January 2023 Books & Quotes

In addition to writing more, one of my goals for this year was to read more too. About halfway through January, I was given the idea of keeping track of the books I’m reading, along with the quotes I’ve enjoyed from them (I was inspired to do this by my dear friend, Lauren Sommers). I have a Google doc that I’ve been keeping up with all month and now I’m just plugging that information in here. I’m going to try to do this at the end of every month for 2023.

Limping with God was definitely my favorite from all of these. There’s a whole huge side story about this one involving the author and the loss of his son, Luke, just a few days before the release of this book. The book itself is incredible, but knowing the side story gave me a whole new lens to view it through. There were several places in Chad’s book where you could undeniably see God preparing him in advance for the loss of his son.

I loaned Limping with God out the day after I finished reading it because it was too good not to share. Unfortunately, I did this before I decided to track my favorite quotes, so although I underlined a lot, I didn’t get the chance to add the quotes to my Google doc. This is why there aren’t any quotes from Limping with God in this post. I plan on sharing them later on, but yeah…I highly recommend this book.

I’m not going to give any other commentary about the books I’m listing other than I enjoyed them all! I’ll let the quotes speak for themselves. I’ve attached Amazon links to each one, so if you’re interested in reading one, you’ll know where to find it. Additionally, I would love suggestions for more books to read. I have my February list going already, but I don’t have anything planned for March. If you have something you love, please share it with me. I greatly prefer nonfiction! 🙂

Here are the books that I finished in January, in the order that I finished them:

1. Limping with God – Chad Bird

2. Low Anthropology – David Zahl

3. Night Driving: Notes from a Prodigal Soul – Chad Bird

4. We’re All Heroes in Our Own Story – Jon Quitt

5. Worship – A.W. Tozer

Low Anthropology – David Zahl – Quotes: 

* “A church with a low anthropology is a place to bring your failures and your shame. It is a place to lay those things down, to hear about second chances and third chances and fourth chances. It is a place to go and not be turned away no matter how overwhelming your limitations are, by what forms your self-centeredness has expressed itself, or how much damage your doubleness has done. Even more than a place to come together, it is a place to fall apart. And there is always room for a few more faces.”

* “There is an inherent God-given dignity to every creature on the planet. This side of eternity, however, goodness has been distorted, such that it often takes the form of inner conflict and self-centeredness. You might even say that the Imago Dei is less a picture of what we are now than of what we will be then (Col. 1:15).”

* “When I no longer expect myself or others to be consistent or consistently admirable, I might stop resenting them for failing to be so.”

* “As someone persuaded of the veracity of the Christian gospel – and that it is a force for good unlike any other – I am saddened to see Christianity lose its unique insights about who we are (and, by extension, who God is). After all, it was Christ who said, ‘Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick; I have come to call not the righteous but sinners’ (Mark 2:17 NRSV). He was not interested in the role models, the moral strivers, or those whose lives were a template for perfection. He beelined toward those whose ledgers were tipped toward failure and who couldn’t seem to find a way out of the messes they’d made (see Rom. 5:6). But my concern moves beyond ecclesial or confessional loyalties. Because no matter our religious background or beliefs, we are all well acquainted with the fallout of tireless perfectionism. It is killing us. The advent of a place we might bring our failures and inadequacies – where those liabilities might be upended and even redeemed – well, that would be welcome news indeed.” 

* “The reality is that low anthropology paves a way for real growth and momentum. It does this because it shifts a person’s hopes from their own internal resources (willpower, discipline, natural energy level) to external possibilities. It opens a person to the outside world, to the possibility of love and the surprise of grace. Put another way, if you think your only hope for happiness or betterment lies within you, then you’ll give up when your limitations are revealed – or when your capacities expire with age. If, on the other hand, you accept those fallibilities, well, everything is gravy. The world is your playground, and setbacks are nothing more than par for the course.”  

* “Thus, those with a low anthropology can be 99 percent sure that something is right and true, but never 100 percent – which is sometimes the difference between taking up arms and not. That is to say, a low anthropology injects even our most heartfelt conclusions with humility. Per Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s aphorism, the line between good and evil runs through every human heart – not between demographics. Anyone who tells you different is ignoring essential evidence from their own life.” 

Night Driving: Notes from a Prodigal Soul – Chad Bird – Quotes:
* This one is by Dietrich Bonhoeffer and was included in Night Driving: “The psalter is the prayer book of Jesus Christ in the truest sense of the word. He prayed the Psalter and now it has become his prayer for all time…we understand how the Psalter can be prayer to God and yet God’s own Word, precisely because here we encounter the praying Christ…because those who pray the psalms are joining in with the prayer of Jesus Christ, their prayer reaches the ears of God. Christ has become their intercessor.”

* “In forgiveness, we lose the control we thought we had because there is no controlling the unrelenting radical grace of a forgiveness crazy Father. This love is frightening to the careful. Reprehensible to the legalist. Dangerous to the moralist. But if you’ve experienced it, you know it’s like being yanked out of the grave and having your coffin lid pried open. It is the most unexpected pleasure in the world to be loved without condition by a God who makes no demands.” 

* “You cannot meet God as he truly is until you have met up with yourself as you really are and that means being unmasked.” 

* “Freedom comes not from pretending I’m someone I’m not, but from the loving welcome of someone who accepts me as I am.”

* “Author Jessica Thomas describes Christ’s sympathy this way ‘If you put two pianos in the same room and you strike a note, putting hammer to string on one of the pianos, the same string on the other piano will vibrate. That is a picture of Christ’s heart and our own. If one of his family is hurting, his heart hurts in the same way. His heart and our heart become one.’” 

* “Repentance is not a work that we perform, but a gift that Christ gives. It’s not an emotion that we stir up within ourselves, but a motion that Christ enacts within us. This motion is always away from us. Away from guilt. Away from self-devised methods of atonement and towards Jesus.”

We’re All Heroes in Our Own Story – Jon Quitt – Quotes: 

* “The problem with trying to prove something to Jesus is that it causes us to believe that our striving and our performance are actually worth something. Jesus didn’t need anything from Peter. He wasn’t looking for proof. Peter had already been chosen.”

* “A legacy has less to do with having people remember you and more to do with people remembering Christ and his work.”

* “Sometimes the greatest thing you will do in this life will never be known by another human being. Significance can never be measured by the affirmation of others.”

* “The reason David was a man after God’s own heart was because he experienced the tender discipline of the Lord and drank in His mercy when he deserved judgment. The reason Peter was invited out onto the water was not because of his faith, but because of the power of Jesus to lead. And the reason Moses was able to lead the throng of Israel through the Red sea was not because of his humility, but because of God’s faithfulness to hear the cries of His people.”

* “Moses was the most humble man on the face of the earth because he was the only one who had seen God face-to-face and lived. There must be something about the proximity to the glory of God that puts a man in his place.”

* “Daily repentance will grind away at your flesh’s need to be known and praised.” 

Worship – A. W. Tozer – Quotes: 

* “The true fear of God is a beautiful thing for it is worship. It is love. It is veneration. It is a high moral happiness because God is. It is a delight so great that if God were not, the worshiper would not want to be either. He or she could easily pray ‘My God continue to be as thou art or let me die. I cannot think of any other God but thee.’ True worship is to be so personally and hopelessly in love with God that the idea of a transfer of affection never even remotely exists. That is the meaning of the fear of God.” 

* “The man who walked about in Jerusalem with dust covered feet and disheveled hair walking in the wind from one place to another was the same Lord God who could make the mighty come down with His voice. This is our Christ. This is our Jesus. And I recommend to you, my friend, that you seek to know Him as He is in His majesty in order that you might know how mighty fortunate you are. If He had stood by His majesty and had not been willing to meek Himself down, you’d have been in bad shape.”

* “Without a complete dependance on the Holy Spirit, we can only fail. If we have been misled to believe we can do Christ’s work ourselves, it will never be done. The man whom God will use must be undone. He must be a man who has seen the King in His beauty.”

* “In Chicago, I was introduced to a deeply serious Christian brother who had come from his native India with a stirring and grateful testimony of the grace of God in his life. I asked him about his church background, of course. He was not Pentecostal. He was neither Anglican or Baptist. He was neither Presbyterian or Methodist. He did not even know what we mean by the label ‘interdenominational’. He was simply a brother in Christ. This Indian had been born into the Hindu religion, but he was converted to and became a disciple of Jesus Christ by reading and seriously studying the New Testament record of the death and resurrection of our Lord. He spoke English well enough to express his Christian concerns for the world and for the churches. I asked him to speak in my pulpit. Through that encounter, I realized that unless we arouse ourselves spiritually, unless we are brought back to genuine love and adoration and worship, our candlestick could be removed. We may need missionaries coming to us, indeed. We may need them to show us what genuine and vital Christianity is!”

* “If God can be understood and comprehended by any of our human means, then I cannot worship him. One thing is sure, I will never bend my knees and say ‘holy, holy, holy’ to that which I have been able to decipher and figure out in my own mind. That which I can explain will never bring me to the place of awe. It can never fill me with astonishment, wonder, or admiration.”

* “If you do not know the presence of God in your office, your factory, your home, then God is not in the church when you attend. I have come to believe that when we are worshiping – if the love of God is in us and the Spirit of God is breathing praise within us, all the musical instruments in heaven are suddenly playing in full support. It is my experience that our total lives, our entire attitude as persons, must be toward the worship of God.”

* “If there is to be true and blessed worship, some things in your life must be destroyed, eliminated. The Gospel of Jesus Christ is certainly positive and constructive, but it must be destructive in some areas, dealing with and destroying certain elements that cannot remain in a life pleasing to God.”

The Joys of Being Secure in Insecurity

One of my goals for 2023 was to write more…and actually share it. Eeeek. I write just about every day, but I rarely share it publicly (being vulnerable is not my favorite). I have a whole host of private entries on this blog that are just for me and Jesus. 

One of the main reasons I write is to remember. During my dark season of 2016, when I almost lost my faith, my writings about God and my encounters with him are what kept me hanging on when it felt like my world was falling apart. “Recalling his wonderful deeds” pulled me out of the pit of despair. Quite literally, it saved my life. Experiencing the saving power of remembering God renewed my desire to write about him. Since that time, I have continued to write and recall everything he does in my life, no matter how big or small it is. 

Now here I am writing about yet another wonderful thing he has done for me and it’s something I’ve never written about before: friendship. I am someone who has always prided myself on having many friends. I shy away from calling anyone my “best” friend, preferring instead to use terms like “lifelong” friend or “soul” friend. I don’t have a best friend because that’s just too exclusive for me…at least that’s what I’ve always said out loud to people. Really though, I’ve just been afraid that I would be the girl that’s clingy and applying too strong a term to the relationship when the feeling isn’t mutual (ick…vulnerability). 

But that all changed when I met Lauren in 2021. We had just moved back to Tuscaloosa and were attempting to plug into a small group when I met her. I honestly don’t remember much more than seeing her in the church foyer, walking up to her, locking arms with her, and telling her we were going to be friends. 

Big yikes. 

If you know me at all, you know that this is not who I am as a person. I struggle with social anxiety and talking to strangers is my personal hell. I have a whole fake persona that leaves people thinking I’m the bubbliest person ever, but it’s just that…fake. Internally, I’m cringing the entire time. My least favorite time during our church services is when they tell us to turn around and shake someone’s hand that we didn’t walk in with. I’m like Randy Jackson on this one: “It’s a no for me, dawg!” So the fact that I willy-nilly walked up to a stranger and did this is beyond me. 

But I did and that was the start of our friendship. 

It was plenty awkward at first. Plenty awkward. We laugh and talk about this openly now calling it a “slow burn” lol. We Marco’d off and on and even met up with our families at a Mexican restaurant one night for dinner. Benji and I liked Lauren and Kev well enough, but there wasn’t really all that much to talk about because we were perfect strangers. Awkward silence? Cue my social anxiety. I remember leaving the restaurant that night feeling more than a little sad because I thought the awkwardness would kill our budding friendship. 

Fortunately, it didn’t. We continued to forge our way through this new foreign land and at some point, I could feel that we were actually growing closer. So much so that I decided it was time to come clean and let Lauren know that I cuss like a sailor. I wish I was kidding – that I didn’t have to have a coming out party for my mouth – but this is yet another fake persona of mine that I wear for others: the one of a smiley, lady-like, clean-mouthed, church lady. 

In reality, colorful language is not something that bothers me. I joke that I’ve been trying to stop cussing since the fourth grade, and God just won’t let me. I believe the intention behind a word matters more than the word itself, but I also respect the fact that language can be offensive to others.

One way I choose to love others is to not cuss around them if I know they are offended by it or if I think they might potentially be. But that also means hiding part of myself in the process. If I can’t speak in rainbow without you flinching, how can I ever open up about depression, anxiety, or the fact that I had a whole year of my life where I didn’t want to live anymore and Jesus pulled me out of it? 

Some people don’t get to meet that version of me, and that’s okay. Everyone has their limits and I do my best to be respectful of them. Taking this mask off for Lauren was the first test of our friendship. Would it be a friendship of limits? Would she choose to know the real me or would she prefer the church lady persona? To my surprise, she didn’t flinch. Instead, she met me with an unmasking of her own. Let’s just say we discovered that we both like the rainbow that day 🙂 

Though our friendship started out as a slow burn, it eventually ignited into something I never saw coming: A holy friendship. Over time, we began to notice similarity after similarity after similarity in ourselves. I won’t go over all of them here, but our commonalities have creeped us out on more than one occasion. I think my favorite time was discovering we both have a playlist named “soaking” on our phones with many of the same worship songs on it. 

Lauren, like me, is an Enneagram six. I don’t live and die by the Enneagram, but I do enjoy using it as a tool to help me better understand and navigate my relationships. If you don’t know anything about type sixes, you should know this: we are incredibly loyal. And very insecure. In relationships, we replay every moment of every encounter, over and over again, sure that we will find cause for that person to leave us. We’re the type that will stare at the ceiling at 2AM, obsessing over a word we spoke to someone in passing four years ago. 

Lauren is the first friend that intuitively knew this about me. No one wants to be seen as insecure, including me. Until meeting her, I had never actually spoken this truth about myself out loud: That I *am* insecure and I leave every single encounter with you questioning all that was said and whether or not you actually wanted to be around me. 

But Lauren knew this without me having to tell her. And she knew it because she knew herself. 

One of my favorite things that she does when she knows I’m feeling insecure is to grab me, look me dead in the eye, and forcefully say “I’m not going anywhere. WE’RE SECURE!!!” I’ve actually kinda started to believe her. Haha. (I can feel her eyes rolling into the back of her head right now, so okay, okay…I believe you, Dr. Jessica!! We’re secure :))

Joking aside though, when she does this, it reminds me of Jesus and how he deals with our struggles. He doesn’t shy away from them, get annoyed, or walk away. Instead, he looks them dead in the eye, calls them out, and tells them to leave. In this way, Lauren loves me just like he does and I am so incredibly grateful for that. 

Not too long ago, I asked God to let me see myself through his eyes. I was struggling with self-hatred, low self-esteem, etc. I believed that he loved me – we had been through enough that I trusted in that much – but I couldn’t understand why or how, so I prayed that he would help me to see it. 

Enter Lauren Rollins. 

As weird as it may seem, I know she is an answer to that prayer. She is just like me in so many ways…in good ways and in “bad” ways. And I have nothing but love and tenderness towards her. She is precious to me. She is like a priceless treasure. And because of our similarities, I cannot see her without seeing myself in this way. I cannot help but to love her, so I cannot help but to love myself. 

And that has been the miracle of being best friends with Lauren Rollins. 

A friend took this of us because we were standing the same way lol

Ruined

The only thing I know in life is that I actually know nothing at all. The more God reveals himself to me, the more I am aware of this and the more I shrink. This is something I have found myself longing after in the new year: to shrink. That’s not something I would have necessarily prayed for in the past because I know it has the potential (or rather likelihood) to be painful. But I want my life and my heart to be full of wonder, so I’m praying to shrink, pain be damned! 

Humanity misses out on the blessing of wonder when we refuse to shrink. We are prideful and arrogant. We think we have all of the answers. We cancel people. We cancel ourselves. We cancel God. All because we think we have the full story. We think we have the ability to know motives and intentions and to accurately judge the heart, even our own, but he is the only one with insight into all of these things. And interestingly enough, he does not cancel his children even though he has the full story on all of us. 

He sees when we are vile and full of hatred. He sees when we give up on him. He sees the thoughts we wouldn’t dare share with another human being. He sees our dark, twisted, and faithless hearts…and he opens up his own in return, freely giving us his love. He chases after us in endless pursuit, all while we run from him in our arrogance. 

How could I see him do this and keep a heart swollen with pride? How could I watch a king chase me down, choosing to lower himself in order to love and serve me, and still feel tall? 

I can’t. 

The only response to that kind of love is worship and adoration. And when you finally see it – when you finally see him – you can’t help but to fall on your face before him, and cry “Woe to me! I am ruined. For I am a man of unclean lips and I live among a people of unclean lips. My eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty!” 

So Jesus, make me small and keep me small. Allow my eyes to see you, my King, the Lord Almighty, in every single moment of every day, for this is the only cure for my pride. It is also the precursor to my wonder. And oh, how I long to be ruined and full of your wonder!