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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.

-Donald Miller

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I Think That Every

Donald Miller

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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.

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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.

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

All Relationships Are Living And Alive And Moving And Becoming Something.

If You Buy The Website, Maybe You'll Do Something With It. But So Far I Haven't; We'll See.

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

If You Have A Beautiful Story, It Has To Have Conflict. If You Don't Have Conflict, It Can't Be A Good Story.

What I Believe Is Not What I Say I Believe; What I Believe Is What I Do.

It's Something You Can Actually Control. With Writing, It Feels Like It's Given To You, And When The Good Stuff Hits, It Feels Like It's Coming From Some Other Planet.and You're Just Channeling It.

I Kept Imagining These People, Just Living Their Daily Lives, And Then Having Them Suddenly Ended In Unjust Tragedy. When We Watch The News, We Grieve All Of This, But When We Go To The Movies, We Want More Of It. Somehow We Realize That Great Stories Are Told In Conflict, But We Are Unwilling To Embrace The Potential Greatness Of The Story We Are Actually In. We Think God Is Unjust, Rather Than A Master Storyteller.

It Is Always The Simple Things That Change Our Lives. And These Things Never Happen When You Are Looking For Them To Happen. Life Will Reveal Answers At The Pace Life Wishes To Do So. You Feel Like Running, But Life Is On A Stroll. This Is How God Does Things.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

I Used Love Like Money, But Love Doesn't Work Like Money. It Is Not A Commodity. When We Barter With It, We All Lose. When The Church Does Not Love It's Enemies, It Fuels Their Rage. It Makes Them Hate Us More.

I Don't Read A Lot Of Inspirational Books For Life. But For Writing, I Think The Two Best Books Are The War Of Art And William Zinsser's On Writing Well. I Read A Lot Of Classics.

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.

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.

The Heart Responds To The Conflict Within A Story.

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.

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

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.

The Words 'alone,' 'lonely,' And 'loneliness' Are Three Of The Most Powerful Words In The English Language. Those Words Say That We Are Human; They Are Like The Words Hunger And Thirst. But They Are Not Words About The Body, They Are Words About The Soul.

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.”

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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Falling In Love

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Falling In Love

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Falling In Love

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If The Abortion Issue Is Important To Me, This Is How You Tackle That Issue.

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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.

I Stay Away From Churches In Which I Feel Like I Have To Pretend I'm A Better Person Than I Am. That Sort Of Thing Moves My Faith Backwards.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

Right, But You Know, What Would Any Of Us Lose By Losing Our Possessions. Maybe We Would Gain Something, Like Relationships, Like The Beauty Of Good Friends, Intimacy, You Know What I Mean, Man? Like We Wouldn't Be Losing Anything If We Lost Our Stuff, We'd Be Gaining Everything.

I Used To Write When I Was In The Mood Or Felt Inspired. Anymore, I Write Whether I Feel Inspired Or Not. It's A Discipline. So That's Definitely Different. It's Part Of Maturing As A Person And As A Professional.

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

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.

Let Probability And Sample Size Do The Heavy Lifting.

When I Started Studying The Issue And Issues Related To Fatherlessness, I Realized I Had All Of Them. Fear Of Intimacy, Fear Of Commitment, Poor Work Ethic, Just Stuff That You Don't Have When You Don't Have A Man In Your Life To Look You In The Eye And Say, "you're Good," Or "good Job."

Great Writers Know What To Cut Out. It's The Same In Life. Clear Ambitions. Clear Relationships. This Is The Stuff Of Good Story.

You Never Question The Truth Of Something Until You Have To Explain It To A Skeptic.

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.

We Live In A World Where Bad Stories Are Told, Stories That Teach Us Life Doesn't Mean Anything And That Humanity Has No Great Purpose. It's A Good Calling, Then, To Speak A Better Story. How Brightly A Better Story Shines. How Easily The World Looks To It In Wonder. How Grateful We Are To Hear These Stories, And How Happy It Makes Us To Repeat Them.

When You Stop Expecting People To Be Perfect, You Can Like Them For Who They Are.

She Knows Who She Is. She Just Forgot For A Little While.

I Think Writers Can Get A Little Melodramatic Sometimes About Their Work, And It Helps Me Not To Do That, To Just Say, "well, This Is How I Make A Living, And I Need To Become A Very Good Craftsman."

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 Want To Keep Walking Away From The Person I Was A Moment Ago... *so Soon You Will Be In That Part Of The Book Where You Are Holding The Bulk Of The Pages In Your Left Hand, And Only A Thin Wisp Of The Story In Your Right. *we Get One Story, You And I, And One Story Alone....it Might Be Time For You To Go. It Might Be Time To Change, To Shine Out.

I Had Some Friends Commenting Me Books, But Mostly It Was People I Didn't Know. But They're Fans. They're Fans Of The Books, So They Have A Working Knowledge Of How I Write, And They Know What They Like And What They Don't Like. I'm Really Grateful For Their Feedback.

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.

In The Age Of Information, Ignorance Is A Choice.

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.

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.

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.

To Change The World You'll Need A Pen.

Changing The World

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

Sometimes I Wish I Could Go Back In Time, Sit Down With Myself And Explain That Things Were Going To Be Okay, That Everybody Loses Ground Sometimes And It Doesn’t Mean Anything. It’s The Way Life Works. This Is Hard To Understand In The Moment. You Get To Thinking About The Girl Who Rejected You, The Job You Got Fired From, The Test You Failed, And You Lose Sight Of The Big Picture — The Fact That Life Has A Beautiful Way Of Remaking Itself Every Few Weeks.

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.

The Human Body Essentially Recreates Itself Every Six Months. Nearly Every Cell Of Hair And Skin And Bone Dies And Another Is Directed To Its Former Place. You Are Not Who You Were Last November.

I Think The Things We Want Most In Life, The Things We Think Will Set Us Free, Are Not The Thing We Need.

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

Be Encouraged. Your Heart Is Writing A Poem On The World And It's Being Turned Into A Thousand Songs.

I Know, From The Three Visits I Made To Him, The Blended Composite Of Love And Fear That Exists Only In A Boy's Notion Of His Father.

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 You Don't Feel Free And Be Yourself, You Can't Connect. Find People Who Accept Your Quirks. They'll Heal Your Soul.

I Didnt Like Being Reminded About How Self-absorbed I Was. I Wanted To Be Over This, Done With This. I Didnt Want To Live In A Broken World Or A Broken Me. I Wasnt Trying To Weasel Out Of Anything. I Just Wasnt In The Mood Of Being On The Earth That Night. I Get Like That Sometimes When It Rains, Or When I See Certain Sad Movies.

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

Ability To Communicate

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

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

I Think That's The True Litmus Test For Someone Who Has Become Closer To Jesus: Their Heart Is More Loving, Accepting, Childlike, Less Believing That They Have All The Answers And More Believing In Him.

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

Much Of The Time I’ve Spent Trying To Impress People Has Been A Waste. The Reality Is People Are Impressed With All Kinds Of Things: Intelligence, Power, Money, Charm, Talent, And So On. But The Ones We Tend To Stay In Love With Are, In The Long Run, The Ones Who Do A Decent Job Loving Us Back.

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.

...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.

People Want To Join A Great Story. If You Want To Lead, Tell One With Your Life.

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 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.

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

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.

Sunday Morning Church Service Is Not An Enormous Priority; Spending Time With Other Believers Is.

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.

The Greatest Stories Go To Those Who Don’t Give In To Fear.

I Listened So Hard Because It Felt Like, While She Was Telling Me Stories, She Was Massaging My Soul, Letting Me Know That I Was Not Alone, That I Will Never Have To Be Alone, That There Are Friends And Family And Churches And Coffee Shops. I Was Not Going To Be Cast Into Space.

We Don't Know How Much We Are Capable Of Loving Until The People We Love Are Being Taken Away, Until A Beautiful Story Is Ending.

...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.

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.

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.

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.

You Cannot Be A Christian Without Being A Mystic

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

We Believe We Will Be Made Whole By Our Accomplishments, Our Possessions, Or Our Social Status. It's Written In The Fabric Of Our Dna That Life Used To Be Beautiful And Now It Isn't, And If Only This And Only That, It Would Be Beautiful Again.

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.

When We Do What God Wants Us To Do, We Are Blessed, We Are Spiritually Healthy.

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

And Once You Live A Good Story, You Get A Taste For A Kind Of Meaning In Life, And You Can't Go Back To Being Normal; You Can't Go Back To Meaningless Scenes Stitched Together By The Forgettable Thread Of Wasted Time.

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

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

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

At The Time, I Didn't Know What Forgiveness Meant. I Wouldn't Really Know What Forgiveness Meant For Another Year, Until My Pastor, Rick Mckinley, Happened To Spell It Out In A Sermon. He Said That When You Forgive, You Bear The Burden Somebody Has Given You Without Holding Them Accountable.

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.

Christian Spirituality Was Not A Children's Story. It Wasn't Cute Or Neat. It Was Mystical And Odd And Clean, And It Was Reaching Into Dirty. There Was Wonder In It And Enchantment.

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.

The Most Attractive Characteristic In A Person Is The Story They Are Telling The World. We Stop And Stare At Stories.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

Everybody Wants To Be Fancy And New. Nobody Wants To Be Themselves. I Mean, Maybe People Want To Be Themselves, But They Want To Be Different, With Different Clothes Or Shorter Hair Or Less Fat. It's A Fact. If There Was A Guy Who Just Liked Being Himself And Didn't Want To Be Anybody Else, That Guy Would Be The Most Different Guy In The World And Everybody Would Want To Be Him.

Even Our Beliefs Have Become Trend Statements.

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.

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.

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.

The Mountains Themselves Call Us Into Greater Stories.

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.

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

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.

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.

Most Great Art Is Freedom Within Form. Without Form, We Are Amateurs, Without Freedom, We Are Robots.

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

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.

The Truth Is There Are A Million Steps, And We Don't Even Know What The Steps Are, And Worse, At Any Given Moment We May Not Be Willing Or Even Able To Take Them; And Still Worse, They Are Different For You And They Are Always Changing. I Have Come To Believe The Sooner We Will Fall In Love With The God Who Keeps Shaking Things Up, Keeps Changing The Path, Keeps Rocking The Boat To Test Our Faith In Him, Teaching Us To Not Rely On Easy Answers, Bullet Points, Magic Mantras, Or Genies In Lamps, But Rather In His Guidance, His Existence, His Mercy, And His Love.

Falling In 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.

My Most Recent Faith Struggle Is Not One Of Intellect. I Don’t Really Do That Anymore. Sooner Or Later You Just Figure Out There Are Some Guys Who Don’t Believe In God And They Can Prove He Doesn't Exist, And There Are Some Other Guys Who Do Believe In God And They Can Prove He Does Exist, And The Argument Stopped Being About God A Long Time Ago And Now It’s About Who Is Smarter, And Honestly I Don’t Care.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The Ambitions We Have Will Become The Stories We Live.

When A Relationship Is Right, It Is No More Possible To Wake Up And Want Out Of The Marriage Than It Is To Wake Up And Stop Believing In God. What Is, Is What Is.

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

But The People Who Took The Bus Didn't Experience The City As We Experienced The City. The Pain Made The City More Beautiful. The Story Made Us Different Characters Than We Would Have Been If We Had Skipped The Story And Showed Up At The Ending An Easier Way.

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

Unconditional Love

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