Drew Dyck - Yawning at Tigers: You Cant Tame God, So Stop Trying

PRAISE FOR YAWNING AT TIGERS

Yawning at Tigers is a needed corrective to self-indulgent Christianity. I hope people listen.

PHILIP YANCEY, AUTHOR, The Jesus I Never Knew

Convicting, compelling, creativeheres a stirring challenge to experience God in all his awesome glory and breathtaking grace! Invite our holy and loving God to roam freely in your life.

LEE STROBEL, AUTHOR, The Case for Christ.

From the beginning weve been casting God in our image. But he cannot be tamed by our timid imaginations. Drew Dyck will take you to Gods Word so you can see the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit as utterly holy and perfectly loving.

COLLIN HANSEN, AUTHOR, Young, Restless, Reformed

Drew Dyck challenges the reader to revere God as he truly is: impressive, weighty, and holy. Dyck deftly weaves together modern illustrations with scriptural insight to paint a powerful picture of a loving and powerful God and Father.

ED STETZER, PRESIDENT, LIFEWAY RESEARCH

Thin notions of Gods transcendence are undermining the churchs vitality and witness to the world. Yawning at Tigers is a strong antidote against a domesticated God.

MATTHEW LEE ANDERSON, MEREORTHODOXY.COM

Yawning at Tigers is a sharp diagnosis of the churchs cavalier attitude toward God and a fervent and winsome call to rediscover Gods beautiful, terrible holiness.

MARK BUCHANAN, AUTHOR, Your Church is Too Safe

This book will inspire many to pursue God with courage.

J. LEE GRADY, FORMER EDITOR, Charisma

Drew Dyck possesses a skill for seeing connections between everyday experiences and spiritual reality. This book made me long for further encounters with the untamed God.

KATHRYN CALLAHAN-HOWELL, PASTOR, WINTON COMMUNITY FREE METHODIST CHURCH, CINCINNATI, OHIO

Lively, provocative, and made me want to pray. Read it, and you may find yourself falling to your knees.

KEVIN MILLER, EDITOR-AT-LARGE, Leadership Journal

Drew Dyck articulates the man-centered obsession of the Western church and calls us to bow in reverence and awe at Gods breathtaking holiness and love.

SCOTT THOMAS, FORMER DIRECTOR, ACTS 29 NETWORK

Yawning at Tigers reminds us that we are made for so much more than service as shabby idols for self-worship.

AMY SIMPSON, EDITOR, GIFTEDFORLEADERSHIP.COM; AUTHOR, Troubled Minds: Mental Illness and the Churchs Mission

Drew Dyck shows that the holiness of God reveals our smallness and Gods bigness, our imperfections and Gods perfections. We have to be reminded that we are not God before we cry out for Gods help. Thank you, Drew, for reminding me of this. I keep forgetting.

TULLIAN TCHIVIDJIAN, PASTOR, CORAL RIDGE PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH; AUTHOR, One Way Love: Inexhaustible Grace for an Exhausted World.

With clear prose and dynamic stories, Dyck shows us the way to a deeper understanding of the life that awaits us, one that until now we have been too afraid to live. The only question is, Are you ready for some danger?

JIM BELCHER, ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF PRACTICAL THEOLOGY, KNOX THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY; AUTHOR, In Search of Deep Faith: A Pilgrimage into the Beauty, Goodness, and Heart of Christianity.

2014 by Drew Nathan Dyck

All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any meanselectronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, scanning, or otherexcept for brief quotations in critical reviews or articles, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Published in Nashville, Tennessee, by Nelson Books, an imprint of Thomas Nelson. Nelson Books and Thomas Nelson are registered trademarks of HarperCollins Christian Publishing, Inc.

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Unless otherwise indicated, Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version, NIV. Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com.

Scripture quotations marked ESV are taken from THE ENGLISH STANDARD VERSION. 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers.

Scripture quotations marked MSG are taken from The Message by Eugene H. Peterson. 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 2000. Used by permission of NavPress Publishing Group. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations marked NKJV are taken from THE NEW KING JAMES VERSION. 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations marked KJV are taken from THE KING JAMES VERSION of the Bible. Public domain.

Scripture quotations marked NLT are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation. 1996. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Wheaton, Illinois 60189. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations marked RSV are taken from the REVISED STANDARD VERSION of the Bible. 1946, 1952, 1971, 1973 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the U.S.A. Used by permission.

Italics added to Scripture quotations reflect the authors own emphasis.

Names and identifying details of some people mentioned in this book have been changed to protect their privacy.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Dyck, Drew.

Yawning at tigers : you cant tame the Almighty, so stop trying / Drew Nathan Dyck.

pages cm

Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN 978-1-4002-0545-5

ISBN 978-1-4002-0546-2 (eBook)

1. God (Christianity)--Holiness. I. Title.

BT147.D93 2014

231.7--dc23

2013042982

Printed in the United States of America

14 15 16 17 18 RRD 6 5 4 3 2 1

To Dad and Mom:

This book is all about God.

Thanks for introducing us.

CONTENTS

PEOPLE ARE STARVING FOR THE AWE OF GOD.

Most dont know it, of course. They think theyre starving for success or money or excitement or acceptanceyou name it. But heres the problem. Even those fortunate enough to satisfy these cravings find they are still hungry. Hungrier, even.

Why? Because theyve left untouched the most ancient and aching need, the one stitched into the fabric of their souls: to know and love a transcendent God.

I believe that once you strip away all our shallow desires and vain pursuits, its God were after. And not just any god. We have enough friends. We need a great and awesome God. A God worth worshipping.

We thirst for transcendence and long to be loved. In the full portrayal of God found in Scripture, we find both.

Our souls find satisfaction only in the God who is grand enough to worship and close enough to love. We need a home, but we also crave adventure. The greatest adventure is to seek God.

Let it begin...

WE LOVE TALKING ABOUT GODS LOVE.

Drop in on almost any evangelical church service and listen. Youll hear worship choruses dripping with emotive lyrics that border on romantic. The sermon will gush with assurances of Gods inexhaustible affection. While such affirmations are goodwe need to be reminded of Gods lovesomething is missing. Rarely do we hear about Gods mystery and majesty, let alone whisper a word about his wrath.

This one-sided portrayal diminishes our experience of God. We cant truly appreciate Gods grace until we glimpse his greatness. We wont be lifted by his love until were humbled by his holiness.

Oswald Chambers wrote, The Bible reveals not first the love of God but the intense, blazing holiness of God. If we long to experience that love, we must begin with a topic many of us would rather avoid: the holiness of God.