30 DAYS OF TRUTH...DAY #25

A BOOK YOU'VE READ THAT CHANGED YOUR VIEW ON SOMETHING.

THE SHACK by Jim Palmer....is the first one I thought of when I read this question.

First if you aren't familiar with this book, here is the product description from Amazon....

Mackenzie Allen Philips' youngest daughter, Missy, has been abducted during a family vacation and evidence that she may have been brutally murdered is found in an abandoned shack deep in the Oregon wilderness. Four years later in the midst of his Great Sadness, Mack receives a suspicious note, apparently from God, inviting him back to that shack for a weekend. Against his better judgment he arrives at the shack on a wintry afternoon and walks back into his darkest nightmare. What he finds there will change Mack's world forever. In a world where religion seems to grow increasingly irrelevant "The Shack" wrestles with the timeless question, "Where is God in a world so filled with unspeakable pain?" The answers Mack gets will astound you and perhaps transform you as much as it did him. You'll want everyone you know to read this book!

I am not one to try and convert anyone, so I will just leave you with the quotes that really struck a cord with me and made me think.

* What is freedom really? Only I can set you free....but freedom can never be forced......And freedom is a process that happens inside a relationship with him. (pages 94-95)
* I'm so sorry that Jesus had to die.....But you need to know that we aren't sorry at all. It was worth it.....And I would have done it even if it were only for you, but it wasn't! (p. 103)
* Humans have a great capacity for declaring something good or evil, without truly knowing. (p. 133)
* This mess is you! Together, you and I, we have been working with a purpose in your heart. And it is wild and beautiful and perfectly in process. (p. 138)
* Because you don't believe. You don't know that we love you. The person who lives by their fears will not find freedom in my love. I am not talking about rational fears regarding legitimate dangers, but imagined fears, and especially the projection of those into the future. To the degree that hose ears have a place in your life, you neither believe I am good nor know deep in your heart that I love you. You sing about it; you talk about it but you don't know it. (p. 142)
* Because we want you to join us in our circle of relationship. I don't want slaves to my will; I want brothers and sisters who will share life with me." (p. 146)
* He doesn't stop a lot of things that cause hi pain. Your wold is severely broken. You demanded your independence, and now you are angry with the one who loved you enough to give it to you. Nothing is as it should be, as Papa desires it to be, and as it will be one day. Right now your world is lost in darkness and chaos, and horrible things happen to those that he is especially fond of. (p. 164)
* All evil flows from independence, and independence is your choice. If I were to simply revoke all the choices of independence, the world as yo know it would cease to exist and love would have no meaning. This world is not a playground where I keep all my children free from evil. Evil is the chaos of this age that you brought to me, but it will not have the final say. Now it touches everyone that I love those who follow me and those who don't. If I take away the consequences of people's choices, I destroy the possibility of love. Love that is forced is no love at all. (p. 190)
* .... religion is about having the right answers, and some of their answers are right. But I am about the process that takes you to the living answer and one you get to him, he will change you from the inside. There are a lot of smart people who are able to say a lot of right things from their brain because they have been told what the right answers are, but they don't know me at all. So really how can their answers be right even if they are right, if you understand my drift? (p. 198)