I just finished reading a book by Kyle Idleman entitled “The End of Me”. Kyle is the teaching pastor at Southeast Christian Church in Louisville, Kentucky. He is the bestselling author of “Not A Fan”, “Gods At War” & “AHA”. “The End of Me” is described this way:
Kyle Idleman reveals that the key to the abundant life Jesus promises lies in embracing His inside-out way of life.
Kyle examines Jesus’s Sermons on the Mount and unpacks many other counterintuitive truths from Scripture, including brokenness is the way to wholeness, mourning is the path to blessing, and emptiness is required to know true fullness. As you begin to live out these paradoxical principles, you will ultimately discover how Jesus transforms you.
Only when you come to the end of yourself can you begin to experience the full, blessed, and whole life Jesus offers.
This book was packed with lots of greats quotes and so I wanted to share some of them. (Bold quotes are my favorite)
The End Of Me:
Reaching the end of me is a daily journey I must make because it’s where Jesus shows up and my real life in Him begins.
Jesus will show us that blessings and fulfillment is found in the least likely place – the end of ourselves.
Brokenness:
Jesus is saying that God’s kingdom begins in you when you come to the end of yourself and realize you have nothing to offer. It’s precisely the opposite of every assumption we tend to make in this world.
The less you see your own brokenness, the more broken you are.
Mourning:
There’s nothing life can throw at us that God can’t use to draw us nearer to Him.
Without seeing the depths of sin, we’ll never understand the heights of God’s love and grace.
Humbled:
Pride is the ultimate issue of the human condition – not just one of the “deadly sins” but the mother of them all.
Bible-time Pharisees were so good with rules and pious acts that they became legends in their own minds. Yet it wasn’t real. The Messiah stood before them, invisible to their eyes. The needs of the hungry and the sick, all around them, didn’t register. The things they cared about didn’t intersect with the things God care about.
The greatest danger in life is anything other than Jesus that becomes a foundation for our confidence.
Authentic:
When the inside and outside match up, you’re pure in heart and you’re where He wants you to be.
A great part of the upside-down inside-out message of Jesus is that God doesn’t look so much on the outside, which is so easy to fake. He looks more on the inside, where we are what we are.
Jesus calls us to live one life and live it out in the open. His name for that is purity of heart, and his reward for that is a rich and fulfilled blessing in life.
To authentically know Him and to be authentically known by Him is what my soul was made for.
Empty To Be Filled:
The story found in 2 Kings 4, is a reminder that God loves to fill empty things – whether it’s a jar or a measure of hope. Jars are made for filling. They don’t fill themselves, but they receive what is poured into them. All jars begin with emptiness.
Disqualified To Be Chosen:
If anyone was disqualified for leadership, shouldn’t it have been a man who murdered believers and organized search-and-destroy missions against the church? (Paul)
Coming to the end of me also means allowing Jesus to put an end to the guilt and shame of the past. He declares your permanent record and offers you a new beginning with a new purpose.
For those of us worried about how others see us, we have to move forward even if we don’t know where we stand with them. God determines your future, not others.
Weak To Be Strong:
Why poverty? What a stable? Why blue-collar shepherds? Because He’s God, and God chooses weakness as the best setting to display His strength. Weakness creates the space that God fills with his strength. He stepped into poverty, weakness, and obscurity, and all we’re left to say is, “Look what God can do.” He takes a blank canvas of drab gray and says, “Watch this!”
The End Of Me:
Death renders all worldly points moot. It’s the ultimate, required surrender of yourself and all you have. When Jesus speaks of dying to ourselves, this is what He wants us to think about. All the stuff of the world is dead to us, and we’re dead to it.
It’s inherently human to focus on ourselves, It’s how we are. Jesus teaches us to deny ourselves, to die to ourselves but that doesn’t mean it ever becomes easy. Each day when we climb out of bed to begin a new day, we’re still human. The old self gets out of bed with us, and we have to put on Christ as an act of will, over and over.
I would love to hear from you on what your favorite quote was. Leave me a comment.
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