{"id":3927,"date":"2008-08-11T08:55:18","date_gmt":"2008-08-11T14:55:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/?p=3927"},"modified":"2013-06-11T07:43:31","modified_gmt":"2013-06-11T13:43:31","slug":"wild-goose-chase","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wild-goose-chase\/","title":{"rendered":"The Wild Goose Chase"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Received a preview copy of <strong>Mark Batterson&#8217;s<\/strong> latest book, &#8220;Wild Goose Chase&#8221; on Saturday. Loving it.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ll post an extended review once I finish the book (which should be before the book&#8217;s release date on Aug 19th).<\/p>\n<p>But I thought I&#8217;d post some initial thoughts\/quotes that really stood out to me &#8211; thus far.<\/p>\n<p>The idea\/title of the book comes from the name the Celtic Christians had for the Holy Spirit &#8211; <em>An Geadh-Glas<\/em> or &#8220;the Wild Goose.&#8221; It may seem strange calling the Holy Spirit the Wild Goose &#8211; especially when you consider what we typically mean when we say, &#8220;a wild goose chase.&#8221; But if you really think about following the Holy Spirit &#8211; that&#8217;s what it&#8217;s really like. You have no idea where you&#8217;re heading. It may seem pointless when you follow The Wild Goose. &#8220;But rest assured, God is working His plan.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><iframe src=\"http:\/\/rcm.amazon.com\/e\/cm?t=malesurvival&#038;o=1&#038;p=8&#038;l=as1&#038;asins=1590527194&#038;fc1=000000&#038;IS2=1&#038;lt1=_blank&#038;m=amazon&#038;lc1=0000FF&#038;bc1=000000&#038;bg1=FFFFFF&#038;f=ifr\" style=\"width:120px;height:240px;\" scrolling=\"no\" marginwidth=\"5\" marginheight=\"5\" frameborder=\"0\" align=\"right\"><\/iframe>&#8220;I wonder if churches do to people what zoos do to animals.&#8221;<\/strong> We&#8217;re caged by so many things in our modern versions of &#8220;faith.&#8221; Batterson spends the rest of the book looking at six different cages we find ourselves in and comparing these cages to different people\/stories we read about in Scripture. As I read about these cages I can see bits and pieces of me living in each of them. Some are stronger cages than others &#8211; but each of them keep me from the adventure The Wild Goose is calling me to follow Him on. <strong>&#8220;You cannot simultaneously live by faith and be bored.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We start dying when we have nothing worth living for. And we don&#8217;t really start living until we find something worth dying for.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;When God puts a passion in your heart, whether it be relieving starvation in Africa or educating children in the inner city or making movies with redemptive messages, that God-ordained passion becomes your responsibility. And you have a choice to make. Are you going to be irresponsibly responsible or responsibly irresponsible?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Supernatural sadness and righteous indignation often reveal our God-ordained passions&#8230; if something causes you to weep and mourn and fast and pray for days on end, it is a good indication that God wants you to take personal responsibility and do something about it. Anything less or anything else is irresponsible responsibility&#8230; If you want to discover your God-ordained passions, then you need to identify what makes you sad, mad, or glad&#8230; God-ordained passions often break our hearts. And they can seem like an overwhelming burden to bear. But pushing our passions is the key to living a fruitful and fulfilling life.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;One of the great mistakes we make is asking God to do for us what God wants us to do for Him. <em>We confuse portfolios. For example, we try to convict people around us of sin. But that is the Holy Spirit&#8217;s responsibility, not ours. <\/em>And when we play God, we not only do a poor job at it, but it is always counterproductive.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;When Christianity turns into a noun, it becomes a turnoff. Christianity is always intended to be a verb. And more specifically an action verb.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Batterson talks a lot about the cage of routine in chp 3. Excellent stuff.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;When God wants us to experience a change in perspective, He often does it via a change in scenery&#8230; where you are geographically affects where you are spiritually&#8230;<\/p>\n<p><em>change of pace + change of pace = change of perspective<\/em><\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We do things without thinking about them. And if we aren&#8217;t careful, we pray without thinking, take Communion without thinking, and worship without thinking&#8230; &#8216;These people say they are mine,&#8217; God complained. &#8216;They honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. And their worship of me is nothing but man-made rules learned by rote.&#8217; &#8230; We need new words, new postures, new thoughts and new feelings.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><strong>related :: <\/strong><br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.evotional.com\/\">Mark Batterson&#8217;s blog<\/a><br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/misc\/quotes-of-the-day\/\">SSL :: quotes of the day<\/a><br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/misc\/more-from-batterson\/\">SSL :: more from batterson<\/a><br \/>\n<span class=\"removed_link\" title=\"http:\/\/www.casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/faith\/church-marketing\/marketing-or-action\/\">SSL :: marketing or action<\/span><br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/reflections\/goals-for-2008\/\">SSL :: goals for 2008<\/a><br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/uncategorized\/church-goals\/\">SSL :: church goals<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Received a preview copy of Mark Batterson&#8217;s latest book, &#8220;Wild Goose Chase&#8221; on Saturday. Loving it. I&#8217;ll post an extended review once I finish the book (which should be before the book&#8217;s release date on Aug 19th). But I thought I&#8217;d post some initial thoughts\/quotes that really stood out to me &#8211; thus far. The &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wild-goose-chase\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">The Wild Goose Chase<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":84,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[31,18],"tags":[1374,1306,1372,1373],"class_list":["post-3927","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-club","category-faith","tag-book","tag-holy-spirit","tag-mark-batterson","tag-wild-goose-chase"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pEnSo-11l","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3927","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/84"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3927"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3927\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11158,"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3927\/revisions\/11158"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3927"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3927"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3927"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}