Everybody, Always

It's simple, Bob Goff says; God wants us to become love. And that's all we have to do.

This book was recommended to me and now I'm recommending it to everyone I know.

Here are some of my favorite parts. There are many, many more. And you must read the story about the witch doctors. You must.

“Jesus talked to His friends a lot about how we should identify ourselves. He said it wouldn't be what we said we believed or all the good we hoped to do someday. Nope, He said we would identify ourselves simply by how we loved people. It's tempting to think there is more to it, but there's not.”

“It's given me a lot of comfort knowing we're all rough drafts of the people we're still becoming.”

“If you want to become love, stop just agreeing with Jesus. Go call someone right now. Lift them up in ways they can't lift themselves. Send them a text message and say you're sorry. I know they don't deserve it. You didn't either. Don't put a toe in the water with your love; grab your knees and do a cannonball. Move from the bleachers to the field and you won't ever be the same. Don't just love the people who are easy to love; go love the difficult ones. If you do this, Jesus said you'd move forward on your journey toward being more like Him. Equally important, as you practice loving everybody, always, what will happen along the way is you'll no longer be who you used to be. God will turn you into love.”

“These people haven't tried to save up love like they're going to need it later; they know we're rivers, not reservoirs.”

“Sadly, whenever I make my opinions more important than the difficult people God made, I turn the wine back into water.”

“We make loving people a lot more complicated than Jesus did. Every time I try to protect myself by telling somebody about one of my opinions, God whispers to me and asks about my heart. Why are you so afraid? Who are you trying to impress? Am I really so insecure that I surround myself only with people who agree with me? When people are flat wrong, why do I appoint myself the sheriff to straighten them out? Burning down others' opinions doesn't make us right. It makes us arsonists.” “That's our job. It's always been our job. We're supposed to just love the people in front of us. We're the ones who tell them who they are. We don't need to spend as much time as we do telling people what we think about what they're doing. Loving people doesn't mean we need to control their conduct. There's a big difference between the two. Loving people means caring without an agenda. As soon as we have an agenda, it's not love anymore. It's acting like you care to get someone to do what you want or what you think God wants them to do. Do less of that, and people will see a lot less of you and more of Jesus.”

“God wants me to love the ones I don't understand, to get to know their names. To invite them to do things with me. To go and find the ones everyone has shunned and turned away. To see them as my neighbors even if we are in totally different places. You'll be able to spot people who are becoming love because they want to build kingdoms, not castles. They fill their lives with people who don't look like them or act like them or even believe the same things as them. They treat them with love and respect and are more eager to learn from them than presume they have something to teach.”

“It's hard to believe Jesus loves the van thieves and all the difficult people we've met just the same as you and me.”