The Divine Embrace

Each time I read this book (have read several times!) I fall in love with my Beloved, Jesus all over again!
Using the illustrations of music and dance, you will find your soul soaring with every word!

Ken Gire never ceases to amaze me in this amazing book about living in God's divine embrace. An easy read, not too theological and captured my attention

Our relationship with Christ is that of an intimate dance

That I would love You more by the end of each day than when I awoke

Truth: Instead of “tinkering” with my soul and stressing about the possibility of failure in spiritual growth, rather focus on jesus and fall in love with Him and as You do that He will transform and provide and come through for you. Matt. 6:24-34

“If we are indifferent to the art of dancing, we have failed to understand, not merely the supreme manifestation fo physical life, but also the supreme symbol of spiritual life.” – Havelock Ellis

I ask that by evening I would love Jesus more than I did that morning. I know that I will love him more if I see him more and hear him more, so I ask to see even the slightest glimpse of him during the day and hear even the smallest echo of his voice above the others voices in my day.

“Except for the point, the still point, There would be no dance, And there is only the dance.” T. S. Eliot

The face of Christ, O how beautiful. You look in the face of somone who loves him. Someone who really loves him! Someone who has left everything to follow him

There is something in the face that reflects the love of Christ

“I fell in love with Him”

A lot of busyness stems from individual and corporate efforts aimed at helping people get over their struggles so they can go on to maturity. A.W. Tozer said “ The man who has struggled to purify himself and has had nothing but repeated failures will experience real relief when he stops tinkering with his soul and looks away to the perfect One. While he looks at Christ, the very things he has so long been trying to do will be getting done within him. It will be God working in him to will and to do”
Love changes us in way that law cannot. Spiritaul formation, that is becoming like Christ, doesn’t happen by following disciplines. It happens by falling in love. When we fall in love with Jesus, all the other loves in our life fall into place. And those that once competed with Christ now subordinate themselves to him. Everything in our life finds its proper value once we have porperly valued him.
We take time for what we value. And we behold what we love. It is not the duty of beholding that changes us, though, but rather the beauty of the one we behold. When Christ at last appears, we will behold him not only in all his beauty but for all eternity. And we will be like him, John says, because we will see him for the first time as he really is 1 John 3:2
One day we will be transformed. And it will be a face transforms us. Here on this earth it is also a face that transorms us, though here we see it through a glass darkly, often distordedly, and only fleetingly 1 Cor. 13:12
That is why busyness is lethal – it keeps us from beholding the face of Jesus. And that is why stillness is essential – to get the best possible look at his face, for the longest possible time.
Beholding Christ’s face is the still point of the dance, around which all our activity should revolve.
If that is not the still point in our lives, there is no dance.
There is only movement.

Dancing is more than about getting the steps right. It is about feeling the music and moving to the music. It is about losing ourselves in the embrace of someone we love. Above all, it is about joy.

The joy of the dance is in the delight in our partner’s eyes

I want them to feel something of how they might feel if Jesus were there instead of me. I want them to feel the love he would feel for them. I want them to feel how precious they are to him, how dear the very sound of their name is to his ears. I want to listen to them the way he would listen, and communicate to them by my listening that their stories matter, their pain matters, they matter

Christ had a tender heart to the hurting and He even gravitated toward them

“He danced as naturally as a bird flies or a fish swims. By now I knew that I didn’t even have to think; I could just give myself to his arm around me with assurance. The guiding arm was so sure and firm, the rythem such a part of my body now athat I could almost forget about my feet” – Catherine Marshall

The Christian life is about us following Christ’s lead, not about him following ours

He doesn’t ask us to write the notes to the music or choreograph the steps to the dance. He asks us merely to take his hand and follow him. To move when he moves. To speed up when he speeds up. To slow down when he slows down. And to stop when he stops

Following Christ’s lead is dependent on hearing his voice.

“Don’t worry about what you don’t’ know. Life’s a dance. You learn as you go.” John Michael Montgomery

Matthew 11:28-30

The most important thing to dancing is this: If we fall in love, our feet will follow. If we draw close to him and stay close, we won’t have to worry about our feet or where he may be leading them

The fear of criticism is silenced by falling in love. If we fallin love with Jesus, not only will nothing on this earth attract us, nothing on this earth will intimidate us.

“I think perfectionism is based on the obsessive belief that if you run carefully enough, hitting each stepping stone just right, you won’t have to die. The truth is that you will die anyway and that a lot of people who aren’t even lookin at their feet are going to do a whole lot better than you, and have a lot more fun while they’re doing it.” Amy Lamott

“And now I’m glad I didn’t know the way ti all would end, the way it all would go Our lives are better left to chance I could have missed the pain, But I’d of had to miss the dance” Garth Brooks

Because Jesus was a man of sorrow, apart from suffering there is a part of Jesus we can never know

Dear Jesus, I love You more than anything else in the entire world

The Holy Spirit reminds us of how much Christ loves us and how much he wants us to love Him

The author's writing style is very engaging. An invitation to the dance of intimacy with Christ with chapters on the still point, joy, music, freedom, spontaneity, dissonance, temptation, fear, critics, informality, and the end of the dance. This is an insightful and creative book I'll come back to again and again.

Gire's beautiful descriptive language moved me to enjoy my Savior all the more! This has become my favorite book! I have read it twice!

This is the first book I have read by Ken Gire. He is a gifted writer, a former editor for Chuck Swindoll's Insight for Living. In this book Ken compares the intimate relationship with Christ as a dance. I have several quotes below that spoke to my heart. I trust they will also speak to your heart.


. . . the Christian life is about intimacy, not technique. p. 7
Before Jesus called the disciples to ministry, he called them to intimacy. Following came first, fishing came later. Before he called them to represent him he called them to be with him. Jesus appointed the twelve that they might be with him and that he might send them out to preach and to have authority over demons (see Mark 3:14-15). Before he sent them out, he drew them closer. He went out with the publically so they could hear him teach and see him heal the sick and cast out demons (see Luke 9:10). Even as he was leaving the earth, he promised he would always be with them (see Matthew 28:20). And later, Luke tells us, the credential by which the disciples were recognized was that of “having been with Jesus” (Acts 4:13). p. 24
In the last words of that prayer, Jesus, speaking to his Father, asks “that the love you have for me may be in them” (John 17:26, NIV). p. 28
Duty destroys relationships, because duty reduces relationships to a to-do list. p. 38
Duty also destroys joy. Whatever joy we may derive from our duties is related to a performance, not a person. If our performance is the source of our joy, it will also be the source of our pride, which in the end will undo us. p. 38
Our activity for Christ should grow out of our intimacy with Him. If we are near Him, continually beholding Him, He will tell us what He wants from the kitchen and when he wants it. pp. 38-39
Being useless and silent in the presence of our God belongs to the core of all prayer in the beginning we often hear our own unruly inner noises more loudly than God’s voice. This is a times very hard to tolerate. But slowly, very slowly, we discover that the silent time makes us quiet and deepens our awareness of ourselves and God. Then, very soon, we start missing these moments when we are deprived of them, and before we are fully aware of it an inner momentum has developed that draws us more and more into silence and closer to that still point where God speaks to us. ~Henri Nouwen pp. 39-40
We are not transformed by a curriculum; we are transformed by a person. And we are transformed not by studying that person but by beholding him. p. 54
Love changes us in ways that law cannot. Spiritual formation, a term used to describe the process of being changed into the image of Christ, doesn’t happen by following disciplines. It happens by falling in love. When we fall in love with Jesus, all the other loves in our life fall into place. And those that once competed with Christ now subordinate themselves to him. Everything in our life finds its proper value once we have properly valued him. p. 54
That is why busyness is lethal – it keeps us from beholding the face of Jesus. And that is why stillness is essential – to get the best possible look at his face, for the longest possible time. p. 55
“To be loved by God,” said C.S. Lewis, “not merely pitied, but delighted in as an artist delights in his work or a father in a son – it seems impossible,” but that is the picture of God we see in the Scriptures. If that’s the picture we have, it will change not only the way we see ourselves, it will change the way we see everything. Including the Scriptures. Now as I read them, I try not only to hear what the people heard but to see what they saw. p. 73
The Christian life is about us following Christ’s lead, not about him following ours. He doesn’t ask us to write the notes to the music or choreograph the steps to the dance. He asks us merely to take his hand and follow him. To move when he moves. To speed up when he speeds up. To slow down when he slows down. And to stop when he stops. p. 89
He comes in such a way that we can always turn him down, . . . comes to us in the hungry man we do not have to feed, comes to us in the lonely man we do not have to comfort, comes to us in all the desperate human need of people everywhere that we are always free to turn our backs upon. ~ Frederick Buechner pp. 94-95
The Father never measured his Son by how successful he was, only by how faithful. p. 97
It seemed to me then, and seems to me still, that if God speaks to us at all in this world, if God speaks anywhere, it is into our personal lives that he speaks. ~Frederick Buechner p. 105
C. S. Lewis once wrote that a doctrine never looked so threadbare as the one he had just successfully defended. One can defend a fortress, he explained, but not a landscape. When we reduce our faith to arguments, it becomes a fortress of manageable and therefore defensible size. But our faith is not a fortress. It is a sprawling landscape of rolling hills and pathless woods, rutted with steep and sometimes shadowy ravines. There are shimmering moments of wonder. There are also terrifying moments of wandering in the dark woods of our most looming, moss-covered fears. pp. 110-111
A Russian writer, whose name escapes me now, once said: “I don’t know the heart of an evil man, but I know the heart of a good man . . . and it’s bad.” p. 111
Our work is not about trying to find movements that are uniquely our own and finding innovative ways to express them. It’s about trying to find movements that are uniquely His own and simply following them. p. 140
The dance we have been invited to participate in is not about the realization of the self but rather the relinquishment of the self. Surrendering Himself is the way Jesus lived his life, from the day of His birth to the day of His death. Each and every day He was faced with the temptations to live for Himself – to defend Himself, advance Himself, exalt Himself. Yet each and every day He resisted them. pp. 140-141
The fear of criticism is silenced by falling in love, If we fall in love with Jesus, not only will nothing on this earth attract us, nothing on this earth will intimidate us. p. 177
I wonder myself sometimes. And I wonder if Jesus were to come back, would He be as impressed with all that goes on at church as we sometimes are? The New Testament uses different metaphors to describe the church and how it was meant to operate. A family is one of them. And a body, another. But a business? Never. Yet the way the church has evolved, it seems closer to the image of a business than to a body or a family. p. 187
Our responsibility is to surrender. The result of our surrender is not our responsibility. p. 207
Not only are the days of our lives in God’s hands, but also the shaping of our lives. All these incremental surrenderings of self are part of the process God uses in shaping us into the image of His son. Jesus was a man of sorrows, we are told. That was part of His beauty. Our sorrows acquaint us with His sorrows. Apart from suffering, there is a part of Jesus we cannot know. If there is a part of Him we cannot know, there is a part of Him we cannot love. And if there is a part of Him we cannot love, there is a part of us that can never be beautiful. p. 208
Jesus says: “The trouble is that you have been thinking of the quiet time, of Bible study and prayers, as a means for your own spiritual growth. This is true, but you have forgotten that this time means something to Me also. Remember, I love you. At a great cost I have redeemed you. I value your fellowship. Just to have you look up into My face warms My heart. Don’t neglect this hour if only for My sake. Whether or not you want to be with Me, remember I want to be with you. I really love you. ~Robert Boyd Munger p. 219

If you are interested in being inspired to having more of an intimate relationship with Christ then this book is for you!

I love Ken Gire

As a musician, I really liked and could relate to the music and dance illustrations. The author did borrow a lot of stories from others (always attributing properly). He used the tie in’s well, but sometimes I just wanted more of his own stories.