Forgotten God by Francis Chan

So today I went to the Christian bookstore to buy guess...some Christian books.
I bought two, one called Walking with God by John Eldredge and another called Forgotten God by Francis Chan. I didn't like Walking with God so I'm gonna exchange it with another book I had interest in while over there.

Forgotten God however is good. It focuses on the neglect of the Holy Spirit in modern day churches and how we need to go back and get more of the Holy Spirit. The real Holy Spirit.

I read the intro and first chapter. Because I don't feel like physically writing right now (3:35am) I'll type my QT here.

12/10/09 (even though it's actually 12/11)

Start of Forgotten God.

The Holy Spirit is neglected and forgotten. There are probably over millions of church goers who cannot say they have experienced the presence or action of God in the past year. And many don't believe they can. I agree with him. Even myself, to a lesser degree. I guess the last time I experienced God was summer retreat? maybe a few months after at this one Friday service. HE also says the main goal of contemporary churches nowadays are to get as much people to come as possible rather than movement in the Holy Spirit. So true. Imagine being stuck on a desert island with nothing but the Bible to read and to come back to contemporary churches. You'd be convinced that the Holy Spirit is necessary is necessary for a believer's existence as air is to life. But we often aren't because of the image churches give us nowadays of the Spirit. The Holy Spirit led the first Christians to do great things, to live lives that didn't make sense to the world around them, and spread the story of God's grace. Sometimes, we feel that there is something missiong at church. So much so that we become dissatisfied and run away from church and God. That something is the Holy Spirit. Without it, people can only accomplish human results. The world doesn't change by human creation nor does a church live differently from other groups of people without the Spirit. With the Spirit however, the church cannot help but be different, and the world cannot help but notice. Living in America, it seems like the Holy Spirit lacks the most here but is working in places like Africa, Asia, etc. "I do believe that the Spirit is more obviously active in places where people are desparate for Him, humbled before Him, and not distracted by their pursuit of wealth or comforts." We should be fellowshipping over what He's doing rather than what he did months or a year ago. With God, there is no balance or enough. When he take in a lot of Him, we should only thirst for me. When we surrender to the Spirit fully, Christ will be magnified, not us (John 16:14).

The author recounts a time when 2 Jehovah's witnesses came to his door and told him that Micheal the archangel of heaven was the same as Jesus Christ. He knew this to be wrong and told them that Jesus was more than one among many angels but they didn't believe him. So he told them to turn to Daniel 10:13 "But the prince of the Persian kingdom resisted me 21 days. Then Michael, one of the chief princes, came to help me." Then the two looked shocked and said they never heard or read this before. He basically responds by saying "you guys only spread what you've heard but don't know if it's true." Then he questions himself by saying the samething.

"Have I ever sat down with the Bible and sought after its self-evident truth? Or had I passively ingested what I heard from other people, much like the Jehovah's witnesses?"

Ask the Spirit to make scripture living and active within you. To take away all those fake pictures you've been told or believed. Alot of us think we don't need the Holy Spirit because we can live comfortably without it. Even church growth can happen without God. All you need is a good speaker, talented band, and fun events. We shouldn't be able to blend in with nonbelievers. Nonbelievers shouldn't be more at peace or happier than we are, but why is it so? Romans 8:9 basically says if we are believers, then the Spirit of God dwells in me. If we are believers, and the Spirit dwells within the body, then there should be a difference between a person who has the Spirit within him/her and one who doesn't. If you said you had an encounter with God where he gave you the super ability to play basketball but didn't improve in skills then wouldn't you question that encounter? We say we've encountered God, put sin to death, serve the church. Dead but risen. But if we aren't any different from those who don't believe, people begin to question our integrity, sanity, or worse, our God. It is fact that the Spirit is in us, so each day should be different. We shouldn't be like nonbelievers. We shouldn't be crawling when we have the ability to fly.