Book Launch Day: Free Ebook!
Snag a free ebook today . . . and learn about swine?
Today One with God launches from the little harbor of my head, out into a bustling and crazed marketplace. For a limited time, I’m even giving away the ebook for FREE on Kindle. I want as many people to read this book as possible, to glean from it some small blessing of the many riches God has been pouring into me.
Is it practical, though?
A topic like “oneness with God” can seem pretty abstract. Is this a book that will lead to practical change in your life? I’ve thought a lot about that. Here are three ways in which oneness with God is VERY practical for everyday life.
1. Identity: Being one with God tells me something very concrete about who I am and how that identity gets worked out each day: I am made for relationships. And the really concrete question you can ask yourself each day, before you interact with a person, is this: What am I giving to this relationship? Put differently, how can I be like John the Baptist to this person, going lower so that they can go higher and experience more of the life-giving person of Jesus Christ? How can I give so that they can get? See, if we’re made to be one with God, if our identity is found in communion and joyful self-giving, that really does shape how I talk to people each day.
2. Purpose: Second, oneness with God shapes my purpose on a daily basis. Jesus asks that we would be one with him for a very special reason: “so that the world may believe that you [the Father] have sent me.” My purpose for existence is so that other people might look through me (not at me) to see the God who loves humanity so much that he sent himself to bring us back to him. What’s my purpose in saying hello to a co-worker, in ordering a cup of coffee, in making lunch for my kids? It’s to get them to stare at the God of grace, the God of giving. Put in biblical terms, my purpose is to be a witness for Christ by living out of my oneness with God: a relationship in which I am fully known and fully loved so that I can fully give myself to others, and in doing so raise an index finger to God.
3. Destiny: Third, oneness with God helps me on a concrete basis with one of the most precious assets humanity has: hope. Do you ever find yourself thinking about where all this is going, where your life is headed? I think about that a lot because I watched my father die of cancer when I was 18. I think A LOT about where I’m going. And you know what? That changes how I act in the present. If I’m focused my eternal destiny of being one with the God I love, then I can be more confident, more focused, more patient, more attentive in the present. Knowing my destiny changes how I go through today. Forever changes what I experience right now.
The Prodigal Swine and Oneness with God
In what may seem unrelated (but, I promise, it isn’t), here are some thoughts on how becoming a prodigal swine (Luke 15) is related to our oneness with God.
