formulaic devotion

Fall in love with Jesus.

Don’t just read all the formulated devotionals about Him.

Really fall in love with Him and His love story.

I just finished reading Searching for God Knows What by Donald Miller this weekend.

It’s about dropping the formulaic theme that Christianity has kind of evolved into and finding the simple vein of falling in love with Jesus.

Donald does the most breath-taking job of giving a picture of Adam and Eve in the garden and the fall.

He describes it as the most beautiful love story/betrayal ever written.

He does such a ridiculously good job at putting me directly in the garden of Eden, watching as a fly on the wall, as Adam spent quite a while (as you can imagine) naming all the animals, looking for a companion.

And one night, God put Adam into a deep sleep and pulled out Adam’s rib and created Eve from that rib (You guys can read Genesis for the rest).

When Donald describes this moment, he talks about how God had strategically let Adam work for such a long time naming animals, so that the moment he lays eyes on Eve… the first human being ever, he would love her and cherish her completely.

When I saw a glimpse of the beauty in Adam and Eve meeting, it somehow impacted the way I saw the bible, in a way I’ve never been impacted.

Not only the moment they meet, but the way that Adam and Eve had THE purest relationship with God, EVER.

That before the fall, they were in perfect communion with God,

And the moment they ate the fruit, it was betrayal of the worst kind.

Imagine being cheated on by a spouse, but worse.

Betraying God, the creator.

It showed me that there is such beauty, love, and heartache in the Bible that we, Americanized Christians have overlooked in the midst of our performance-based-emotion-driven way of seeing and seeking God.

There is so much emotion and love in the Bible.

Not just the “I know God loves me” love, no, this deep, pure, unfathomable love that cannot be contained nor described in mere words.

But has to be sung, danced, or cried out.

That the Bible is this love story that we have washed down into 3 songs and 3 step messages on how to be a better human but it its purely the most beautiful story ever written.

I don’t really have much else to say.

Let us not look over the beauty of the words that God breathed, 

Let us let Him breathe them on us.