trustworthy you can determine the source is, the shorter the leap of faith.” (meaning: entry 17)

“When you have hope, you are able to see the beauty and potential of every circumstance. Life is filled with wonder. Hope empowers us to pursue our dreams.

Dreams are the art form of hope. They paint a picture of the life we desire.” (seek)

“You’re in trouble when you stop believing in hope. No matter how hard your life is, if you can imagine a different one, it somehow seems to pull you through. You can stomach who you are, no matter how much you hate yourself, if you can somehow believe that one day you’ll become someone different.” (seek)

“My soul doesn’t crave something from God;

my soul craves God.

And by the way, so does yours.”

(seek)

** Enjoy my friends Bryan and Katie’s song and dare to trust God wholly. He loves you unconditionally. You have a destiny to fulfill. You’re important. What you do matters. Blessings on all your dreams today. May today be the best day of your life thus far.**