{"id":7340,"date":"2021-07-17T01:00:00","date_gmt":"2021-07-17T05:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.treatsforthesoul.org\/?p=7340"},"modified":"2021-07-14T12:36:04","modified_gmt":"2021-07-14T16:36:04","slug":"squeezing-god-in","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.treatsforthesoul.org\/squeezing-god-in\/","title":{"rendered":"Squeezing God In!"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<iframe title=\"Squeezing God In! 7\/17\/21\" allowtransparency=\"true\" height=\"150\" width=\"100%\" style=\"border: none; min-width: min(100%, 430px);\" scrolling=\"no\" data-name=\"pb-iframe-player\" src=\"https:\/\/www.podbean.com\/player-v2\/?i=idisi-108becc-pb&#038;from=pb6admin&#038;share=1&#038;download=1&#038;rtl=0&#038;fonts=Arial&#038;skin=1&#038;font-color=&#038;btn-skin=7\"><\/iframe>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>In her novel&nbsp;<em>A Thousand Acres,<\/em>&nbsp;Jane Smiley shows readers a highly dysfunctional family which nevertheless attended church each Sunday.&nbsp;<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Yet this is how the novel&#8217;s narrator sums up this religious practice:&nbsp;<strong><em>&#8220;We came to church to pay our respects, not to give thanks.&#8221;&nbsp;<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>When faith becomes a compartment of life instead of life&#8217;s vibrant center, when you&#8217;re just stopping off to put in your time or pay your respects, squeezing God in between everything else that you clearly&nbsp;value&nbsp;much more highly, then you reveal yourself as an ill-clad impostor.&nbsp;<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong><em>You haven&#8217;t put on a festive wedding garment as Jesus asks you to put on (Matthew 22:11-14). You&#8217;re still refusing to wear that funny party hat because you fail to realize that the kingdom of God&nbsp;IS&nbsp;a high and holy and hilarious feast thrown by a King who has prepared the best of everything for you on a Sunday morning.&nbsp;<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Thanks to Scott Hoezee<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Why or why not after the pandemic have you made your way back to the wedding feast at church on Sunday that Jesus has prepared for you?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>GOD NEVER ENDS ANYTHING ON A NEGATIVE.&nbsp;&nbsp;GOD ALWAYS ENDS ON A POSITIVE!<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-amazon wp-block-embed-amazon\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<div class=\"oceanwp-oembed-wrap clr\"><iframe title=\"THE GATHERING: Jesus and Abortion A Story For Our Time\" type=\"text\/html\" width=\"1200\" height=\"550\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen style=\"max-width:100%\" src=\"https:\/\/read.amazon.com\/kp\/card?preview=inline&#038;linkCode=kpd&#038;ref_=k4w_oembed_gAXK7xDRkBfDUZ&#038;asin=B08BC62QCX&#038;tag=kpembed-20\"><\/iframe><\/div>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In her novel&nbsp;A Thousand Acres,&nbsp;Jane Smiley shows readers a highly dysfunctional family which nevertheless attended church each Sunday.&nbsp; Yet this is how the novel&#8217;s narrator sums up this religious practice:&nbsp;&#8220;We came to church to pay our respects, not to give thanks.&#8221;&nbsp; When faith becomes a compartment of life instead of life&#8217;s vibrant center, when you&#8217;re [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":7342,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"qubely_global_settings":"","qubely_interactions":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"qubely_featured_image_url":{"full":["https:\/\/www.treatsforthesoul.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/Man-Praying.png",304,202,false],"landscape":["https:\/\/www.treatsforthesoul.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/Man-Praying.png",304,202,false],"portraits":["https:\/\/www.treatsforthesoul.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/Man-Praying.png",304,202,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/www.treatsforthesoul.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/Man-Praying-150x150.png",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/www.treatsforthesoul.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/Man-Praying-300x199.png",300,199,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/www.treatsforthesoul.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/Man-Praying.png",304,202,false],"large":["https:\/\/www.treatsforthesoul.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/Man-Praying.png",304,202,false],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/www.treatsforthesoul.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/Man-Praying.png",304,202,false],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/www.treatsforthesoul.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/Man-Praying.png",304,202,false],"ocean-thumb-m":["https:\/\/www.treatsforthesoul.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/Man-Praying.png",304,202,false],"ocean-thumb-ml":["https:\/\/www.treatsforthesoul.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/Man-Praying.png",304,202,false],"ocean-thumb-l":["https:\/\/www.treatsforthesoul.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/Man-Praying.png",304,202,false],"qubely_landscape":["https:\/\/www.treatsforthesoul.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/Man-Praying.png",304,202,false],"qubely_portrait":["https:\/\/www.treatsforthesoul.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/Man-Praying.png",304,202,false],"qubely_thumbnail":["https:\/\/www.treatsforthesoul.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/Man-Praying-140x100.png",140,100,true],"rpwe-thumbnail":["https:\/\/www.treatsforthesoul.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/Man-Praying-45x45.png",45,45,true]},"qubely_author":{"display_name":"Medard Laz","author_link":"https:\/\/www.treatsforthesoul.org\/author\/medlaz\/"},"qubely_comment":0,"qubely_category":"<a href=\"https:\/\/www.treatsforthesoul.org\/category\/daily-treats\/\" rel=\"category tag\">Daily Treats<\/a>","qubely_excerpt":"In her novel&nbsp;A Thousand Acres,&nbsp;Jane Smiley shows readers a highly dysfunctional family which nevertheless attended church each Sunday.&nbsp; Yet this is how the novel&#8217;s narrator sums up this religious practice:&nbsp;&#8220;We came to church to pay our respects, not to give thanks.&#8221;&nbsp; When faith becomes a compartment of life instead of life&#8217;s vibrant center, when you&#8217;re&hellip;","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.treatsforthesoul.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7340"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.treatsforthesoul.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.treatsforthesoul.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.treatsforthesoul.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.treatsforthesoul.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7340"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.treatsforthesoul.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7340\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.treatsforthesoul.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7342"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.treatsforthesoul.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7340"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.treatsforthesoul.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7340"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.treatsforthesoul.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7340"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}