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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.

-Rob Bell

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When Isaiah Predicted That

Rob Bell

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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.

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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.

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[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.

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Working Together

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Sacred Feminine

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Worst Situation

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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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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.

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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.

Jesus Is God's Way Of Refusing To Give Up His Dream For The World.

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.

Everybody Is Following Somebody. Everybody Has Faith In Something And Somebody. We Are All Believers.

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.

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.

One Truth Is That Suffering Raises Profound Questions With The Universe. The Other Truth Is That Grace, Gift And Generosity Also Raise Profound Questions.

My Parents Were Both Very Intellectually Honest, Straightforward, And For Them, Faith Meant That You Were Fully Engaged.

Straightforward

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.

You Can Set Your Intention To Better Understand Your Soul, Your Spirit, Through Daily Practices Like Prayer, Yoga And Meditation, Etc.

When Someone Sets Out To Be Controversial Or Provocative Or Shocking As An End In Itself, I Don't Think That's A Noble Goal.

Well, I Affirm Orthodox Christian Faith. I Affirm The Nicene Creed. I Don't Think I'm Doing Anything Terribly New.

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)

I Actually Think There Is Hell Because We See Hell Every Day.

The Fundamental Story Arc Of The Bible Is God Is Passionate About Rescuing This World, Restoring It, Renewing It.

That Breath That You Just Took, That's A Gift!

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.

Being A Pastor For 20 Years I Realized That The Labels, Agnostic, Atheist, Believer, Everybody's Human And Everybody Wants To Know What Kind Of Universe We're Living In, And Everybody's Living According To A Story.

I Get Ideas About Things I Want To Make And Then I Throw Myself Into It With Everything I Have.

My Interest Is In What's True, Where Is The Life, Where Is The Heart And What Inspires.

The Fact That We Are Loved And Accepted And Forgiven In Spite Of Everything We Have Done Is Simply Too Good To Be True.

Too Good To Be True

If This Understanding Of The Good News Of Jesus Prevailed Among Christians, The Belief That Jesus’s Message Is About How To Get Somewhere Else, You Could Possibly End Up With A World In Which Millions Of People Were Starving, Thirsty, And Poor; The Earth Was Being Exploited And Polluted; Disease And Despair Were Everywhere; And Christians Weren’t Known For Doing Much About It. If It Got Bad Enough, You Might Even Have People Rejecting Jesus Because Of How His Followers Lived. That Would Be Tragic.

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.

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.

In One Of The Accounts Of Jesus's Death We Read That The Curtain In The Temple Of God-the One That Kept People Out Of The Holiest Place Of God's Presence-ripped.one New Testament Writer Said That This Ripping Was A Picture Of How, Because Of Jesus, We Can Have New, Direct Access To God.a Beautiful Idea.but The Curtain Ripping Also Means That God Comes Out, That God Is No Longer Confined To The Temple As God Was Previously.

People Received, Affirmed And Experienced Grace In Many Different Forms.

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.

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.

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.

There's Way Too Much Wonder And Mystery All Around Us To Not Stay Open To More That's Going On Here. You Can Wake Up, And Sense And Feel And Taste And Hear A Whole World Right Here Within This One, Right Here In This Breath You're About To Take.

At The Center Of The Christian Tradition Since The First Church Have Been A Number Who Insist That History Is Not Tragic, Hell Is Not Forever, And Love, In The End, Wins And All Will Be Reconciled To God.

The Vibrant, Real Historic Christian Faith Is Very Wide And Leaves Lots And Lots Of Room For Varying Perspectives. It's Very Diverse And Wide, That's Part Of It's Strength, Life And Vibrancy.

The Thought Of The Word Church And The Word Marketing In The Same Sentence Makes Me Sick.

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.

There's Nothing Wrong With Possessions; It's Just That They Have Value To Us Only When We Use Them, Engage Them, And Enjoy Them. They're Nouns That Mean Something Only In Conjunction With Verbs. That's Why Wealth Is So Dangerous: If You're Not Careful You Can Easily End Up With A Garage Full Of Nouns.

What Is God Like? Because Millions And Millions Of People Were Taught That The Primary Message - The Center Of The Gospel Of Jesus - Is That God Is Going To Send You To Hell, Unless You Believe In Jesus. And So, What Gets, Subtlely, Sort Of Caught And Taught Is That Jesus Rescues You From God. But What Kind Of God Is That; That We Would Need To Be Rescued From This God? How Could That God Ever Be Good; How Could That God Ever Be Trusted? And How Could That Ever Be Good News.

To Be Honest With You, I Am Passionate About All The People Out There Who Want To Know Jesus, They Want To Know God, And They Are Sick Of A System That Is Hung Up On A Bunch Of Things That Have Nothing To Do With The Love Of God.

To Make It Really Clear And Simple, Let's Call This Movement Across History We See In Passages Like The Ones We Just Looked At From Exodus And Deuteronomy Clicks. What We See Is God Meeting People At The Click They're At, And Then Drawing Them Forward.when They're At F, God Calls Them To G.when We're At L, God Calls Us To M.and If We're Way Back There At A, God Meets Us Way Back There At A And Does What God Always Does: Invites Us Forward To B.

The Best Team Does Not Always Win, It's The Team That Plays The Best.

The Cross Is Gods Way Of Taking Away All Of Our Accusations, Excuses, And Arguments.

The Life That You Want Begins The Moment You Embrace The Life You Have Because All Of It Is A Miracle.

We Often Rush Through The Experiences That Have The Greatest Shift.

My Experience Is That Lots Of People Go To Church, Sing The Songs, Tell The Story, Etc But Have Profound Ambivalence About God.

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. I Think The Ship Has Sailed And I Think The Church Needs -- I Think This Is The World We Are Living In And We Need To Affirm People Wherever They Are.

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?

On The Sabbath- We Are Reminded That We Are Not Human Doings, But Human Beings.

Grace Is When You Know You're Loved Exactly As You Are.

Swords Appear Strong, But They're Actually Quite Weak. Jesus Appears Weak, But He's Actually Quite Strong.

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.

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.

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.

Questions Are Not Scary. What Is Scary Is When People Don’t Have Any. What Is Tragic Is Faith That Has No Room For Them.

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.

Every Generation Has To Ask Difficult Questions About What Does It Mean To Follow Jesus.

Difficult Questions

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

If Anybody Didn't Have A Messiah Complex, It Was Jesus.

You Want People Who Are Both Great Fans And Supporters And Believers Of Your Work And People Who Are Also Ruthlessly Honest. People Who Will Tell You The Truth About It. Over The Years I've Picked Up Some Friends And I Know Who To Show What To And They'll Give Me The Proper Read.

The Modern World Has Created Airports And Hospitals And Put 10,000 Songs In Our Pocket. It Has Built Gleaming Buildings And Computers And Advances And Innovations That Blow Our Minds. But We Have Soul, And Spirit, And Consciousness, And The Modern World Hasn't Done So Well At Helping Us Name And Understand What It Means To Be Thriving And Fully Alive With A Full Heart.

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.

So This Is Reality, This Forgiveness, This Reconciliation, Is True For Everybody. Paul Insisted That When Jesus Died On The Cross, He Was Reconciling "all Things, In Heaven And On Earth, To God." All Things, Everywhere. ...this Reality Then Isn't Something We Make Come True About Ourselves By Doing Something. It Is Already True. Our Choice Is To Live In This New Reality Or Cling To A Reality Of Our Own Making.

If The Gospel Isn't Good News For Everybody, Then It Isn't Good News For Anybody.

Faith Can Take Many Different Forms And Expressions.

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.

Doctrine Is A Wonderful Servant And A Horrible Master.

People Have A View Of A God Who Is Terrible That They Can't Even Imagine Being Loving Or Wanting Anything To Do With.

I Like To Say That I Practice Militant Mysticism. I'm Really Absolutely Sure Of Some Things That I Don't Quite Know.

What We Believe About Heaven And Hell Is Incredibly Important Because It Exposes What We Believe About Who God Is And What God Is Like.

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.

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.

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.

Resurrection Is A Belief And Hope In Restoring This World.

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.

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.

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.

I Have Been Told That I Need To Believe In Jesus. Which Is A Good Thing. But What I Am Learning Is That Jesus Believes In Me.

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.

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.

Common Humanity

Christian Is A Great Noun And A Poor Adjective

The Lesson That Has Been Hardest For Me To Learn: There Is Nothing To Prove.

God Is Bigger Than The Christian Faith.

Christian Faith

One Of The Oldest Aches In The Bones Of Humanity Is Loneliness. I Mean It's One Of The Things That Goes Way Back; Loneliness Is Not Good For The World. And So, Whoever You Are, Gay Or Straight, It Is Totally Normal, Natural, And Healthy To Want Somebody To Go Through Life With. It's Central To Our Humanity.

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.

Because With Every Action, Comment, Conversation, We Have The Choice To Invite Heaven Or Hell To Earth.

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

I Believe God Gives People The Right To Say No, To Resist, To Refuse, To Reject, To Cling To Their Sins, To Cling To Their Version Of Their Story.

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.

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.

I'm Very Comfortable In A Room With Thousands Of People.

The Resurrection Confronts Our World With Wonder, Mystery, And Miracles.

Two Of The Most Powerful Words You Can Hear Someone Say Are ‘me Too.’

The Christian Faith Is Mysterious To The Core. It Is About Things And Beings That Ultimately Can't Be Put Into Words. Language Fails. And If We Do Definitively Put God Into Words, We Have At That Very Moment Made God Something God Is Not.

Missions Then Is Less About The Transportation Of God From One Place To Another And More About The Identification Of A God Who Is Already There [...] You See God Where Others Don't. And Then You Point Him Out. So The Issue Isn't So Much Taking Jesus To People Who Don't Have Him, But Going To A Place And Pointing Out To The People The Creative, Life-giving God Who Is Already Present In Their Midst.

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.

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.

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.

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.

I Believe Our World Desperately Needs Good News.

Opening Up Your Soul To Someone, Letting Them Into Your Spirit, Thoughts, Fears, Future, Hopes, Dreams ... That Is Being Naked.

Something Is Profoundly Wrong And We Are Desperate For Justice, For Restoration And For Somebody Somewhere To Do Something About This.

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