What if God isn’t who you think
He is and neither are you?
No book, apart from the Bible, has changed my life more dramatically than The Cure.
A few years back, I heard one of the authors, John Lynch, share the message of The Cure at a men’s retreat and felt as if God was speaking directly to my soul. It was in that moment that God opened my eyes to the reality of His unwavering grace and unconditional love, and that He never asked me to try to fix myself before I could enjoy a relationship with Him.
If you want to learn how God views you, how to sin less, and how to finally experience a meaningful relationship with Jesus, I highly suggest you read The Cure.
Purchase The Cure on Amazon today!
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Highlighting My Highlights:
I’m one of those guys who can’t read a book without a highlighter in my hand, and as far as I’m concerned, it would be a shame to mark up my favorite content and never share it with you. With that in mind, here are some of my favorite quotes from The Cure:
Chapter One: Two Roads
“We do not see God as He is, and we do not see ourselves as we are.”
“Despite all my passionate sincerity, I keep sinning. Then I get fixated on trying not to sin. Then it repeats: Same sin, same thoughts, same failure.”
“If out primary motive is pleasing God, we’ll never please Him enough and we’ll never learn trust. Pleasing God is a good desire, It just can’t be our primary motivation or it will imprison our hearts… When our primary motive becomes trusting God, however, we suddenly discover there is nothing in the world that pleases Him more! Until you trust God, nothing you do will please God.”
“What if Christ, for the believer, is never over there, on the other side of our sin? What if the power of His death on the cross allows Him to stand right in front of me, on my worst day, and smile bigger and happier than any human being ever could?”
Chapter Two: Two Faces
“No one told me that when I wear a mask, only my mask receives love.”
“This life in Christ is not about what I can do to make myself worthy of His acceptance, but about daily trusting what He has done to make me worthy of His acceptance.”
“We may even be fueled by a sincere desire to make God look good by having our act together. He has no need of such help, but we think it’s our duty. So, we hide our scars and pretend we’re modeling to the world how well God treats His followers. Instead we just come off as weird and smug.”
Chapter Three: Two Gods
“You have as much of God as you’re going to get! He lives in you! You are in Him. How much closer do you want than that? Every moment of every day, fused with you, there He is. He never moves. Never covers His ears when you sin, never puts up a newspaper, never turns His back. He’s not on the other side of your sin, waiting for you to get it together so you can finally be close. It’s incredible! Don’t you think? That’s why they call it ‘Good News’!”
“The reason people rebel is not because they trusted grace or chose to live out of their new identity. It’s the very opposite. It’s moralism, the law of religious practice and thought, that keeps them trying to get away with something.”
“This is the cruel joke we play on ourselves: To bluff and pretend we are righteous, secretly knowing we aren’t, only to eventually discover we actually were all along!”
Chapter Four: Two Solutions
“You can tell another what is going on inside before it happens. And the moment you do—at any point along the way—the cycle stops. The madness, the pain, the damage… all of it stops. The power of sin is broken.”
“I am ‘Christ in me’ on my worst day, in my worst thought, during my worst temptation. So, I learn to tell on myself, both to God and to others. I experience the truth that living in holiness is living with nothing hidden. Then I am clean; I am free; I am healing.”
Chapter Five: Two Healings
“We can almost picture God forced to sit on His hands, waiting until we give up so He can rescue us.”
“If I am to be set free, I must first embrace a forgiveness that is solely for my benefit. Only then can I extend forgiveness to the benefit of another.”
“We must be weakened to the point we drop our defenses long enough to look to God and call out, ‘Help.’ This condition is called repentance… Repentance isn’t doing something about my sin. It’s admitting I can’t do anything about my sin. It’s trusting that only God can cleanse me, and only He can convince me I’m truly cleansed.”
Chapter Six: Two Friends
“What if it was less important that anything ever gets fixed than that nothing has to be hidden?”
“God allows some pain to awaken our hearts. Many of us are awakening to the pain of realizing we can’t even control our world the way we thought we could. We’re stuck with unresolved issues, symptoms we’re trying to fix, without the help of anyone else.”
“Nothing defines religion quite as well as attempting impossible tasks with limited power, all while pretending that it’s working.”
“Only those who risk trusting other flawed, fallible others to love them get to experience love.”
Chapter Seven: Two Destinies
“We can strive to sin less, but not love more. But, when we love more, we cannot help but sin less. This effort allows us to extend love to the wounded, angry, and unlovely. It is the effort of actually living out of who He has made us to be.”
“The quality of your life is based in trusting this: Where you re right now is the perfect place for you, or the God of all goodness and power would not allow you to be there.”
