End of Crazy Love!

Total reading for week: 100 pages

This part of the book talked about giving. He gave inspiring examples of how people expressed their faith through their giving. One example was a man who would always give 20 percent of his money to the church and then his income greatly decreased and he started giving 30 percent to the church. I find that amazing that a man would have that much faith that even though you would think he would start giving less to the church to accomadate for his lowered income, but instead gave even more! That just amazes me. Another thing Francis talked about along the lines of giving was giving your time. Giving time can sometimes affect your life more than giving money can because if we let God have control of our time then he will do awesome things with it. But giving that is not motivated by love will gain nothing. If we are just giving because we feel like we should then we will not gain anything.

This chapter also brought up the idea of downgrading so that others may upgrade. I love that thought. There's a Bible verse that says "He must increase and I must decrease", which is one of the favorite Bible verses. The thought of being more like Jesus and less like my sinful-self fills me with joy.

Another thing that I liked was when Chan said that pride tells us that we've given more than other people so that is sufficient enough. We always compare ourselves to other people, which is silly because we are all different people! We all have different circumstances and lives so why do we always compare to others to see if we're doing the bare minimum it takes to be considered a good Christian?

Chan starts talking about what it is like to be obsessed with something. It means to have the mind excessively preoccupied with a single emotion or topic. God tells us in Luke chapter 6 to love our enemies and loan to them without expecting anything in return. I thought it was interesting how Francis brought up the point that it is so easy for us to lend things to our loved ones because we know that they will repay us somehow, but God says it is more important to lend to our enemies and expect nothing in return. God says that is true love.

The end of this book gave many examples of people who really live like that. Those examples were extremely touching and inspiring. I would definitely recommend this book to anyone who is feeling dry in their walk with Jesus becasue this book makes you think deeper than you ever thought you would! So go buy it!