If you are looking for a laugh out loud funny book, Stuff Christians Like by Jon Acuff is the book you’ve always been looking for. I am so grateful that we serve a God that has an awesome sense of humor…because I know that we sure give him a lot to laugh about in our interesting pursuits of what Christians should like and how they should act. I have read this book off and on over the past few months. It is a series of essays that come from the SCL blog that Jon started a few years ago. One of my all-time favorite blog posts is: The Rarest Church Musician of All Time.
I will post a few of my favorite thoughts from the book below, but I would encourage you to head over to the blog to see Jon’s newest stuff…and then head to Amazon to pick up a copy of this book. It is hilarious!
- Sometimes, you think, “I wish I had a t-shirt that said ‘I direct deposit my tithe’ so people wouldn’t judge me.”
- If you want to become a professional church grumbler, not just some amateur occasionally throwing rocks at the worship service, minister, or other attributes of the church, there’s one key phrase you need to know: “I’m not being fed.” Just be careful who you say this to. Pastors are starting to get wily. When people tell my friend, “I’m not being fed,” he replies, “I’m perfectly happy to spoon feed my one-year-old. But if I’m still spoon-feeding him when he’s five, we’ve got a problem. Here’s a fork. Feed yourself.”
- In Christ we are not worthless. In Christ we are not hopeless. In Christ we are not dumb or ugly or forgotten. In Christ we are not naked. In Isaiah 61:10 it says, “For he has clothed me with garments of salvation and arrayed me in a robe of righteousness.”
- We can stop worrying about trying to become famous Christians. That’s done.
- I’m sure that when God hears stuff like that, he wants to throw a lightning bolt down at us. And not just a regular one, but some sort of super lightning bolt coated with tigers and switchblades.
- Everyone knows that swears are nineteen times more powerful coming out of the mouth of a Christian.
- “I’ll pray for you” is just the Christian equivalent of ending a date by saying, “I’ll give you a call.” It shouldn’t be, but it is, and right now I have about a 17 percent success rate when it comes to actually following through on my `I’ll pray for you’ promises. I know that’s horrible, but that reflects a ten-year average that includes 2000-2005, when I was batting about 0.000. I’ve done better these last five years to pull up my average, but you know what they say about prayer statistics: “It’s a marathon, not a sprint”.