Obsession

Welcome back, oh wait I guess that would be for me. It has been nearly two months since I have written here. I could come up with many excuses, but won't, just plain haven't been writing.

Over the last few days I have read the book Crazy Love by Francis Chan. This is a good book and worth the time to read it. In chapter 8 Chan outlines a profile of a person who is obsessed with God. This has had a significant impact on me so I thought I would share it with all who are willing to read. Here comes the first disclaimer, I write not as someone who has figured out how to be obsessed with God. I write as a person engaged in the struggle to be obsessed. Perhaps you are in the struggle too, and perhaps we can struggle together.

If we are going to look at what in means to be obsessed with God we had better create a baseline for the word obsessed. The American Heritage Dictionary offers, To have the mind excessively preoccupied with a single emotion or topic, as a working definition. This definition challenges, haunts, and makes me want to give up at the start. We live in a culture that tells us we do not need to be excessively preoccupied with anything. In fact it is probably not healthy to be that way with anything. Yet we are challenged to be obsessed with God.

To be obsessed with God has many implications for our lives. Most of these implications will require us to re-order our lives. The things which have classically been held as most important, might have to come down on the priority list. To be obsessed with God means a total devotion to the ways and being of God. Over the next few weeks I will be using the markers laid out by Francis Chan to explore what it might look like to be obsessed with God. Please feel free to join in the dialogue as I am hoping to discover something along the way.