Love Does: Discover a Secretly Incredible Life in an Ordinary World
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9%
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But the kind of love that God created and demonstrated is a costly one because it involves sacrifice and presence.
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He spent time with the kinds of people most of us spend our lives avoiding.
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people who haven’t met Jesus are going to think the people who have met Jesus are crazy.
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The people who slowly became typical have the greatest problem wrapping their minds around a dynamic friendship with an invisible, alive God.
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Jesus told the people He was with that it’s not enough to just look like you love God. He said we’d know the extent of our love for God by how well we loved people.
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I used to be afraid of failing at something that really mattered to me, but now I’m more afraid of succeeding at things that don’t matter.
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The thing I love about God is He intentionally guides people into failure. He made us be born as little kids who can’t walk or talk or even use a bathroom correctly. We have to be taught everything. All that learning takes time, and He made us so we are dependent on Him, our parents, and each other. The whole thing is designed so we try again and again until we finally get it right. And the whole time He is endlessly patient.
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God finds us in our failures and our successes, and He says that while we used to think one way about things, now He wants us to think another way about those same things. And for me, I’ve realized that I used to be afraid of failing at the things that really mattered to me, but now I’m more afraid of succeeding at things that don’t matter.
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I’ve learned that God sometimes allows us to find ourselves in a place where we want something so bad that we can’t see past it. Sometimes we can’t even see God because of it. When we want something that bad, it’s easy to mistake what we truly need for the thing we really want.
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But I’ve always wondered if, when we want to do something that we know is right and good, God places that desire deep in our hearts because He wants it for us and it honors Him. Maybe there are times when we think a door has been closed and, instead of misinterpreting the circumstances, God wants us to kick it down.
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I used to think you had to be special for God to use you, but now I know you simply need to say yes.
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God is always trying to save lives, and it seems like He usually uses the least likely people to do it.
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“You know what it is about someone that makes them a friend? A friend doesn’t just say things; a friend does
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I think every day God sends us an invitation to live and sometimes we forget to show up or get head-faked into thinking we haven’t really been invited. But you see, we have been invited—every day, all over again.
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I don’t think God is the kind of guy who forces Himself on anybody either.
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I think God pays attention to our hearts and enjoys when people want to get close to Him. He knows our sadness and the brokenness we want to hide from Him, and He sends people to look for us.
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I used to think the words spoken about us describe who we are, but now I know they shape who we are.
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He asks if we’ll give up that thing we’re so proud of, that thing we believe causes us to matter in the eyes of the world, and give it up to follow Him.
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For example, I say that I don’t have the time to do something when what I really lack is compassion.
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when we meet people who have been fed the fake stuff about who God is and what He’s about, it’s not surprising that they have a little indigestion.
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I think faith can be kind of the same because Jesus didn’t always explain everything in great detail. If someone I trust tells me something, and I know it’s for my benefit, I just trust it.
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I think God doesn’t spell out everything for us in life, but He does tell us how we can write our lives better; and trusting Him implicitly is always the right place to start.
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It taught me that when God is big enough and loves me enough to say He forgives me, I should actually believe Him. I mean, I shouldn’t keep feeling bad about all of the times I’ve messed up because that’s ignoring what God said,
62%
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God doesn’t speak to me with a voice to make audio needles move, but there are times when I’ve sensed something down deep, almost like a tuning fork has just been pinged in my soul.
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He asks us to hang that version of ourselves for everyone to see. Despite our inherent beauty, each of us is tempted to hide the original so we won’t get damaged.
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Jesus modeled that we don’t need to talk about everything we’ve done. It’s like He was saying, what if we were just to do awesome, incredible stuff together while we’re here on earth and the fact that only He knew would be enough?
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God delights in answering our impossible prayers.
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God says He wants us to battle injustice, to look out for orphans and widows, to give sacrificially.
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Palms up means you have nothing to hide and nothing to gain or lose. Palms up means you are strong enough to be vulnerable, even with your enemies. Even when you have been tremendously wronged. Jesus was palms up, to the end.