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I Know Our Culture Will Sometimes Understand A Love For Jesus As Weakness. There Is This Lie Floating Around That Says I Am Supposed To Be Able To Do Life Alone, Without Any Help, Without Stopping To Worship Something Bigger Than Myself. But I Actually Believe There Is Something Bigger Than Me, And I Need For There To Be Something Bigger Than Me. I Need Someone To Put Awe Inside Me; I Need To Come Second To Someone Who Has Everything Figured Out.

-Donald Miller

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I Know Our Culture

Donald Miller

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I Know Our Culture Will Sometimes Understand A Love For Jesus As Weakness. There Is This Lie Floating Around That Says I Am Supposed To Be Able To Do Life Alone, Without Any Help, Without Stopping To Worship Something Bigger Than Myself. But I Actually Believe There Is Something Bigger Than Me, And I Need For There To Be Something Bigger Than Me. I Need Someone To Put Awe Inside Me; I Need To Come Second To Someone Who Has Everything Figured Out.

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When I Was In Love There Was Somebody In The World Who Was More Important Than Me, And That, Given All That Happened At The Fall Of Man, Is A Miracle, Like Something God Forgot To Curse.

Today I Wonder Why It Is God Refers To Himself As 'father' At All. This, To Me, In Light Of The Earthly Representation Of The Role, Seems A Marketing Mistake.

Humans Are Designed To Seek Comfort And Order, And So If They Have Comfort And Order, They Tend To Plant Themselves, Even If Their Comfort Isn't All That Comfortable. And Even If They Secretly Want For Something Better.

Every Human Being Is Searching For A Deep Sense Of Meaning, And Yet We're All Chasing Success. We've Confused One For The Other.

Sometimes The Story We're Telling The World Isn't Half As Endearing As The One That Lives Inside Us.

It Wasn't Necessary To Win For The Story To Be Great, It Was Only Necessary To Sacrifice Everything.

I'm Not A Pastor; I've Never Been On Staff At A Church.

Without A Positive Male Role Model In Your Life It Is Extremely Difficult To Become A Man Who Benefits His Family And Benefits Society.

He Thought About The Story His Daughter Was Living And The Role She Was Playing Inside That Story. He Realized He Hadn't Provided A Better Role For His Daughter. He Hadn't Mapped Out A Story For His Family. And So His Daughter Had Chosen Another Story, A Story In Which She Was Wanted, Even If She Was Only Being Used. In The Absence Of A Family Story, She'd Chosen A Story In Which There Was Risk And Adventure, Rebellion And Independence.

Let's Show Up To Life. Let's Prove How Beautiful It Can Really Be. Let's Face The Conflict, Redeem It, Conquer It, And Allow It To Mold Our Character. Let's Participate In What God Is Doing In The World.

The Thing About Being Irresponsible Is It's Only Cute Till You Are About Twenty-two Or So, Then It Becomes A Liability. One Day You Wake Up Under A Pizza Box, The Television Blaring In Your Bedroom, The Laundry Piled Up Over What Might Be A Bedside Table, And You Ask Yourself: 'how Did My Life Get Like This? Why Don't People Like Me? Didn't I Have A Cat And What Is That Smell?'

True Intimacy, The Exchange Of Affection Between Two People Who Are Not Lying, Is Transforming.

...she Wanted God To Make Sense. He Doesn't. He Will Make No More Sense To Me Than I Will Make Sense To An Ant.

We Don't Naturally Want To Take Responsibility For Our Lives. We Want To Give The Responsibility To Someone Else. We Blame Them When Our Lives Aren't Good.

What We Really Need Is Somebody Who Loves Us So Much We Don’t Worry About Death, Or About [anything For That Matter]… We Need This; We Need This So We Can Love Other People Purely And Not For Selfish Gain, We Need This So We Can See Everybody As Equals, We Need This So Our Relationships Can Be Sincere, We Need This So We Can Stop Kicking Ourselves Around, We Need This So We Can Lose All Self-awareness And Find Ourselves For The First Time, Not By Realizing Some Dream, But By Being Told Who We Are By The Only Being Who Has The Authority To Know, By That I Mean The Creator.

I Know Our Culture Will Sometimes Understand A Love For Jesus As Weakness. There Is This Lie Floating Around That Says I Am Supposed To Be Able To Do Life Alone, Without Any Help, Without Stopping To Worship Something Bigger Than Myself. But I Actually Believe There Is Something Bigger Than Me, And I Need For There To Be Something Bigger Than Me. I Need Someone To Put Awe Inside Me; I Need To Come Second To Someone Who Has Everything Figured Out.

I Think If You Like Somebody You Have To Tell Them. It Might Be Embarrassing To Say It, But You Will Never Regret Stepping Up. I Know From Personal Experience, However, That You Should Not Keep Telling A Girl That You Like Her After She Tells You She Isn't Into It. You Should Not Keep Riding Your Bike By Her House Either.

And When You Find Love, Or When You Are Mature Enough To Understand It, The Feeling You Get Is Gratitude.

Great Stories Move Through Fear.

It Was A Haunting Feeling, The Sort Of Sensation You Get When You Wonder Whether You Are Two People, The Other Of Which Does Things You Can't Explain, Bad And Terrible Things.

I Am Human Because God Made Me. I Experience Suffering And Temptation Because Mankind Chose To Follow Satan. God Is Reaching Out To Me To Rescue Me. I Am Learning To Trust Him, Learning To Live By His Precepts That I Might Be Preserved.

...i Should Have People Around Bugging Me And Getting Under My Skin Because Without People I Could Not Grow - I Could Not Grow In God, And I Could Not Grow As A Human.

There Is Something Beautiful About A Billion Stars Held Steady By A God Who Knows What He Is Doing. (they Hang There, The Stars, Like Notes On A Page Of Music, Free-form Verse, Silent Mysteries Swirling In The Blue Like Jazz.) And As I Lay There, It Occurred To Me That God Is Up There Somewhere.

Imagine, A Being With A Mind As Great As God's, With Feet Like Trees And A Voice Like Rushing Wind, Telling You That You Are His Cherished Creation.

For Me, The Beginning Of Sharing My Faith With People Began By Throwing Out Christianity And Embracing Christian Spirituality, A Nonpolitical Mysterious System That Can Be Experienced But Not Explained.

You Can't Tell A Good Story Without Conflict - The Story Can't Be Beautiful Or Meaningful. We're Taught To Run From Conflict, And It's Robbing Us Of Some Really Good Stories.

When We Think Too Much About The Opinions Of Others, We Are Letting Them Edit A Book God Has Written.

It Is Worthy Of Note That The Chinese And Japanese Characters For Money And Gold Are The Same.

The Very Scary Thing About Religion, To Me, Is That People Actually Believe God Is Who They Think He Is.

The Times We Worked Harder To Make The Day Stand Out. Our Story Demanded That We Change And So We Did.

We Have To Have Positive Male Role Models.

I Had Always Suspected Language Was Quite Limited In Its Ability To Communicate The Intricate Mysteries Of Truth.

Ability To Communicate

Somehow I Had Come To Believe That Because A Person Is In Need, They Are Candidates For Sympathy, Not Just Charity. It Was Not That I Wanted To Buy Her Groceries, The Government Was Already Doing That. I Wanted To Buy Her Dignity. And Yet, By Judging Her, I Was The One Taking Her Dignity Away.

Do I Still Think There Will Be A Day When All The Wrongs Are Made Right, When Our Souls Find The Completion They Are Looking For? I Do. But When All Things Are Made Right, It Won’t Be Because Of Some Preacher Or Snake-oil Salesman Or Politician Or Writer Making Promises In His Book. I Think, Instead, This Will Be Done By Jesus. And It Will Be At A Wedding. And There Will Be A Feast.

Earthly Love… Is Temporal And Slight So That Is Has To Be Given Again And Again In Order For Us To Feel Any Sense Of Security; But God’s Love, God’s Voice And Presence, Would Instill Our Souls With Such Affirmation We Would Need Nothing More And Would Cause Us To Love Other People So Much We Would Be Willing To Die For Them.

I Can No More Understand The Totality Of God Than The Pancake I Made For Breakfast Understands The Complexity Of Me

Passion About Nothing Is Like Pouring Gasoline In A Car Without Wheels. It Isn't Going To Lead Anybody Anywhere.

It Comforts Me To Think That If We Are Created Beings, The Thing That Created Us Would Have To Be Greater Than Us, So Much Greater, In Fact, That We Would Not Be Able To Understand It. It Would Have To Be Greater Than The Facts Of Our Reality, And So It Would Seem To Us, Looking Out From Within Our Reality That It Would Contradict Reason. But Reason Itself Would Suggest It Would Have To Be Greater Than Reality, Or It Would Not Be Reasonable.

Meaningful Stories Have Lots And Lots Of Conflict. If We Avoid Conflict, Our Stories Won't Be Meaningful.

Our Lives Have A Countdown Clock That We Can't See. Mine Reminds Me To Only Do Work That Matters.

All This Beauty Exists So You And I Can See His Glory, His Artwork. It's Like An Invitation To Worship Him, To Know Him.

Things Jesus Never Said: "you Should Come With Me To Church.

Half The Time I Pick Up A Book, That's What I'm Trying To Get.

I Can't Do It. It Would Be Like, Say, Trying To Fall In Love With Somebody, Or Trying To Convince Yourself That Your Favorite Food Is Pancakes. You Don't Decide Those Things, They Just Happen To You. If God Is Real, He Needs To Happen To Me.

Falling In Love

I Never Liked Jazz Music Because Jazz Music Doesn't Resolve. But I Was Outside The Bagdad Theater In Portland One Night When I Saw A Man Playing The Saxophone. I Stood There For Fifteen Minutes, And He Never Opened His Eyes.

One Of The Things I Associate With God Is A Sunrise. How Many Sunrises Have You Missed Over The Years, And God Created That?

We Don't Think Much About How Our Love Stories Will Affect The World, But They Do. Children Learn What's Worth Living For And What's Worth Dying For By The Stories They Watch Us Live. I Want To Teach Our Children How To Get Scary Close, And More, How To Be Brave. I Want To Teach Them That Love Is Worth What It Costs.

Half The Time I Don't Know What I'm Trying To Say.

Meaning Is Something We Experience More Than We Attain. It's Like Finding A Nice, Easy Current In A River That Carries You Through Life.

The Heart Responds To The Conflict Within A Story.

I Think Our Society Puts Too Much Pressure On Romantic Love, And That Is Why So Many Romances Fail. Romance Can't Possibly Carry All That We Want It To.

No, Life Cannot Be Understood Flat On A Page. It Has To Be Lived; A Person Has To Get Out Of His Head, Has To Fall In Love, Has To Memorize Poems, Has To Jump Off Bridges Into Rivers, Has To Stand In An Empty Desert And Whisper Sonnets Under His Breath... We Get One Story, You And I, And One Story Alone. God Has Established The Elements, The Setting And The Climax And Resolution. It Would Be A Crime Not To Venture Out, Wouldn't It?" -donald Miller,through Painted Deserts

Falling In Love

The Ambitions We Have Will Become The Stories We Live.

At The End Of The Day, When I Am Lying In Bed And I Know The Chances Of Any Of Our Theology Being Exactly Right Are A Million To One, I Need To Know That God Has Things Figured Out, That If My Math Is Wrong We Are Still Going To Be Okay. And Wonder Is That Feeling We Get When We Let Go Of Our Silly Answers, Our Mapped Out Rules That We Want God To Follow. I Don't Think There Is Any Better Worship Than Wonder.

If I Use The Bible To Prove I Am Right, I Have Yet To Be Humbled By The Beautiful Truths Of The Bible.

Of His New Book, Don Says: “it Might Be The Greatest Book Ever Written. I Don’t Think Anybody Is Going To Read A Book Again After They Read My New One. I Think God Is Proud Of Me. I Am Going To Make A Killing Off This Thing And I’m Going To Use The Money To Go To Space.

Without The Christian Explanation Of Original Sin, The Seemingly Silly Story Of Adam And Eve And The Tree Of The Knowledge Of Good And Evil, There Was No Explanation Of Conflict. At All.

I Posted Chapters Online And Let People Give Feedback, And I Was Surprised At How Much Of That Feedback I Actually Used For The Book.i Posted Chapters Online And Let People Give Feedback, And I Was Surprised At How Much Of That Feedback I Actually Used For The Book. It Was A Different Process For Me, But I Liked It.

And If These Mountains Had Eyes, They Would Wake To Find Two Strangers In Their Fences, Standing In Admiration As A Breathing Red Pours Its Tinge Upon Earth's Shore. These Mountains, Which Have Seen Untold Sunrises, Long To Thunder Praise But Stand Reverent, Silent So That Man's Weak Praise Should Be Given God's Attention.

It Is No Coincidence That Jesus Talks Endlessly About Love. Free Love. Unconditional Love.

Unconditional Love

I Think Jesus Is Saying, Look, You Guys Are Running Around Like Monkeys Trying To Get People To Clap, But People Are Fallen, They Are Separated From God, So They Have No Idea What Is Good Or Bad, Worthy To Be Judged Or Set Free, Beautiful Or Ugly To Begin With. Why Not Get Your Glory From God? Why Not Accept Your Feelings Of Redemption Because Of His Pleasure In You, Not The Fickle And Empty Favor Of Man? And Only Then Will You Know Who You Are, And Only Then Will You Have True, Uninhibited Relationships With Others.

Other People Keep Our Souls Alive, Just Like Food And Water Does With Our Body.

I Think We Can Provide Better Stories Through Providing Mentors, And Certainly Part Of My Story Is Providing Mentors To Kids Growing Up Without Dads. I Think Positive Male Role Models Go A Long Way In Terms Of Rescuing Kids From A Life Of Trouble.i Think Positive Male Role Models Go A Long Way In Terms Of Rescuing Kids From A Life Of Trouble.

The Most Difficult Lie I Have Ever Contended With Is This: Life Is A Story About Me.

I Don't Know Why It Is, Exactly, But The People With The Healthiest Self-esteem, Are Also The Greatest At Intimacy. I'm Not Talking About Arrogant People. I'm Talking About People Who Know They Are Both Good And Bad Yet Believe At The Deepest Level They Are Really Good For People.

I Heard Once That Real Love Doesn't Ask What Is In It For Me; It Just Gives Unconditionally. It Just Tries To Take The Weight Out Of Somebody Else's Pack, Lessen His Load, And If It Gets Reciprocated, That's Great, But That Isn't What You Did It For.

I Never Liked Jazz Music Because Jazz Music Doesn't Resolve. But I Was Outside The Bagdad Theater In Portland One Night When I Saw A Man Playing The Saxophone. I Stood There For Fifteen Minutes, And He Never Opened His Eyes. After That I Liked Jazz Music. Sometimes You Have To Watch Somebody Love Something Before You Can Love It Yourself. It Is As If They Are Showing You The Way. I Used To Not Like God Because God Didn't Resolve. But That Was Before Any Of This Happened.

What I’m Saying Is I Think Life Is Staggering And We’re Just Used To It. We All Are Like Spoiled Children No Longer Impressed With The Gifts We’re Given—it’s Just Another Sunset, Just Another Rainstorm Moving In Over The Mountain, Just Another Child Being Born, Just Another Funeral.

One Of The Things I Love About Our Source Text As Christians, The Bible Is That It Teaches Us Not To Avoid Conflict. And It Teaches Us That Before The Fall Of Man, In Paradise, There Was Conflict. God Wants Conflict To Be A Part Of Your Life.

I Think It's Very Hard For Us, For Christians, To Understand That It's Okay To Read A Book, For Instance, On How To Manage Your Time. There's Nothing Wrong With That.

The Downside Of Being A Writer Is You Get Plenty Of Time To Overthink Your Life.

All My Books Have Been Titled Based On A Piece Of The Prose From Inside The Book.

What Do Markets Do? They Consolidate, They Breakout, They Extend, They Overextend, They Back And Fill, They Consolidate, And Repeat The Process. That's All You Need To Know About The Markets.

I Could Not Have Known Then That Everybody, Every Person, Has To Leave, Has To Change Like Seasons; They Have To Or They Die. The Seasons Remind Me That I Must Keep Changing.

How Disappointing Would It Be Get To Heaven And Find Out God Created Life To Be Enjoyed While All We Did Was Worry?

The Most Often Repeated Commandment In The Bible Is 'do Not Fear.' It's In There Over Two Hundred Times. That Means A Couple Of Things, If You Think About It. It Means We Are Going To Be Afraid, And It Means We Shouldn't Let Fear Boss Us Around. Before I Realized We Were Supposed To Fight Fear, I Thought Of Fear As A Subtle Suggestion In Our Subconscious Designed To Keep Us Safe, Or More Important, Keep Us From Getting Humiliated. And I Guess It Serves That Purpose. But Fear Isn't Only A Guide To Keep Us Safe; It's Also A Manipulative Emotion That Can Trick Us Into Living A Boring Life.

I Didn't Know How Story Worked. So, When Writing The Screenplay, People Introduced Me To The Science Of It. And I'm Grateful. I'll Probably Use That Information For The Rest Of My Career, In Terms Of Writing Novels Or Writing Stories. And Then, Of Course, To Help Me Live A Better Story, A More Meaningful Story

Some People Skip Through Life. Others Are Dragged Through It. I Sometimes Wonder If We Are Moving Through Time, Or Whether Time Is Moving Through Us. Light, Unlike Anything Else In The Universe Is Not Effected By Time. Light Exists Outside Of Time.. It Is Still A Mystery To Physicists.

It Is Hard For Us To Admit We Have A Sin Nature Because We Live In This System Of Checks And Balances. If We Get Caught, We Will Be Punished. But That Doesn't Make Us Good People; It Only Makes Us Subdued. Just Think About The Congress And Senate And Even The President. The Genius Of The American System Is Not Freedom; The Genius Of The American System Is Checks And Balances. Nobody Gets All The Power. Everybody Is Watching Everybody Else. It Is As If The Founding Fathers Knew, Intrinsically, That The Soul Of Man, Unwatched, Is Perverse.

I Often Learn More About Myself From Listening To The Life Story Of A Friend Than I Do Reflecting On My Own Story.

There's A Lot Of Letters, And A Lot Of People Come Say "hi" At Book Signings, But I'm Amazed At How Normal Everybody Is.

Sometimes The Things We Want Most In Life Are The Things That Will Kill Us.

I Have Sometimes Wondered If The Greatest Desire Of Man Is To Be Known And Loved Anyway.

I Think Understanding Your Life As A Story Is A Really Terrific Way Of Kind Of Knowing Where You Are And Knowing Who You Are.

Knowing Who You Are

I Am A Person Of Faith, So I Come From A Community That's Involved In 360,000 Churches Across The Country, That Is An Institution That Could, In A Relatively Short Period Of Time, Provide Hundreds Of Thousands, If Not Millions, Of Positive Male Role Models.

...i Want My Spirituality To Rid Me Of Hate, Not Give Me Reason For It.

The Truth Is, If What We Choose To Do With Our Lives Won't Make A Story Meaningful, It Won't Make A Life Meaningful Either.

Meaning Of Life

It's Funny How You Can't Ask Difficult Questions In A Familiar Place, How You Have To Stand Back A Few Feet And See Things In A New Way Before You Realize Nothing That Is Happening To You Is Normal. The Trouble With You And Me Is We Are Used To What Is Happening To Us. We Grew Into Our Lives Like A Kernel Beneath The Earth, Never Able To Process The Enigma Of Our Composition...nothing Is Normal. It Is All Rather Odd, Isn't It, Our Eyes In Our Heads, Our Hands With Five Fingers, The Capacity To Understand Beauty, To Feel Love, To Feel Pain.

A Story Is Based On What People Think Is Important, So When We Live A Story, We Are Telling People Around Us What We Think Is Important.

I Want To Keep Walking Away From The Person I Was A Moment Ago, Because A Mind Was Made Fo Figure Things Out, Not To Read The Same Page Recurrently.

Before I Studied Story, I Was Trying To Write A Novel, And It Was Terrible. It Wasn't Going Anywhere, And I Couldn't Figure Out What I Was Trying To Do. It Was Really Hard; Much Harder Than I Thought It Was Going To Be. Now That I've Studied Story, I Think I'd Have A Different Approach And Maybe I Could Actually Get It Done.

I've Wondered, Though, If One Of The Reasons We Fail To Acknowledge The Brilliance Of Life Is Because We Don't Want The Responsibility Inherent In The Acknowledgment. We Don't Want To Be Characters In A Story Because Characters Have To Move And Breathe And Face Conflict With Courage. And If Life Isn't Remarkable, Then We Don't Have To Do Any Of That; We Can Be Unwilling Victims Instead Of Grateful Participants.

It’s Interesting That In The Bible, In The Book Of Ecclesiastes, The Only Practical Advice Given About Living A Meaningful Life Is To Find A Job You Like, Enjoy Your Marriage, And Obey God. It’s As Though God Is Saying, Write A Good Story, Take Somebody With You, And Let Me Help.

If What You Are Doing Is Important, You Will Encounter Resistance. If What You Are Doing Isn't Important It Will Be Easy.

If The Point Of Life Is The Same As The Point Of A Story, The Point Of Life Is Character Transformation. If I Got Any Comfort As I Set Out On My First Story, It Was That In Nearly Every Story, The Protagonist Is Transformed. He's A Jerk At The Beginning And Nice At The End, Or A Coward At The Beginning And Brave At The End. If The Character Doesn't Change, The Story Hasn't Happened Yet. And If Story Is Derived From Real Life, If Story Is Just Condensed Version Of Life Then Life Itself May Be Designed To Change Us So That We Evolve From One Kind Of Person To Another.

I'm Just Trying To Make The Point That The Story We're Telling Ourselves Is Often Very Different From The Story We're Telling The People Around Us.

Most Of Us Are Waiting. We're Waiting For Something Interesting To Happen. And I Think We're Going To Wait Forever If We Don't Do Something More Interesting With Our Lives.

We Don't Need As Much As We Have. Hardly Any Of Us Need As Much Money As We Have. It's True What They Say About The Best Things In Life Being Free.

I Posted The First Three Chapters And I Had Enough People Say That Chapter Two Was Dragging That I Cut It Out Just Before The Book Went To Press. And I'm Glad I Did. The Book Is A Lot Better Without It.

When We Talk About The Decline Of The American Family, I Think We Have To Go Back To The Industrial Revolution.

I Want To Start Replacing My “fix” Response With An “enjoy” Response And Just Let People Be Themselves.

I Think, In The Grand Epic, Jesus Is The Hero Of Our Stories. And Our Stories, As They Were, Are Subplots In A Grand Epic And Our Job Is Not To Be The Hero Of Any Story. Our Job Is To Be A Saint In A Story That He Is Telling.

Christians Might Say That You Can't Live A More Meaningful Life Without Jesus. Well, That's Absolutely Not True. You Can. You Can Enjoy A Sunrise Whether You Know Jesus Or Not.

Your Life Is A Blank Page. You Write On It.

I Think This Is When Most People Give Up On Their Stories. They Come Out Of College Wanting To Change The World, Wanting To Get Married, Wanting To Have Kids And Change The Way People Buy Office Supplies. But They Get Into The Middle And Discover It Was Harder Than They Thought. They Can't See The Distant Shore Anymore, And They Wonder If Their Paddling Is Moving Them Forward. None Of The Trees Behind Them Are Getting Smaller And None Of The Trees Ahead Are Getting Bigger. They Take It Out On Their Spouses, And They Go Looking For An Easier Story.

I Asked God To Help Me Understand The Story Of The Forest And What It Means To Be A Tree In That Story.

Believing In God Is As Much Like Falling In Love As It Is Making A Decision. Love Is Both Something That Happens To You And Something You Decide Upon.

Falling In Love

The Early Bird Catches The Worm. But I Have Never Been One For Worms. I Am Not Sure What The Late Bird Catches, But I Will Feast With Him Today. Probably Porridge.

There Is Something Beautiful About A Billion Stars Held Steady By A God Who Knows What He Is Doing.

Even Our Beliefs Have Become Trend Statements. We Don’t Even Believe Things Because We Believe Them Anymore. We Only Believe Things Because They Are Cool Things To Believe.

If We Hear, In Our Inner Ear, A Voice Saying We Are Failures, We Are Losers, We Will Never Amount To Anything, This Is The Voice Of Satan Trying To Convince The Bride That The Groom Does Not Love Her. This Is Not The Voice Of God. God Woos Us With Kindness. He Changes Out Of Character With The Passion Of His Love.

The Inciting Incident Is How You Get (characters) To Do Something. It's The Doorway Through Which They Can't Return, You Know. The Story Takes Care Of The Rest.

I Love To Give To Charity, But I Don't Want To Be Charity. This Is Why I Have So Much Trouble With Grace.

The Sexual Conquest Is Huge With Men In Terms Of Affirming Themselves And Their Feelings Of Masculinity. That's A Misguided Kind Of Affirmation. That Is Not Helpful, But That Stuff Happens.

It Occurs To Me It Is Not So Much The Aim Of The Devil To Lure Me With Evil As It Is To Preoccupy Me With The Meaningless.

It Blew My Mind That What I Was Thinking Was Actually Applicable To People's Lives, And It Certainly Revolutionized Family.

Moral #1: "if You Work Hard, Stay Focused, And Never Give Up, You Will Eventually Get What You Want In Life." Moral #2: Sometimes The Things We Want Most In Life Are The Things That Will Kill Us.

There Are About 360,000 Churches In America, So We Could Mentor A Million Kids Within A Short Period Of Time If Everyone Signed On, Which, Of Course, Is A Pipedream, But We're Going To Reach Toward That.

Self-discipline Will Never Make Us Feel Righteous Or Clean; Accepting God's Love Will.

It's Not What People Do That Scares Me. It's What They Hide. It's The Secrets That Keep Us From Bonding And Create Distrust. If We Were More Willing To Accept Each Other's Depravity We'd Be More United, We'd Be More Honest. If You Hide Two Things From Me, I'll Assume You're Hiding A Million. And I'll Keep You At A Distance. I'm Not Afraid Of The Evil In You. It's In Me Too.

You Cannot Be A Christian Without Being A Mystic

I Think Writers Would Do Better To Consider That Idea [to Write To Yourself], Because You Know Yourself Really Well, And You Never Know Your Demographic Fully. You Only Get Into Trouble If You Try To Please Somebody You Don't Really Understand.

It's Possible To Do Both As A Writer - To Engage And Have A Family And All That Good Stuff - And I Chose Not To For The Sake Of The Career.

And So I Have Come To Understand That Strength, Inner Strength, Comes From Receiving Love As Much As It Comes From Giving It.

Sometimes When I Watch My Dog, I Think About How Good Life Can Be, If We Only Lose Ourselves In Our Stories. Lucy Doesn't Read Self-help Books About How To Be A Dog; She Just Is A Dog. All She Wants To Do Is Chase Ducks And Sticks And Do Other Things That Make Both Her And Me Happy. It Makes Me Wonder If That Was The Intention For Man, To Chase Sticks And Ducks, To Name Animals, To Create Families, And To Keep Looking Back At God To Feed Off His Pleasure At Our Pleasure.

The Reason I Like Writing A Memoir Is Because It Isn't Preachy.

Nothing Is Going To Change In Congo Until You And I Figure Out What Is Wrong With The Person Inside The Mirror

Leave. Roll The World Around On Your Tongue For A Bit. It Is A Beautiful World, Isn't It? So Strong And Forceful, The Way You Have Always Wanted To Be. And You Will Not Be Alone. You Have Never Been Alone. Don't Worry. Everything Will Still Be Here When You Get Back. It Is You Who Will Have Changed.

When You Write, You're Alone In A Room. And When Someone Reads A Book, They're Alone In A Room, Too, Usually. It's A Really Intimate Exchange. And So People Ask Me Where I Get The Boldness To Talk About This Or That, But I Didn't Feel Like It Required Any Sort Of Courage, Because I Was Alone. Sometimes It Feels Weird For People To Read It.

We Live On Top Of The Created World, I Think To Myself, Not In It.

I Need For There To Be Something Bigger Than Me. I Need Someone To Put Awe Inside Me; I Need To Come Second To Someone Who Has Everything Figured Out.

If We Knew How Much God Loved Us And Was For Us, We’d Talk To Him All Day Long.

I Am Something Of A Recluse By Nature. I Am That Cordless Screwdriver That Has To Charge For Twenty Hours To Earn Ten Minutes Use. I Need That Much Downtime.

The More I Try To Impress People, The More I Separate Myself From Them. Vulnerability Attracts Love.

Many Of Our Attempts To Understand Christian Faith Have Only Cheapened It. I Can No More Understand The Totality Of God Than The Pancake I Made For Breakfast Understands The Complexity Of Me. The Little We Do Understand, That Grain Of Sand Our Minds Are Capable Of Grasping, Those Ideas Such As God Is Good, God Feels, God Loves, God Knows All, Are Enough To Keep Our Hearts Dwelling On His Majesty And Otherness Forever.

I Believe The Greatest Trick Of The Devil Is Not To Get Us Into Some Sort Of Evil But Rather Have Us Wasting Time. This Is Why The Devil Tries So Hard To Get Christians To Be Religious. If He Can Sink A Man's Mind Into Habit, He Will Prevent His Heart From Engaging God. I Was Into Habit.

When You Fly Across The Country In An Airplane The Country Seems Vast; But It Isn't Vast. It's All Connected By Roads One Can Ride A Bike Down. If You Watch The News And There's A Tragedy At A House In Kansas, That Guy's Driveway Connects With Yours, And You'd Be Surprised By How Few Roads It Takes To Get There.

In Exchange For Our Humility And Willingness To Accept The Charity Of God, We Are Given A Kingdom. And A Beggar's Kingdom Is Better Than A Proud Man's Delusion.

I Tend To Write First Drafts That Are Incredibly Cognitive, Very Rational, Very Boring. They Come Off As Justification. Like, 'this Is My Idea And Here's All The Reasons That It's Right.' It Doesn't Make For Very Compelling Reading.

The Thing About New Things Is You Feel New When You Buy Them, You Feel As Though You Are Somebody Different Because You Own Something Different. We Are Our Possessions, You Know. There Are People Who Get Addicted To Buying New Stuff. Things. Piles And Piles Of Things. But The New Things Become Old Things So Quickly. We Need New Things To Replace The Old Things.

He Said To Me I Was A Tree In A Story About A Forest, And That It Was Arrogant Of Me To Believe Any Differently. And He Told Me The Story Of The Forest Is Better Than The Story Of The Tree.

Maybe Life Isn't Meaningless...maybe Just Your Life Is Meaningless

The Trouble With Deep Belief Is That It Costs Something. And There Is Something Inside Me, Some Selfish Beast Of A Subtle Thing That Doesn't Like The Truth At All Because It Carries Responsibility, And If I Actually Believe These Things I Have To Do Something About Them. It Is So, So Cumbersome To Believe Anything. And It Isn't Cool.

Every Creative Person, And I Think Probably Every Other Person, Faces Resistance When They Are Trying To Create Something Good...the Harder The Resistance, The More Important The Task Must Be.

As A Human, I Am Flawed In That It Is Difficult For Me To Consider Others Before Myself. It Feels Like I Have To Fight Against This Force, This Current Within Me That, More Often Than Not, Wants To Avoid Serious Issues And Please Myself, Buy Things For Myself, Feed Myself, Entertain Myself, And All Of That.

Lets Choose To Do Something Really Difficult, Something That Saves Lives, And Let's Do That Thing With People We Love.

Book Of Ecclesiastes, God Is Saying... Write A Good Story, Take Somebody With You And Let Me Help

A Story Is A Character Who Wants Something And Overcomes Conflict To Get It.

Dying For Something Is Easy Because It Is Associated With Glory. Living For Something Is The Hard Thing. Living For Something Extends Beyond Fashion, Glory, Or Recognition. We Live For What We Believe.

My Sunday School Teachers Had Turned Bible Narrative Into Children's Fables. They Talked About Noah And The Ark Because The Story Had Animals In It. They Failed To Mention That This Was When God Massacred All Of Humanity.

Suffering Ceases To Be Suffering When You Have A Redemptive Perspective.

...if I Do Not Introduce People To Jesus, Then I Don't Believe Jesus Is An Important Person. It Doesn't Matter What I Say.

I Love Writing Books - I Really Do. If I Could Just Quit Everything And Work On A Book Every Day, I Would Love That Most.

All The Trees Are Losing Their Leaves, And Not One Of Them Is Worried.

There's A Genius Part Of You That Wants To Create. That Part Of You Wants To Talk To God. Get Out Of The Way.

By Accepting God's Love For Us, We Fall In Love With Him, And Only Then Do We Have The Fuel We Need To Obey.

Falling In Love

I Fell In Love With Books. Some People Find Beauty In Music, Some In Painting, Some In Landscape, But I Find It In Words. By Beauty, I Mean The Feeling You Have Suddenly Glimpsed Another World, Or Looked Into A Portal That Reveals A Kind Of Magic Or Romance Out Of Which The World Has Been Constructed, A Feeling There Is Something More Than The Mundane, And A Reason For Our Plodding.

I Think Life Is Staggering And We're Just Too Used To It.

Nobody Will Listen To You Unless They Sense That You Like Them.

What I Believe Is Not What I Say I Believe; What I Believe Is What I Do. I Used To Say That I Believed It Was Important To Tell People About Jesus, But I Never Did. A Friend Kindly Explained That If I Do Not Introduce People To Jesus, Then I Don't Believe Jesus Is An Important Person. It Doesn't Matter What I Say. We Live For What We Believe.

Everybody Wants To Be Somebody Fancy. Even If They're Shy.

Instead Of Asking What It Feels Like To Follow God Or Be Used By God, We Should Be Asking Who God Is, And Whether We Really Know Him. Everything Else Will Take Care Of Itself.

If We Are Not Willing To Wake Up In The Morning And Die To Ourselves, Perhaps We Should Ask Ourselves Whether Or Not We Are Really Following Jesus.

Even Our Beliefs Have Become Trend Statements.

Grace Only Sticks To Our Imperfections. Those Who Can’t Accept Their Imperfections Can’t Accept Grace Either.

I Don't Wonder Anymore What I'll Tell God When I Go To Heaven When We Sit In The Chairs Under The Tree, Outside The City........i'll Tell These Things To God, And He'll Laugh, I Think And He'll Remind Me Of The Parts I Forgot, The Parts That Were His Favorite. We'll Sit And Remember My Story Together, And Then He'll Stand And Put His Arms Around Me And Say, "well Done," And That He Liked My Story. And My Soul Won't Be Thirsty Anymore. Finally He'll Turn And We'll Walk Toward The City, A City He Will Have Spoken Into Existence A City Built In A Place Where Once There'd Been Nothing.

The Times In My Life When I Have Been Most Happy Haven't Been The Times When I Have Had The Most Money Or The Most Freedom Or The Most Anything, But Rather When I've Been In Love Or In Community Or Right With People.

If I Have A Hope, It's That God Sat Over The Dark Nothing And Wrote You And Me, Specifically, Into The Story And Put Us In With The Sunset And The Rainstorm As Though To Say, “enjoy Your Place In My Story. The Beauty Of It Means You Matter, And You Can Create Within It Even As I Have Created You.”

And There Is Something Profoundly Humbling About Knowing God. I’m Not Talking About The Trinket God Or The Genie-in-a-lamp God. I Mean The God Who Invented The Tree In My Front Yard, The Beauty Of My Sweetheart, The Taste Of A Blueberry, The Violence Of A River At Flood. There Are A Lot Of Religious Trends That Would Have Us Controlling God, Telling Us That If We Do This That And The Other, God Will Jump Through Our Hoops Like A Monkey. But This Other God, This Real God, Is Awesome And Strong, All-encompassing And Passionate, And For Reasons I Will Never Understand, He Wants To Father Us.

There's No Authoritarian Structure At Reed College, But The Education Is Conservative. So What You Have Is A Lot Of Students Who Are Very Authentically Looking For Truth.

And Through A Dark Night Of The Soul, I Came To Realize That Salvation Happens Through A Mysterious, Indefinable, Relational Interaction With Jesus In Which We Become One With Him. I Realized Christian Conversion Worked More Like Falling In Love Than Understanding A Series Of Concepts Of Ideas. This Is Not To Say There Are No True Ideas, It Is Only To Say There Is Something Else, Something Beyond.

Falling In Love

...a Beggar's Kingdom Is Better Than A Proud Man's Delusion.

The Thing I Loved About Her Was That I Never Felt Like She Was Selling Anything. She Would Talk To God As If She Knew Him, As If She Had Talked To Him On The Phone That Day. She Was Never Ashamed Which Is The Thing With Some Christians I Had Encountered.

Good Stories Must Travel Through Conflict. And In Epic Stories, The Conflict Must Become Unbearable.

If You Want To Bond With Your Friends, Do Something Very Hard With Them, Something That You Won't Be Able To Do Alone.

You're Always Weighing Whether You Should Be That Accessible Or Not, But My Personality Is Naturally Just To Throw It All Out There, So I'm Much More Comfortable With Doing Thatmy Personality Is Naturally Just To Throw It All Out There, So I'm Much More Comfortable With Doing That.

People Love To Have Lived A Great Story, But Few People Like The Work It Takes To Make It Happen.

Job Found Contentment And Even Joy, Outside The Context Of Comfort, Health Or Stability. He Understood The Story Was Not About Him, And He Cared More About The Story Then He Did About Himself.

I Loved The Fact That It Wasn't My Responsibility To Change Somebody, That It Was God's, That My Part Was Just To Communicate Love And Approval.

When You Stop Expecting People To Be Perfect, You Can Like Them For Who They Are. And When You Stop Expecting Material Possessions To Complete You, You'd Be Surprised At How Much Pleasure You Get In Material Possessions. And When You Stop Expecting God To End All Your Troubles, You'd Be Surprised How Much You Like Spending Time With God.

I Have Friends Who Are Writers, But We Don't Tend To Talk About Literature Very Much. It's Just Not Part Of My Process; I Tend To Be Pretty Secretive About What I'm Working On.

If You Watched A Movie About A Guy Who Wanted A Volvo And Worked For Years To Get It, You Wouldn’t Cry At The End When He Drove Off The Lot, Testing The Windshield Wipers. You Wouldn’t Tell Your Friends You Saw A Beautiful Movie Or Go Home And Put A Record On To Think About The Story You’d Seen. The Truth Is, You Wouldn’t Remember That Movie A Week Later, Except You’d Feel Robbed And Want Your Money Back. Nobody Cries At The End Of A Movie About A Guy Who Wants A Volvo.

I Think That Every Living Person, Every Person Who Is Awake To The Functioning Principles Within His Reality Has A Moment Where He Stops Blaming The Problems In The World On Group Thinking, On Humanity And Authority, And Starts To Face Himself. I Hate This More Than Anything. This Is The Hardest Principle Within Christian Spirituality For Me To Deal With. The Problem Is Not Out There, The Problem Is The Needy Beast Of A Thing Living In My Chest.

But Playing Your Music As Loud As You Want And Coming Home Drunk Aren't Real Life. Real Life, It Turns Out, Is Diapers And Lawnmowers, Decks That Need Painting, A Wife That Needs To Be Listened To, Kids That Need To Be Taught Right From Wrong, A Checkbook, An Oil Change, A Sunset Behind A Mountain, Laughter At A Kitchen Table, Too Much Wine, A Chipped Tooth, And A Screaming Child.

There Are Things You Cannot Understand, And You Must Learn To Live With This. Not Only Must You Learn To Live With This, You Must Learn To Enjoy This.

The People I Used To Be Surrounded By Are Getting Along Without Me. Somehow, That Really Bugs Me.

When I Walked Into The Christian Section Of A Bookstore, The Message Was Clear: Faith Is Something You Do Alone. Rick Does Not Have Much Tolerance For People Living Alone. He's Like Bill Clinton In That He Feels Everyone's Pain. If Rick Thinks Somebody Is Lonely, He Can't Sleep At Night. He Wants Us All To Live With Each Other And Play Nice So He Can Get Some Rest. Tortured Soul.

It Confuses Me That Christian Living Is Not Simpler. The Gospel, The Very Good News, Is Simple.

I Always Thought The Bible Was More Of A Salad Thing, You Know, But It Isn't. It's A Chocolate Thing.

If The Point Of Life Is The Same As The Point Of A Story, The Point Of Life Is Character Transformation.

The Real Voice Is Stiller And Smaller And Seems To Know, Without Confusion, The Difference Between Right And Wrong And The Subtle Delineation Between The Beautiful And Profane. It's Not An Agitated Voice, But Ever Patient As Though It Approves A Million False Starts. The Voice I Am Talking About Is A Deep Water Of Calming Wisdom.

Too Much Of Our Time Is Spent Trying To Chart God On A Grid, And Too Little Is Spent Allowing Our Hearts To Feel Awe. By Reducing Christian Spirituality To Formula, We Deprive Our Hearts Of Wonder.

There Are Two Types Of Men In This World--one Is Looking For A Woman To Make His Life Complete And The Other Is Looking For A Woman To Join His Complete Life.

And I Found Jesus Very Disturbing, Very Straightforward. He Wasn't Diplomatic, And Yet I Felt Like If I Met Him, He Would Really Like Me. Don, I Can't Explain How Freeing That Was, To Realize That If I Met Jesus, He Would Like Me. I Never Felt Like That About Some Of The Christians On The Radio. I Always Thought If I Met Those People They Would Yell At Me. But It Wasn't Like That With Jesus.

Truth Grew In My Mind Like A Fungus, And Though I Tried To Sleep It Out, There Was No Resisting The Epiphanies.

It Is When People Do Not Allow God To Show Up Through Them ... That The World Collapses In On Itself.

Relationships Unlock Certain Parts Of Who We Are Supposed To Be.

It Made Me Wonder If The Reasons Our Lives Seem So Muddled Is Because We Keep Walking Into Scenes In Which We, Along With The People Around Us, Have No Clear Idea What We Want.

I Am Early In My Story, But I Believe I Will Stretch Out Into Eternity, And In Heaven I Will Reflect Upon These Early Days, These Days When It Seemed God Was Down A Dirt Road, Walking Toward Me. Years Ago He Was A Swinging Speck In The Distance; Now He Is Close Enough I Can Hear His Singing. Soon I Will See The Lines On His Face.

I Will Love You Like God, Because Of God, Mighted By The Power Of God. I Will Stop Expecting Your Love, Demanding Your Love, Trading For Your Love, Gaming For Your Love. I Will Simply Love. I Am Giving Myself To You, And Tomorrow I Will Do It Again. I Suppose The Clock Itself Will Wear Thin Its Time Before I Am Ended At This Altar Of Dying And Dying Again. God Risked Himself On Me. I Will Risk Myself On You. And Together, We Will Learn To Love, And Perhaps Then, And Only Then, Understand This Gravity That Drew Him, Unto Us.

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