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I Think That Grace And Love Always Rattle People.
-Rob Bell
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I Think That Grace

Rob Bell
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I Think That Grace And Love Always Rattle People.

Understanding the Quote: "i think that grace and love always rattle people...."

This quote by Rob Bell reflects deeply on the theme of thinking. It connects to the universal human journey of purpose, motivation, and reflection. Often categorized under Thinking, People, Grace, the quote offers insight, emotional clarity, and intellectual inspiration to readers worldwide.

Whether you’re a student exploring new ideas, a leader trying to motivate your team, or someone seeking direction in life — this quote provides value. It resonates because it’s more than words — it’s a bridge between experience and wisdom. It shows how Rob Bell interprets life's core challenges and triumphs.

Lessons From the Quote

This quote teaches resilience and focus. It reminds readers that no matter where they stand in life, reflection and self-awareness lead to growth. Each word has meaning, and when studied, it becomes clear how impactful thoughtful language can be.

About Rob Bell

Rob Bell is celebrated for insightful thoughts on thinking and people. Their legacy lives on through writings that guide, comfort, and inspire. Discover more on their profile page.

Actionable Takeaways

  • Reflect on how this quote applies to your current life path.
  • Share the message with someone who needs inspiration.
  • Write your thoughts on this quote in a journal or blog post.
  • Use it as a daily affirmation or reminder.

Closing Thoughts

Quotes like this endure because they capture universal truths. They comfort us in solitude and empower us in groups. Carry this quote forward — live by its wisdom, share its message, and keep its essence alive.

Views: 1087
Topic
Thinking
People
Grace
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The Great German Scholar Helmut Thielicke Once Said That A Person Who Speaks To This Hour’s Need Will Always Be Skirting The Edge Of Heresy, But Only The Person Who Risks Those Heresies Can Gain The Truth.
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Creating And Sharing Beautiful Things Has Provided Me With The Inspiration That We Can Do Things We Never Thought We Could Do And That We Will Get To See Wonderful Things We Never Thought We Would See.
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The Historical Orthodox Christian Faith Is Extremely Wide And Diverse.
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I Have Met Countless People Who Call Themselves Christians Who Don't Appear To Have Any Living Breathing Vibrant Connection With The Resurrected Christ And I've Met Countless People From Every Religious Background Including Atheists That Tell Me Of Their Very Personal And Real Experiences Of The Living Christ. I Don't Have People Asking Me Why They Should Believe Something - That's Starting Off On The Wrong Foot To Say The Least.
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A Lot Of Christians Have Been Taught A Story That Begins In Chapter 3 Of Genesis, Instead Of Chapter 1. If Your Story Doesn't Begin In The Beginning, But Begins In Chapter 3, Then It Starts With Sin, And So The Story Becomes About Dealing With The Sin Problem. So Jesus Is Seen As Primarily Dealing With Our Sins.
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Well, I Affirm Orthodox Christian Faith. I Affirm The Nicene Creed. I Don't Think I'm Doing Anything Terribly New.
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Look At The Size Of The Universe And Look At What We're Discovering About String Theory. There's A Wide-eyed Sense Of We're Just Getting Started Here.
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To Say It Again, Eternal Life Is Less About A Kind Of Time That Starts When We Die, And More About A Quality And Vitality Of Life Now In Connection To God. Eternal Life Doesn't Start When We Die; It Starts Now. It's Not About A Life That Begins At Death; It's About Experiencing The Kind Of Life Now That Can Endure And Survive Even Death.
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Your Deepest, Darkest Sins And Your Shameful Secrets Are Simply Irrelevant When It Comes To The Counterintuitive, Ecstatic Announcement Of The Gospel. So Are Your Goodness, Your Rightness, Your Church Attendance, And All Of The Wise, Moral, Mature Decisions You Have Made And Actions You Have Taken.
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Jesus Is Bigger Than Any One Religion. He Didn't Come To Start A New Religion, And He Continually Disrupted Whatever Conventions Or Systems Or Establishments That Existed In His Day. He Will Always Transcend Whatever Cages And Labels Are Created To Contain And Name Him, Especially The One Called "christianity.
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Your Life Is A Gift. Before Anything Else Can Be Said About You, For Some Reason The Universe (or God, Or Being, Or Force, Or Reality, Or Whatever You Name It) Chose To Give You Life.
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To Me Some Of The Greatest Writing Is When Somebody Puts Something In Words That You Felt And Experienced And You Go, That's It.
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We Need A Childlike Trust That God Is Good... Ultimately We Are Ok. That Is A Simple, Beautiful Pure Thing That Can Be Complicated Ferociously By All Sorts Of Intellectual Categories.
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What If Tomorrow Someone Digs Up Definitive Proof That Jesus Had A Real, Earthly, Biological Father Named Larry, And Archeologists Find Larry's Tomb And Do Dna Samples And Prove Beyond A Shadow Of A Doubt That The Virgin Birth Was Just A Bit Of Mythologizing The Gospel Writers Threw In To Appeal To The Followers Of The Mithra And Dionysian Religious Cults That Were Hugely Popular At The Time Of Jesus, Whose Gods Had Virgin Births? Could You Still Be A Christian? Is The Way Of Jesus Still The Best Possible Way To Live?
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Atoms Are A Relationship Of Energy. You Are A Relationship Of Energy Interacting With Another Person Who Is Another Complex Relationship Of Energy. We All Exchange More Than Words With Each Other. . . We Are Made Of The Same Substance As Rocks And Stars. .. We Are An Exotic Cocktail Living On This Planet. .. We Live In This Universe Which Is A Self-transcending Reality
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Powerful
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The Interactions I Have Are With People Who Are Very Kind And Very Grateful And They Say Very Overwhelming Things To Me. Somebody Who Doesn't Like What I Do Or Doesn't Understand It, Then It Wasn't For Them.
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People
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There Are Moments When We Have To Return To Our Roots.
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We Often Rush Through The Experiences That Have The Greatest Shift.
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I'm Very Comfortable In A Room With Thousands Of People.
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The Moment God Is Figured Out With Nice Neat Lines And Definitions, We Are No Longer Dealing With God.
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I Actually Think There Is Hell Because We See Hell Every Day.
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I'm Interested In Painting The Most Beautifully Compelling Pictures And Images And Metaphors And Stories And Explanations Possible That Will Put Jesus In Language For A World That Desperately Needs To Hear It.
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To Elevate Abstract Doctrines And Dogmas Over Living, Breathing, Embodied Experiences Of God's Love And Grace, Then, Is Going The Wrong Direction. It's Taking Flesh And Turning It Back Into Words.
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Doctrine
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Crave
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Large Groups
Belief
Love Is Giving Up Control. It’s Surrendering The Desire To Control The Other Person. The Two—love And Controlling Power Over The Other Person—are Mutually Exclusive. If We Are Serious About Loving Someone, We Have To Surrender All The Desires Within Us To Manipulate The Relationship.
Sex
Giving Up
Love Is
The Ancient Hebrews Had A Word For This Awareness Of The Importance Of Things. They Called It Kavod. Kavod Originally Was A Business Term, Referring To The Heaviness Of Something, Which Was Crucial In Weights And Measures And The Maintaining Of Fairness In Transactions. Over Time The Word Began To Take On A More Figurative Meaning, Referring To The Importance And Significance Of Something.
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Fairness
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Heart
Inspire
Interest
Enjoy Mystery And Speculation, But Don't Drift Into Dogma.
Dogma
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Enjoy
Love Is What God Is, Love Is Why Jesus Came, And Love Is Why He Continues To Come, Year After Year To Person After Person...may You Experience This Vast, Expansive, Infinite, Indestructible Love That Has Been Yours All Along. May You Discover That This Love Is As Wide As The Sky And As Small As The Cracks In Your Heart No One Else Knows About, And May You Know, Deep In Your Bones, That Love Wins.
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Heart
Winning
When The Lab Rats Hear The Bell Ringing, They Freeze. That's What Fear Does To You - Fear Stops You Dead In Your Tracks. Fear Can Keep You From Harm, But Fear Can Also Rob You Of Your Potential. Fear Can Rob You Of An Experience. Fear Can Rob You Of Happiness. Fear Can Rob You Of Real Life... Darkness Has A Way Of Scaring Us.
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We Shape Our God, And Then Our God Shapes Us.
Shapes
Why Blame The Dark For Being Dark? It Is Far More Helpful To Ask Why The Light Isn’t As Bright As It Could Be.
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Light
Deep Thought
Doctrine Is A Wonderful Servant And A Horrible Master.
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Wonderful
Masters
It Is Trusting That I Am Loved. That I Always Have Been. That I Always Will Be. I Don't Have To Do Anything. I Don't Have To Prove Anything, Or Achieve Anything, Or Accomplish One More Thing. That, Exactly As I Am, I Am Totally Accepted, Forgiven, And There Is Nothing I Could Ever Do To Lose This Acceptance.
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Achieve
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Breathing
Generosity
Extraordinary
As A Pastor, You Get Invited Into The Most Poignant Moments Of People's Lives. Whether It's A Wedding Or A Funeral Or A Hospital Visit, You Get Invited Into The Center Of The Event, Whether Or Not You Know The People.
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People
Funeral
If The Gospel Isn't Good News For Everybody, Then It Isn't Good News For Anybody. And This Is Because The Most Powerful Things Happen When The Church Surrenders Its Desire To Convert People And Convince Them To Join. It Is When The Church Gives Itself Away In Radical Acts Of Service And Compassion, Expecting Nothing In Return, That The Way Of Jesus Is Most Vividly Put On Display.
Jesus
Powerful
Compassion
And A Lot Of Times, The Religious Discussion Is Almost A Masquerade For The Real Question, Is What Stories That We Tell Ourselves And That We Tell Each Other And What Convictions And Beliefs Actually Have The Capacity To Make Us The Kind Of People Who Together Can Make The World The Kind Of World We All Want It To Be?
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Suffering Is Traumatic And Awful And We Get Angry And We Shake Our Fists At The Heavens And We Vent And Rage And Weep. But In The Process We Discover A New Tomorrow, One We Never Would Have Imagined Otherwise.
Heaven
Suffering
Awful
My Experience As A Pastor Is Lots Of People Have Really Toxic, Dangerous, Psychologically Devastating Images Of God In Their Head, Images Of A God Who's Not Good.
People
Toxic
Pastor
We Need To Return To The Simplicity That God Is Love.
Simplicity
Needs
Return
It Is Such A Letdown To Rise From The Dead And Have Your Friends Not Recognize You.
Letdowns
Faith Can Take Many Different Forms And Expressions.
Expression
Different
Form
Do We Get What We Want? Yes, We Get What We Want. God Is That Loving. If We Want Isolation, Despair, And The Right To Be Our Own God, God Graciously Grants Us That Option. If We Insist On Using Our God-given Pwer To Make The World In Our Image, God Allows Us That Freedom; We Have The Kind Of License To Do That.that's How Love Works. It Cant Be Forced, Manipulated, Or Coerced. It Always Leaves Room For The Other To Decide. God Says Yes, We Can Have What We Want, Because Love Wins.
Winning
Yes We Can
Despair
We Live In The Midst Of A Creation That Is Groaning.
Creation
Midst
Groaning
I Am For Marriage. I Am For Fidelity. I Am For Love, Whether It's A Man And Woman, A Woman And A Woman, A Man And A Man.
Men
Men And Women
Fidelity
It Takes Quite A Spine To Turn The Other Cheek. It Takes Phenomenal Fortitude To Love Your Enemy. It Takes Firm Resolve To Pray For Those Who Persecute You. (with Reference To Matthew 5)
Enemy
Praying
Fortitude
Swords Appear Strong, But They're Actually Quite Weak. Jesus Appears Weak, But He's Actually Quite Strong.
Jesus
Strong
Weak
It Often Takes Suffering And Lost In Order To Remind Us Of How Precious Life Is.
Inspiring
Order
Suffering
This Is Why For Thousands Of Years Christians Have Found The Cross To Be So Central To Life. It Speaks To Us Of God's Suffering, God's Pain, God's Broken Heart. It's God Making The First Move And Then Waiting For Our Response.
Christian
Pain
Moving
When Someone Wrongs Us, We Rarely (if Ever) Want To Do The Same Thing Back. Why? Because We Want To Do Something More Harmful. Likewise, When Someone Insults Us, Our Instinct Is To Search For Words That Will Be More Insulting.revenge Always Escalates.
Revenge
Insulting
Want
It Is Better To Be Fully Present And Rested And Engaged For One Thing Than Rushed, Distracted, And Scattered For Ten.
Distracted
Engaged
One Thing
What's Interesting Is, If You Take The Scientists And The Theologians, The Really Good Ones, They End Up Both Filled With This Wide-eyed Sense Of Wonder And Awe About Look At This World We Live In.
Interesting
Looks
World
When You Forgive Somebody, When You Are Generous, When You Withhold Judgment, When You Love And When You Stand Up To Injustice, You Are, In That Moment, Bringing Heaven To Earth.
Love
Inspirational
Forgiveness
I Like To Say That I Practice Militant Mysticism. I'm Really Absolutely Sure Of Some Things That I Don't Quite Know.
Practice
Knows
Militant
It Often Appears That Those Who Talk The Most About Going To Heaven When You Die Talk The Least About Bringing Heaven To Earth Right Now, As Jesus Taught Us To Pray: 'your Will Be Done On Earth As It Is In Heaven.' At The Same Time, It Often Appears That Those Who Talk The Most About Relieving Suffering Now Talk The Least About Heaven When We Die.
Jesus
Taught Us
Heaven
God Then Makes People Whom He Puts Right In The Middle Of All This Loaded Creation. Commanding Them To Care For Creation, To Manage It, To Lovingly Use It, To Creatively Order It... They Are Environmentalists. Being Deeply Connected With Their Environment Is Who They Are. For Them To Be Anything Else Or To Deny Their Divine Responsibility To Care For All That God Has Made Would Be To Deny Something That Is At The Core Of Their Existence. This Is Why Litter And Pollution Are Spiritual Issues.
Spiritual
Responsibility
Order
What Does Happen Constantly With All Kinds Of People I Meet Is They Say "i Had This Encounter With Jesus, Can You Help Me Understand It..." The Labels, More Than Ever, Simply Aren't Big Enough To Contain What The Cosmic Christ Is Up To In The World.
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People
Labels
When People Use The Word Hell, What Do They Mean? They Mean A Place, An Event, A Situation Absent Of How God Desires Things To Be. Famine, Debt, Oppression, Loneliness, Despair, Death, Slaughter--they Are All Hell On Earth. Jesus' Desire For His Followers Is That They Live In Such A Way That They Bring Heaven To Earth. What's Disturbing Is When People Talk More About Hell After This Life Than They Do About Hell Here And Now. As A Christian, I Want To Do What I Can To Resist Hell Coming To Earth.
Christian
Jesus
Loneliness
We Can Choose The Way Of Compassion, The Way Of Forgiveness, The Way Of Generosity. Or We Can Choose Other Paths And Those Have Very Real Consequences In The World. This Is Absolutely Crucial.
Real
Compassion
Generosity
I Believe Our World Desperately Needs Good News.
Believe
Our World
Needs
If The Gospel Isn't Good News For Everybody, Then It Isn't Good News For Anybody.
News
Good News
Ifs
Culture Is Already There And The Church Will Continue To Be Even More Irrelevant When It Quotes Letters From Two Thousand Years Ago As Their Best Defense. When You Have In Front Of You Flesh And Blood People Who Are Your Brothers And Sisters, Aunts And Uncles, Co-workers And Neighbors And They Love Each Other And They Just Want To Go Through Life With Someone.
Brother
Uncles
Aunt
Often The People Most Concerned About Others Going To Hell When They Die Seem Less Concerned With The Hells On Earth Right Now, While The People Most Concerned With The Hells On Earth Right Now Seem The Least Concerned About Hell After Death.
People
Earth
Hell
[the Bible] Has To Be Interpreted. And If It Isn’t Interpreted, Then It Can’t Be Put Into Action. So If We Are Serious About Following God, Then We Have To Interpret The Bible. It Is Not Possible To Simply Do What The Bible Says. We Must First Make Decisions About What It Means At This Time, In This Place, For These People.
Mean
People
Decision
Love Demands Freedom. It Always Has, And It Always Will. We Are Free To Resist, Reject, And Rebel Against God's Ways For Us. We Can Have All The Hell We Want.
Rebel
Demand
Want
I Think What's Happened In The Modern World, There's A Lot Of People That Sound Very Smart And It's Very Compelling And Alluring, But It Leaves You Empty.
Smart
Thinking
People
We Embrace Truth Wherever We Find It From Whoever Says It However We Come Across It. It's A Big Beautiful Exotic Heartbreaking Mysterious World We Live In And It's Our Home And We Get To Explore And Learn And Affirm Truth Wherever We Find It.
Beautiful
Home
Heartbreaking
Christian Is A Great Noun And A Poor Adjective
Christian
Adjectives
Nouns
When I Talk About The God Who Is With Us, For Us, And Ahead Of Us, I'm Talking About Our Facing That Which Most Terrifies Us About Ourselves, Embracing It And Fearing It No Longer, Refusing To Allow It To Exist Separate From The Rest Of Our Being, Resting Assured That We Are Loved And We Belong And We Are Going To Be Just Fine.
Talking
Fine
Assured
I Embrace The Term 'evangelical,' If By That We Mean A Belief That We Together Can Actually Work For Change In The World, Caring For The Environment, Extending To The Poor Generosity And Kindness, A Hopeful Outlook. That's A Beautiful Sort Of Thing.
Beautiful
Kindness
Mean
The Joy Is In The Creation. So I've Never Had A Target Audience, It's Always Been About Being True To The Work As It Emerges.
Target Audience
Joy
Creation
You Can Be Very Religious And Invoke The Name Of God And Be Able To Quote Lots Of Verses And Be Well Versed In Complicated Theological Systems And Yet Not Be A Person Who Sees. It’s One Thing To Sing About God And Recite Quotes About God And Invoke God’s Name; It’s Another Be Aware Of The Presence In Every Taste, Touch, Sound, And Embrace. With Jesus, What We See Again And Again Is That It’s Never Just A Person, Or Just A Meal, Or Just An Event, Because There’s Always More Going On Just Below The Surface.
Religious
Jesus
Names
Your Life Is A Gift And How You Respond To It - What You Do With It Matters. That's Where I Start.
Matter
Life Is
Life Is A Gift
Many In The Modern World Fell For The Myth That We're Living In A Static, Fixed, Flat Reality Of Just Material Things.
Reality
World
Modern
Take Faith, For Example. For Many People In Our World, The Opposite Of Faith Is Doubt. The Goal, Then, Within This Understanding, Is To Eliminate Doubt. But Faith And Doubt Aren't Opposites. Doubt Is Often A Sign That Your Faith Has A Pulse, That It's Alive And Well And Exploring And Searching. Faith And Doubt Aren't Opposites, They Are, It Turns Out, Excellent Dance Partners.
Our World
Opposites
People
If We Are Serious About Loving Someone, We Have To Surrender All The Desires Within Us To Manipulate The Relationship.
Loving Someone
Desire
Serious
Resurrection Is A Belief And Hope In Restoring This World.
World
Belief
Resurrection
The Danger Is That In Reaction To Abuses And Distortions Of An Idea, We'll Reject It Completely. And In The Process Miss Out On The Good Of It, The Worth Of It, The Truth Of It.
Atheist
Ideas
Missing
This Is Misguided And Toxic And Ultimately Subverts The Contagious Spread Of Jesus' Message Of Love, Peace, Forgiveness And Joy That Our World Desperately Needs To Hear.
Jesus
Our World
Joy
I Believe That God Is Love. I Believe That Jesus Came To Show Us This Love, To Give Us This Love, To Teach Us About This Love, So That We Could Live In This Love And Extend It To Others.
Jesus
Believe
Giving
You Can Be Living In A Big House, Driving A Nice Car, Going On Exotic Vacations And Still Be Empty Inside, Crippled With Fear And Dread.
Nice
Vacation
Car
I Think That At The Core Of Faith Is Trust.
Thinking
Core
Our Tendency In The Midst Of Suffering Is To Turn On God. To Get Angry And Bitter And Shake Our Fist At The Sky And Say, "god, You Don't Know What It's Like! You Don't Understand! You Have No Idea What I'm Going Through. You Don't Have A Clue How Much This Hurts." The Cross Is God's Way Of Taking Away All Of Our Accusations, Excuses, And Arguments. The Cross Is God Taking On Flesh And Blood And Saying, "me Too.
Hurt
Blood
Sky
We All Want To Make A Difference, To Live In Peace, To Have Joy Each Morning That We Get To Live This Day And See What It Brings.
Morning
Differences
Joy
I Would Hope That Wherever I Go I Bring Good News - That's What That Word Means, Right? It Began With The First Followers Of Jesus Taking A Roman Military Propaganda Term And Co-opting It For Their Own Subversive Purposes, Insisting That The World Isn't Made Better Through Coercive Military Violence But Through Sacrificial Love. How Great Is That!? Unfortunately This Word Has Been Hijacked In Several Years For Other Purposes But No Worries, We're Taking It Back.
Jesus
Military
Mean
People Received, Affirmed And Experienced Grace In Many Different Forms.
People
Grace
Different
Everybody Is Following Somebody. Everybody Has Faith In Something And Somebody. We Are All Believers.
Have Faith
Believer
Following
The Resurrection Confronts Our World With Wonder, Mystery, And Miracles.
Our World
Miracle
Mystery
Suffering, It Turns Out, Demands Profound Imagination. A New Future Has To Be Conjured Up Because The Old Future Isn't There Anymore.
Profound
Imagination
Suffering
I Get Ideas About Things I Want To Make And Then I Throw Myself Into It With Everything I Have.
Ideas
Want
The Fundamental Story Arc Of The Bible Is God Is Passionate About Rescuing This World, Restoring It, Renewing It.
Stories
Passionate
Fundamentals
For Many People, God Is Primitive, Behind, Trying To Drag Everything Back To Some Prehistoric Era As Opposed To Spirit, Force, Love, Drawing Us Into A Better Future, Which To Me Is - That Story Has Done Something In Me And I've Seen It Do Things In Other People.
Drawing
People
Trying
The Lesson That Has Been Hardest For Me To Learn: There Is Nothing To Prove.
Lessons
Hardest
Prove
Two Of The Most Powerful Words You Can Hear Someone Say Are ‘me Too.’
Powerful
Two
Most Powerful
That May Sound A Big Vague, But What Has Struck Me In City After City Is That Despite Our Differences And Diversity, There's A Common Humanity We All Share. In Many Ways We're All Searching And Longing For The Same Things.
Cities
Differences
Common Humanity
My Parents Were Both Very Intellectually Honest, Straightforward, And For Them, Faith Meant That You Were Fully Engaged.
Parent
Honest
Straightforward
The Fact That We Are Loved And Accepted And Forgiven In Spite Of Everything We Have Done Is Simply Too Good To Be True.
Done
Facts
Too Good To Be True
Fear Wants Us To Become Obsessed With Some Event Or Person In The Future, A Year, A Month, Even A Day. It Also Wants Us To Look Backwards Not At Our Successes, But Our Short-comings And Our Failures. Fear Losses It's Grip When We Stay In The Now.
Loss
Years
Events
It's Absurd And Quite Tragic The Way People Have Managed To Pit Science Against Faith. They Aren't In Conflict At All - They're Long Lost Dance Partners. I Don't Divide The World Up Into Christians And Other People - We Are All Human Beings, Brothers And Sisters, And We Embrace Truth Wherever We Find It, Whether That's In A Lab, A Field Or A Cathedral. Because Sometimes You Need A Scientist And Sometimes You Need A Poet.
Christian
Brother
Long
Salvation Is The Entire Universe Being Brought Back Into Harmony With Its Maker.
Harmony
Salvation
Makers
I Think The Church Needs – I Think This Is The World We Are Living In And We Need To Affirm People Wherever They Are.
Thinking
People
Church
Opening Up Your Soul To Someone, Letting Them Into Your Spirit, Thoughts, Fears, Future, Hopes, Dreams ... That Is Being Naked.
Dream
Opening Up
Soul
Your Job Is The Relentless Pursuit Of Who God Made You To Be. And Anything Else You Do Is Sin And You Need To Repent Of It.
Jobs
Needs
Fresh Start
The Life That You Want Begins The Moment You Embrace The Life You Have Because All Of It Is A Miracle.
Inspiring
Miracle
Want
Whether We Are Reading The Bible For The First Time Or Standing In A Field In Israel Next To A Historian And An Archaeologist And A Scholar, The Bible Meets Us Where We Are. That Is What Truth Does
Reading
Israel
Doe
People Have A View Of A God Who Is Terrible That They Can't Even Imagine Being Loving Or Wanting Anything To Do With.
Views
People
Imagine
On The Sabbath- We Are Reminded That We Are Not Human Doings, But Human Beings.
Sabbath
Doings
Humans
Something Is Profoundly Wrong And We Are Desperate For Justice, For Restoration And For Somebody Somewhere To Do Something About This.
Justice
Restoration
Desperate
When We Get To What Happens When We Die, We Don't Have Any Video Footage. So Let's At Least Be Honest That We Are Speculating, Because We Are.
Video
Honest
Happens
Times Change. God Doesn’t, But Times Do. We Learn And Grow, And The World Around Us Shifts, And The Christian Faith Is Alive Only When It Is Listening, Morphing, Innovating, Letting Go Of Whatever Has Gotten In The Way Of Jesus And Embracing Whatever Will Help Us Be More And More The People God Wants Us To Be.
Change
God
Faith
When Isaiah Predicted That Spears Would Become Pruning Hooks, That's A Reference To Cultivating. Pruning And Trimming And Growing And Paying Close Attention To The Plants And Whether They're Getting Enough Water And If Their Roots Are Deep Enough. Soil Under The Fingernails, Grapes Being Trampled Under Bare Feet, Fingers Sticky From Handling Fresh Fruit. It's That Green Stripe You Get Around The Sole Of Your Shoes When You Mow The Lawn. Life In The Age To Come. Earthy.
Shoes
Roots
Feet
I Do A Meet And Greet After Every Show In Which I Tell The Audience That I Would Love To Thank Every Single One Of Them For Coming. Which A Lot Of People Take Me Up On! So I Get To Meet Hundreds And Hundreds Of People Every Night, Night After Night.
Night
People
Take Me
I Thought That Christian Was A Noun, A Person Looking For Authenticity. I Never Understood That Idea That A Band Could Be Christian Or Something Could Be Christian. But It Just Can Be And Is.
Christian
Ideas
Band
Some Communities Don't Permit Open, Honest Inquiry About The Things That Matter Most. Lots Of People Have Voiced A Concern, Expressed A Doubt, Or Raised A Question, Only To Be Told By Their Family, Church, Friends, Or Tribe: "we Don't Discuss Those Things Here." I Believe The Discussion Itself Is Divine. Abraham Does His Best To Bargain With God, Most Of The Book Of Job Consists Of Arguments By Job And His Friends About The Deepest Questions Of Human Suffering, God Is Practically On Trial In The Book Of Lamentations, And Jesus Responds To Almost Every Question He's Asked With...a Question.
Jesus
Jobs
Believe
Agape Doesn't Love Somebody Because They're Worthy. Agape Makes Them Worthy By The Strength And Power Of Its Love. Agape Doesn't Love Somebody Because They're Beautiful. Agape Loves In Such A Way That It Makes Them Beautiful.
Beautiful
Way
Agape Love
If Your Faith Is Threatened By Something That's True, Then It Wasn't Much Of A Faith To Begin With, Was It?
Threatened
Ifs
And This Reality Extends Beyond This Life. Heaven Is Full Of Forgiven People. Hell Is Full Of Forgiven People. Heaven Is Full Of People God Loves, Whom Jesus Died For. Hell Is Full Of Forgiven People God Loves, Whom Jesus Died For. The Difference Is How We Choose To Live, Which Story We Choose To Live In, Which Version Of Reality We Trust.
Jesus
Reality
Differences
Celebrity Seems Totally At Odds With Authentic Community And Honest, Real Sorts Of Relationships.
Real
Odds
Community
I Got Into Pastoring Because Of The Art Form. I Started A Church, But I Felt The Art Form Needed To Be Freed For All People. A Particular Religion Over Others Was Never Interesting To Me. I Wanted To Talk To People About What It Means To Be Alive And What It Means To Be Human.
Art
Mean
People
Like A Mirror, God Appears To Be More And More A Reflection Of Whoever It Is That Happens To Be Talking About God At The Moment.
Reflection
Mirrors
Talking
The Peace We Are Offered Is Not A Peace That Is Free From Tragedy, Illness, Bankruptcy, Divorce, Depression, Or Heartache. It Is Peace Rooted In The Trust That The Life Jesus Gives Us Is Deeper, Wider, Stronger, And More Enduring Than Whatever Our Current Circumstances Are, Because All We See Is Not All There Is And The Last Word About Us And Our Struggle Has Not Yet Been Spoken.
Jesus
Struggle
Divorce
The Thought Of The Word Church And The Word Marketing In The Same Sentence Makes Me Sick.
Sick
Marketing
Church
God Is Bigger Than The Christian Faith.
Christian
Bigger
Christian Faith
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