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*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.

-Donald Miller

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*i Want To Keep

Donald Miller

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*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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

Fear Isn’t Only A Guide To Keep Us Safe; It’s Also A Manipulative Emotion That Can Trick Us Into Living A Boring Life … The Great Stories Go To Those Who Don’t Give In To Fear.

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

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

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.

The Ambitions We Have Will Become The Stories We Live.

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

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

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

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 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

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

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.

You Cannot Be A Christian Without Being A Mystic

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

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.

We Have To Have Positive Male Role Models.

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

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.

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

There Is A Time When Every Person Who Encounters Jesus, Who Believes Jesus Is The Son Of God, Decides That They Will Spend Their Life Following Him. Some People, Like The Apostle Paul, Make This Decision The Minute They Meet Him, The Minute They Become A Christian. Others, Like The Apostle Peter, Endure Years Of Half-hearted Commitment And Spiritual Confusion Before Leaping In With All Their Passion. Still Others May Enjoy Some Benefits Of God's Love And Grace Without Entering Into The True Joy Of A Marriage With Their Maker.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

Ability To Communicate

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

*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 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.

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

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.

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

I 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.

Flattery Has A Short Battery Life, But Reminding People They Are Amazing And Precious And Wanted And Works Of Art Can Truly Change Their Lives.

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.

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

...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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.”

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.

No Love Is Conditional. If Love Is Conditional, It’s Just Some Sort Of Manipulation Masquerading As Love.

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.

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 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.

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.

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

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

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

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 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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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 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

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 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.

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.

In An Age In Which We Can Project An Image And Score That Image Based On Immediate Facebook And Twitter Feedback, Thus Making A Video Game Of Life And A False-reality Composed Of Lies, What Gets Lost Is A Joyful Obsession With The Work We Create From The Purest Of Motives, A Sheer Joy In The Act Of Creation Itself That Causes Us To Lose Ourselves In Something Else, And In A Way Die To Ourselves Over The Absolute Love Of A Thing We Are Breathing Into Life.

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.

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.

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

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

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 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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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."

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

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

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.

Let Probability And Sample Size Do The Heavy Lifting.

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.

Sometimes You Have To Watch Somebody Love Something Before You Can Love It Yourself.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

Unconditional Love

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.

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

...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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

Even Our Beliefs Have Become Trend Statements.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

The Heart Responds To The Conflict Within A Story.

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.

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

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.

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

The 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.

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.

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.

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.

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

Falling In Love

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

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.

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

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 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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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