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

by Bob Goff

God’s idea isn’t that we would just give and receive love but that we could actually become love.

Burning down others’ opinions doesn’t make us right. It makes us arsonists.

Those who are becoming love don’t throw people off roofs; they lower people through them instead.

What I’ve come to realize is if I really want to “meet Jesus,” then I have to get a lot closer to the people He created. All of them, not just some of them.

whenever I make my opinions more important than the difficult people God made, I turn the wine back into water.

Arguments won’t change people. Simply giving away kindness won’t either. Only Jesus has the power to change people, and it will be harder for them to see Jesus if their view of Him is blocked by our big opinions.

Find a way to love difficult people more, and you’ll be living the life Jesus talked about.

When joy is a habit, love is a reflex.

Don’t tell people what they want; tell them who they are.

We need every type of prayer I suppose, but I don’t think we need to sound like each other. God isn’t wowed by fancy words; He delights in humble hearts.

Loving people doesn’t mean we need to control their conduct.

Loving people means caring without an agenda. As soon as we have an agenda, it’s not love anymore.

It’s acting like you care to get someone to do what you want or what you think God wants them to do. Do less of that, and people will see a lot less of you and more of Jesus.

He said He wanted us to become new creations. His plan for our renewal is that we cut away all the things hanging us up and start all over again each day with Him.

People who are becoming love stop faking it about who they are and where they are in their lives and their faith.

The Bible is full of stories of people who messed up. It seems like failure in the world was a requirement for success with God.

God has never looked in your mirror or mine and wished He saw someone else. Every time we fake it and aren’t authentic, we make God’s love for us look fake too.

our lives will never be about Jesus if we keep making everything about ourselves.

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

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.

If our life and our identity are found in Jesus, I think we can redefine safe as staying close to Him.

A movement is just a bunch of people making moves.

God hasn’t been shouting instructions to me as I’ve made mistakes because He doesn’t need to. His silence isn’t indifference; it’s engagement.

What we do with our love will become the conversations we have with God.

People don’t follow vision; they follow availability.

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

We all encounter difficulties. It’s what we do next that defines us.

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

People who are becoming love lose all the labels because they know they don’t need them.

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

He didn’t give us a membership; He gave us a message.

God said He doesn’t dwell in buildings made by men; instead, we can find Him in the people He made who want their lives to look like His.

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

Sometimes God uses the most difficult things in our lives to show us the most accurate things about our lives—if we have the guts to receive a little grace.

I don’t think people grow old. I think they just lose their imaginations and end up looking old.

Great love often involves tremendous risk.

It’s easy to admire Jesus and think He’s a nice guy. But 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.

There is no love without justice, but there is no justice without love.

I don’t think we have any business telling people what to change in their lives unless we’re willing to change a couple of things in ours.

Don’t tell them all your opinions; give them all your love.