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I Think The Best Thing A Person Can Do Is To Read Through The Gospels In The Bible And Really Look At Jesus, Because If A Person Does This, They Will Realize That The Jesus They Learned About In Sunday School Or The Jesus They Hear Jokes About Or The Skinny, Gandhi Jesus That Exists In Their Imaginations Isn't Anything Like The Real Jesus At All.

-Donald Miller

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I Think The Best

Donald Miller

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I Think The Best Thing A Person Can Do Is To Read Through The Gospels In The Bible And Really Look At Jesus, Because If A Person Does This, They Will Realize That The Jesus They Learned About In Sunday School Or The Jesus They Hear Jokes About Or The Skinny, Gandhi Jesus That Exists In Their Imaginations Isn't Anything Like The Real Jesus At All.

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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.

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

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.

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

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

When One Of My Friends Becomes A Christian, Which Happens About Every 10 Years Because I Am A Sheep About Sharing My Faith, The Experience Is Euphoric. I See In Their Eyes The Trueness Of The Story.

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

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

*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.

Fear Is A Manipulative Emotion That Can Trick Us Into Living A Boring Life.

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.

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

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.

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

Christ, In Short, Asks Us To Give Everything, All Our False Redemption In The Lifeboat, All Our False Ideas About Who God Is, All Our Trust In Something Other Than God To Redeem Us. In So Doing, We Die To Our Broken Natures In Exchange For His Perfect Nature, And Find Unification With Him That Will Allow God To See Us As One.

...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.

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

The Mountains Themselves Call Us Into Greater Stories.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

In The Age Of Information, Ignorance Is A Choice.

God Doesn't Give Us Crying, Pooping Children Because He Wants To Advance Our Careers.

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.

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.

I Think Each Of Us Can, Through Our Writing, Discover Our Super Power

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

I'm The Kind Of Person Who Wants To Present My Most Honest, Authentic Self To The World, So I Hide Backstage And Rehearse Honest And Authentic Lines Until The Curtain Opens.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

If You Aren't Telling A Good Story, Nobody Thinks You Died Too Soon; They Just Think You Died.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

The Heart Responds To The Conflict Within A Story.

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

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 Think The Best Thing A Person Can Do Is To Read Through The Gospels In The Bible And Really Look At Jesus, Because If A Person Does This, They Will Realize That The Jesus They Learned About In Sunday School Or The Jesus They Hear Jokes About Or The Skinny, Gandhi Jesus That Exists In Their Imaginations Isn't Anything Like The Real Jesus At All.

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.

If A Piece Of Genius Comes, It Comes, And It If Doesn't, It Doesn't.

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

Unconditional Love

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Great Stories Move Through Fear.

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

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.

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

I Do Not Believe A Person Can Take Two Issues From Scripture, Those Being Abortion And Gay Marriage, And Adhere To Them As Sins, Then Neglect Much Of The Rest And Call Himself A Fundamentalist Or Even A Conservative. The Person Who Believes The Sum Of His Morality Involves Gay Marriage And Abortion Alone, And Neglects Health Care And World Trade And The Environment And Loving His Neighbor And Feeding The Poor Is, By Definition, A Theological Liberal, Because He Takes What He Wants From Scripture And Ignores The Rest.

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.

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.

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

I Don't Find Anyone More Noble Than Jesus.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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 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

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.

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.

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

The Economy Is Turning Around, So That's Going To Help A Little Bit.

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

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.

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.

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

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."

I'm Amazed At How Much My Writing Is Improved When I Step Away From The Computer, Even In Small Amounts. If I'm Stuck, I Vacuum The Living Room Or Walk The Dog. I'm Amazed At What Comes Out Of That... We Have To Realize That Part Of The Writing Life Where We're Sitting Down At The Computer Is Harvesting The Crops, But You Have To Have Planted Them And Watered Them And Created Fertile Soil - And That's A Life.

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

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

Ability To Communicate

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

Being A Christian Is More Like Falling In Love Than Understanding A Series Of Ideas.

Falling In Love

When Something Happens To You, You Have Two Choices In How To Deal With It. You Can Either Get Bitter, Or Get Better.

Most Great Art Is Created When The Artist Feels They Are Channeling Something Rather Than Trying To Communicate Something.

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

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

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

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.

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.”

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

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

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."

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.

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

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.

Good Writers Show Rather Than Tell. Stories Are Told In Action. Life Stories Are No Different.

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.

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.

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 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 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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

...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.

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.

God Made A Whole Beautiful Earth And Decided To Put You In It, To Experience All Of This Beauty. You Can't Do That Watching Television All The Time.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

The Ambitions We Have Will Become The Stories We Live.

People Who Live Great Stories Know Failure Isn’t A Judgment, It’s An Education.

Everybody Has To Leave, Everybody Has To Leave Their Home And Come Back So They Can Love It Again For All New Reasons.

More Than My Questions About The Efficacy Of Social Actions Were My Questions About My Own Motives. Do I Want Social Justice For The Oppressed Or Do I Jusy Want To Be Known As A Socially Active Person? I Spend 95 Percent Of My Time Thinking About Myself Anyway. I Dont Have To Watch The Evening News To See The World Is Bad, I Only Have To Look At Myself. I Am Not Brow Beating Here, I Am Only Saying That True Charge , True Living Giving, God Honoring Change Would Have To Start With The Individual. I Was The Very Problem I Had Been Protesting. I Wanted To Make A Sign That Read “i Am The Problem

We Have To Have Positive Male Role Models.

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.

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.

The Most Important Thing That Happens Within Christian Spirituality Is When A Person Falls In Love With Jesus.

Falling In Love

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

You Cannot Be A Christian Without Being A Mystic

Every Day You Live Is A Page. Every Year, A Chapter. Your Life, A Book. What Is It About?

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

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

We Shouldn’t Be Afraid To Embrace Whimsy, That Nagging Idea That Life Could Be Magical; It Could Be Special If We Were Only Willing To Take A Few Risks.

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

To Change The World You'll Need A Pen.

Changing The World

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.

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.

To Be In A Relationship With God Is To Be Loved Purely And Furiously. And A Person Who Thinks Himself Unlovable Cannot Be In A Relationship With God Because He Can't Accept Who God Is; A Being That Is Love. We Learn That We Are Lovable Or Unlovable From Other People. That Is Why God Tells Us So Many Times To Love Each Other.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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’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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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 Started Storyline After I'd Accomplished All My Goals And Still Wasn't Happy. I'd Become A New York Times Bestselling Author, Which Was My Goal From High School, And Yet I Was Less Happy After Accomplishing My Goals Than I Was Before.

We Don't Think Of Our Flaws As The Glue That Binds Us To The People We Love, But They Are. Grace Only Sticks To Your Imperfections.

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.

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