Everybody, Always: Becoming Love in a World Full of Setbacks and Difficult People

by Bob Goff

We don’t need to call everything we do “ministry” anymore either. Just call it Tuesday. That’s what people who are becoming love do.

Jesus’ message to the world is as simple as it is challenging: It’s not about us anymore; it’s about Him.

People who are turning into love give their love away freely without any thought about who gets credit for it.

We talk about what we love the most. People who are becoming love talk a lot more about what God’s doing than what they’re doing because they’ve stopped keeping score.

People who are turning into love do this. They adopt beautiful patterns and surrounding imagery for their lives. They fill their lives with songs, practices, and habits that communicate love, acceptance, grace, generosity, whimsy, and forgiveness. People who are becoming love repeat these actions so often they don’t even realize they’re doing it anymore. It’s just finger memory to them.

Keep this in mind, though: loving people the way Jesus did is always great theology.

Playing it safe doesn’t move us forward or help us grow; it just finds us where we are and leaves us in the same condition it found us in. God wants something different for us.

Loving people we don’t understand or agree with is just the kind of beautiful, counterintuitive, risky stuff people who are becoming love do.

What delights you? What fires your imagination? What fills you with a deep sense of meaning and purpose? What draws you closer to God? What is going to last in your life and in the lives of others? Do those things.

planning to love people is different than just loving people. For some people, it’s easier to make plans than to make time. If this is you, here’s how to fix it: make love your plan. There’s less to write down that way.

Jesus probably wants us to show people who He is by what we do, not just tell them what we think.

God wants to use people like us to show the world what we know about Jesus by having them see the way we love the people around us. Particularly the difficult ones.

The beautiful message of Jesus is His invitation to everyone that they can trade in who they used to be for who God sees them becoming. He said we can each get a new identity in Him. The people who take Him up on this offer begin to define success and failure the way He did. They move from merely identifying with someone’s pain to standing with them in it, and from having a bunch of opinions to giving away love and grace freely. People who are becoming love make doing these things look effortless.

When we draw a circle around the whole world like grace did and say everybody is in, God’s love gives us bigger identities than we used to have. With our newer, bigger identities, we can draw even bigger arcs around people’s lives. We start to see that our time here isn’t meant to be spent forming opinions about the people we meet. It’s an opportunity to draw the kind of circles around them that grace has drawn around us, until everybody is on the inside.

We’re not held back by what we don’t have, but by what we don’t use.

just keep bringing whatever you have to God and let Him decide what He’ll do with it.

He knows he’s neither defined nor limited by his circumstances. He sees power in his brokenness and opportunities in the opposition he faces.

People like Karl don’t think about what they’ve lost. They think about what they’ll do with what they still have. And the answer is much.

Sometimes prayers are spoken, and other times they are said in our actions.

God isn’t always leading us to the safest route forward but to the one where we’ll grow the most.

He didn’t need more words or to know what they meant in Greek or Hebrew. He just needed an opportunity.

What we actually want is that extra nudge of confidence from God and the opportunity to move forward courageously to do those things we already know how to do. What a shame it would be if we were waiting for God to say something while He’s been waiting on us to do something. He speaks to me the loudest on the way. Simply put, if we want more faith, we need to do more stuff.

His biggest priority isn’t removing failure as an option but reminding me He loves me as I try.

He’s written things on our hearts like love and grace and patience and compassion so we can write those things on the hearts of our friends.

He said we’ll talk about how we treated the people we came across during our lives and whether we treated them as if they were Him.

What it seems He’ll care about most is how we treated the people on the fringes of our lives. He’ll want to talk about whether we gave them a hug or some much-needed help. All of this because He said if we did kind things for the lonely and hurting and isolated in the world we were really doing it for Him.

“We didn’t know it was You. We just decided we’d love people the way You said to.”

He said if we wanted to be with Him, we’d stop playing it safe and go talk to them instead of talking about them.

Sure, I noticed them, but I just wasn’t close enough to recognize it wasn’t just hurting, lonely people I was passing by—it was Jesus I was avoiding.

I know it’s hard to believe, but they’re Jesus—even the ones who look and act so differently than He did.

People don’t follow vision; they follow availability.

I don’t want what’s fair anymore. I want to be like Jesus. It’s a distinction worth making.

We don’t need to be the hero in everyone’s story. Jesus already landed that part.

I once heard someone say, “If you want applause, join the circus.” If you want to talk about it with Jesus forever, keep it quiet.

I do it because Jesus said we were supposed to, and I came to play, not to watch.

Here’s the simple message Jesus has for us: if we fill our buckets with love, we can actually become love.

People will figure out what we really believe by seeing what we actually do.

Another great quote from @BobGoff in his book "Everybody, Always".

During the times when I’m confused, my feelings have been hurt, or I’m exhausted or frustrated, I’m learning how to fill my bucket with love.

People don’t grow where they’re planted; they grow where they’re loved.

Knowing things about the Bible is terrific. But I’d trade in a dozen Bible studies for a bucket full of acceptance—and truth b...

He knew the gospel wasn’t a bunch of rules to obey; it was a Person to follow and be one with.

I spoke to a guy once who said the church had hurt his feelings, so he was leaving it. I told him, “You can’t leave the church, you are the church.”

At our church there is nothing to join, just Jesus.

Many of us think of our big mistakes as disqualifying us; God sees them as preparing us.

He said if we wanted to please God, we needed to love our enemies.

it’s a lot easier to agree with Jesus than to do what He says.

Our problem following Jesus is we’re trying to be a better version of us, rather than a more accurate reflection of Him.

there’s a big difference between liking Jesus and being like Him, and He said we would never be able to be like Him unless we loved our enemies.

What Kabi and I are both learning about love and grace and forgiveness is that none of us needs to fully understand it to fully receive it.

He said He would turn us into love if we were willing to leave behind who we used to be.