Reading!

I've read some awesome books in the past week and a half, and I would recommend them to everyone.

Crazy Love by Francis Chan

-Chan challenged me to wake up and look around. The incredible God who created this universe LOVES me. He deserves more than my affection, attention, and actions, and so often I don't even give those to Him. Sometimes we give a holy and magnificent God our leftovers. But, when we fall truly and completely in love with God, everything changes.

My favorite part of the book was the chapter titled "The Profile of the Obsessed". He begins the chapter with the definition of the word "obsessed"--to have the mind excessively preoccupied with a single emotion or thought. Here are points that hit me:

"People who are obsessed with Jesus give freely and openly, without censure. Obsessed people love those who hate them and who can never love them back."

"People who are obsessed with Jesus aren't consumed with their personal comfort and safety above all else. Obsessed people care more about God's kingdom coming to this earth than their own lives being shielded from pain and distress."

"A person who is obsessed with Jesus knows that the sin of pride is always a battle. Obsessed people know that you can never be "humble enough," and so they seek to make themselves less known and Christ more known (Matt. 5:16)."

The E-Myth Revisited by Michael E. Gerber

-Gerber discusses the small business, why most small businesses fail, and how to prevent that from happening, but more importantly he emphasizes the importance of knowing yourself and goal setting in the process of living your live like you mean it.

Favorites:

"Creativity thinks up new things. Innovation does new things. (Theodore Levitt)"

"The world's not the problem; you and I are.
The world's not in chaos; we are...
So if the world is going to be changed, we must first change our lives!
Unfortunately, we haven't been taught to think that way...
But now is the time to learn how. Now is the time to change."

The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky

-This is a Russian classic, completed in 1880. Dostoevsky weaves an intricate tale of brothers and their father as he highlights questions about God, love, morality, and immortality. It may have entered my top 5 books.

Some of my favorite quotes:

"... love in action is a harsh and dreadful thing compared to love in dreams. Love in dreams is greedy for immediate action, rapidly performed and in the sight of all. Men will even give their lives if only the ordeal does not last long but is soon over, with all looking on and applauding as though on the stage. But active love is labor and fortitude, and for some people too, perhaps, a complete science. But I predict that just when you see the with horror that in spite of all your efforts you are getting further from your goal instead of nearer to it--at that very moment I predict that you will reach it and behold clearly the miraculous power of the Lord who has been all the time loving and mysteriously guiding you."

"Obedience, fasting, and prayer are laughed at, yet only through them lies the way to real , true freedom. I cut off my superfluous and unnecessary desires, I subdue my proud and wanton will and chastise it with obedience, and with God's help I obtain freedom of spirit and with it spiritual joy. Which is most capable of conceiving a great idea and serving it--the rich man in his isolation or man who has freed himself from the tyranny of material things and habits? "