Dirty God by Johnnie Moore engaged all five of my senses in a way that I don’t think has ever been done in a book. I appreciate the way that Johnnie vividly paints pictures of his travels and encounters with people that God has placed in his path. You can literally smell and taste the dirt in some of the most remote parts of the world where people need the gospel the most. You can hear the cry of their hearts and see their anguish when all they need is for someone to put their arm around them and offer them rest from the weariness of their life and their struggles. Dirty God is not for the faint of heart or anyone that desires to follow a blond hair blue-eyed Jesus that sits on a palatial throne separated from the messiness of life. This book is for someone that wants to dive in and truly wrestle with the idea of grace and what it looks like on a daily basis. Are you ready to get dirty?
I highlighted several things while reading and have posted those below…
- This is a book about grace. And how grace split time in half and made a broken world a playground again for the goodness and kindness of God.
- All the religions of the world are after God’s attention. They throw their roses, tie their strings, and plead for their deity to give them—at least—a passing glance.
- But Jesus changed things. He told a different story. He taught, and millions of Christians through the ages have discovered, a different kind of God. Jesus’ teaching gave birth to the only religious system in the world that breaks through the racket of worship with a simple message: the real God is a God who delights in giving grace. We can stop trying so hard to get his attention. We already have it.
- God’s Old Testament prophets had their fair share of drama. Jonah was swallowed by a fish because of blatant disobedience, David had an affair, Jeremiah was a crybaby, Isaiah once walked naked and barefoot for three years to make a point, Ezekiel lay on his side for over a year as an illustration of God’s relationship with his people, and Hosea married a prostitute.
- The Bible teaches us that God “demonstrates his own love for us” (Rom. 5:8) in how he came to us in Jesus. He didn’t expect us to climb up to him. He climbed down to us. He got his hands dirty so that we could have our hearts cleaned.
- Grace and God’s power are friends, not enemies, of one another. It is not a weak God who associates with weak people, but rather a strong God, attracted to the opportunity to be powerful in their weakness. Grace is hard. It shows not God’s weakness, but his incredible strength.
- He came not to judge the sin of the world but rather to take onto his own shoulders the burden of giving a second chance to people who didn’t deserve one.
- His justice was delivered through his tears.
- GRACE IS FOR THE REST OF US, NOT JUST THE BEST OF US
- Jesus is the kind of spiritual leader who loves—who, in fact, is obsessed by—those of us who are a little rough around the edges. His mission wasn’t to those who already have their stuff together—it was to those who simply wanted to have their stuff together, and who knew they needed a lot of grace and a lot of help to get there.
- The truth of God’s grace is so powerful that it literally had the effect of breaking history in half. Jesus’ life was of such iconic significance that it required the redefinition of time. It broke history in half. The calendar was traumatized.
- Christianity is a lifestyle of joyful fellowship with a grace-distributing God whose love has drawn us to repentance. It’s not a laborious path to a place of perfection that we’ll never reach.
- Understanding the width and breadth of God’s love has two effects. First, it makes you go nearly mad with gratitude. Secondly, it hooks your heart, and you find yourself trusting that God’s ways are the best ways. You stop fighting against truth and you embrace it. You see God as primarily kind and benevolent, and you stop seeing him as the cosmic judge who enjoys laying heavy doses of condemnation on people. In a word, you find yourself saturated with his kindness.
- The arrival of grace was a tsunami that changed eternity, reshaped religion, and redefined everything—forever.
- Our hearts were tuned to play in harmony with God. Jesus’ death was the missing note to make the harmony happen, and grace the hammer that struck it. Now our relationship with him can play in sweet harmony as grace continues to make the music possible.
- Jesus’ love and Jesus’ grace are so great it’s scandalous—too much to bear, and too easy to get, and that’s why it’s always been so controversial. That’s also why it’s so remarkable.
- God didn’t cautiously divvy out grace to the deserving. He broke the dam, and let it rush loosely and wildly into history. Jesus grabbed us by the nape of the neck and thrust us into its drenching, transformative flow.
- Christians might be thought of as holy, but they’re not always thought of as very happy.
- When you start to look at your faith through the lens of joy, things change for the good. Faith is no longer the death of your old self (and your old fun and old freedom and old life). Faith is the injection of real life into what you thought was life.
- You can stop the masquerade. Jesus knew what he was getting himself into.
- Grace is the great rescuing of God’s people, by God, from death to life.
- The premise of this book is that God’s relationship with people is primarily defined as a relationship of grace, and grace should make us better people and make the world a better place. It’s our responsibility as God’s children to live as people of grace in a world that desperately needs what it doesn’t always accept.
- Grace is the enemy of looking out for number one and survival of the fittest.
- The power of grace and the power of this world are at odds with one another. One sees power in self-preservation at all costs, and the other sees power in self-sacrifice, but each of these divergent systems of belief draws upon a god for their strength.
- Grace is inherently radical because grace chooses to ignore what might be deserved and to dole out mercy instead.
- Grace is inherently radical because grace chooses to ignore what might be deserved and to dole out mercy instead.
- Sometimes it’s our responsibility to tell people what they need to hear over what they want to hear, to treat them how they need to be treated as opposed to how they want to be treated, and to do for them what is best over what is easiest.
- Grace stands up for truth when people don’t want to hear it, and grace stands in the gap for those who haven’t a voice. Grace takes the hit. Grace decides to charge injustice from the front lines. Grace sometimes says what no one wants to hear and then keeps saying it until everyone has heard it.
- Far more of us fall prey to these “white-collar” sins than to their more grotesque bigger brothers. For every murderer, for every fraud, for every serial liar, there are millions nursing envy, bitterness, pent-up anger, and hatred. One of the greatest lies we’ve been taught to believe is that these wrongs are less wrong.
- Evil is real, but evil is incinerated when it collides with grace—through Jesus.
- True compassion means that we care enough to effect change.
- God expects us to get our own hands dirty just as he dirtied his own. He wants to meet us—not in the sanctuary but in the slums. Where hopelessness resides is where the rivers of grace are meant to flow most freely.
- Grace is the miracle that each of us can exercise at will in the world around us.
- Jesus is asking us to join him in the trenches.
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