I saw this book on someone’s desk a while ago. The title was provocative so I really wanted to check it out. I finally got around to reading it. This isn’t the best book I’ve read by Hybels, but the content supported the premise. Here’s an overview and some highlights.
The premise of Holy Discontent is that in the lives of people who are investing joyfully of their time, their money, and their energies into something [a passion], they can always link it back to a single spark of frustration that fueled what is now a raging fire in their souls. And that this attraction to a specific cause or purpose is irresistible. One example Hybels uses is the example of Moses and the frustration he felt over the captivity of the Israelites in Egypt. Here are some of the highlights:
- I believe the motivating reason why millions of people choose to do good in the world around them is because there is something wrong in that world. In fact, there is something so wrong that they just can’t stand it.
- I’ve come to refer to the powerful, spiritual congruence that connected Moses’ priorities to the priorities of God as his “holy discontent,”
- Still today, what wrecks the heart of someone who loves God is often the very thing God wants to use to fire them up to do something that, under normal circumstances, they would never attempt to do.
- The most inspired, motivated, and driven people I know are the ones who live their lives from the energy of their holy discontent.
- Your ability to detect and then act on that which makes you discontent can actually catalyze freedom-based living in the hearts of your friends and family members!
- Martin Luther King Jr. became famous because of what he couldn’t stand.
- I think you know the question I have for you. What can’t you stand?
- A bad day lived from the energy of your holy discontent is far better than the best day lived anywhere else.
- Figure out what you can’t stand. Channel your holy discontent energy into helping to fix what’s broken in this life.
