A Loving Life Quotes

“Sometimes hesed is translated “steadfast love.” It combines commitment with sacrifice. Hesed is one-way love. Love without an exit strategy. When you love with hesed love, you bind yourself to the object of your love, no matter what the response is. So if the object of your love snaps at you, you still love that person. If you’ve had an argument with your spouse in which you were slighted or not heard, you refuse to retaliate through silence or withholding your affection. Your response to the other person is entirely independent of how that person has treated you. Hesed is a stubborn love. Love like this eliminates moodiness, the touchiness that is increasingly common in people today.”
― Paul E. Miller, A Loving Life: In a World of Broken Relationships

“You endure the weight of love by being rooted in God. Your life energy needs to come from God, not the person you are loving. The more difficult the situation, the more you are forced into utter dependence on God. That is the crucible of love, where self-confidence and pride are stripped away, because you simply do not have the power or wisdom or ability in yourself to love. You know without a shadow of a doubt that you can’t love. That is the beginning of faith—knowing you can’t love. Faith is the power for love. Paul the apostle tells us that the I beam or hidden structure of the Christian life is “faith working through love” (Gal. 5:6). Faith energizes love. We handle the weight of love by rooting ourselves in God. Our inability to sustain love drives us into dependence on God. Then faith becomes a continuous cry. Like the tax collector in the temple, we cry out, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner!” (Luke 18:13). In overwhelming situations where you are all out of human love, you discover that you are praying all the time because you can’t get from one moment to the next without God’s help. You realize you can’t do life on your own, and you need God and his love to be the center. You lean upon God because you can’t bear the weight of love. So faith is not a mountain to climb, but a valley to fall”
― Paul E. Miller, A Loving Life: In a World of Broken Relationships

“Being sexually intimate outside of marriage is like giving a stranger the title for your car and hoping he will eventually pay the cost. We would never do with a car title what many young women do with their bodies. Sexual intimacy is not a path to love; it is a seal for love.”
― Paul E. Miller, A Loving Life: In a World of Broken Relationships

“Like Jesus, we must embrace the death that the Father has put in front of us. The path to resurrection is through dying, not fighting.”
― Paul E. Miller, A Loving Life: In a World of Broken Relationships

“When you realize that death is at the center of love, it is quietly liberating. Instead of fighting the death that comes with love, you embrace what your Father has given you. A tiny resurrection begins in your”
― Paul E. Miller, A Loving Life: In a World of Broken Relationships

“if an unseen hand is shaping the day, then the day becomes an adventure.”
― Paul E. Miller, A Loving Life: In a World of Broken Relationships

“Why is hesed love so important? Because life is moody. Feelings come and go. Pressures rise and fall. Passions ebb and flow. Hesed is a stake in the heart of the changing seasons of life. Words of commitment create a bond that stands against life’s moodiness.”
― Paul E. Miller, A Loving Life: In a World of Broken Relationships

“Our “in tune with my feelings” era believes that to be true to myself, to be authentic, means I need to act on my feelings. But the opposite is true. In fact, true authenticity means I maintain a trust through thick and thin.”
― Paul E. Miller, A Loving Life: In a World of Broken Relationships

“Hesed loves regardless of the response. It does not demand recognition or equality. It is uneven.”
― Paul E. Miller, A Loving Life: In a World of Broken Relationships

“Love can be lonely. It does not remain so, but that is often where it does its best work. The greatest acts of love are almost always hidden. But, Jesus tells us, “There is nothing hidden that will not be disclosed” (Luke 8:17, NIV).”
― Paul E. Miller, A Loving Life: In a World of Broken Relationships

“in the silence of losing you find yourself tucked under the wings of God.”
― Paul E. Miller, A Loving Life: In a World of Broken Relationships

“The modern quest for authenticity has become twisted into a quest to have our will and our emotions in sync. This faux authenticity is just a fancy version of the sixties slogan, “If it feels good, do it.” So the celebration of being “true to yourself” means acting on your feelings. “I’m not in love with my spouse anymore, so I’m going to leave.” This oft-repeated formula, the logic behind many broken covenants, equates love with feeling happy. The result? We are dominated by the tyranny of our ever-changing feelings. We”
― Paul E. Miller, A Loving Life: In a World of Broken Relationships

“At a difficult time in my life when multiple relationships had imploded, God continually brought Isaiah 30:15 to mind: “In repentance and rest is your salvation” (NIV). I wanted other people to repent. God wanted me to repent. I sensed God closing all the doors in my life except the one marked “Repentance.” So”
― Paul E. Miller, A Loving Life: In a World of Broken Relationships

“God doesn’t like to be experienced. He wants to be known.”
― Paul E. Miller, A Loving Life: In a World of Broken Relationships

“Suffering is the frame, the context, where we learn to love.”
― Paul E. Miller, A Loving Life: In a World of Broken Relationships

“Hesed love isn’t just doing love; it is the enjoyment of love. It likes to have parties.”
― Paul E. Miller, A Loving Life: In a World of Broken Relationships

“Hope is the faint glimmer on the distant horizon. It keeps you moving on the journey of love. The closing scene of the first chapter of Ruth ends with a hint of hope: “And they came to Bethlehem at the beginning of the barley harvest” (Ruth 1:22).”
― Paul E. Miller, A Loving Life: In a World of Broken Relationships

“The cure for a cranky soul begins by repenting, by realizing that my moodiness is a demand that my life have a certain shape. Surrendering to the life that my Father has given me always puts me under the shelter of his wings. That leaves me whole again, and surprisingly cheerful.”
― Paul E. Miller, A Loving Life: In a World of Broken Relationships

“In America, where we have incredible abundance, we are becoming increasingly cranky. Our touchiness is fed by an outlook on life that, following Emerson and Thoreau, enshrines the self. When feeling happy is the goal, we always end up testy because life conspires against us.”
― Paul E. Miller, A Loving Life: In a World of Broken Relationships

“Like Jesus, she takes the lower place. Love and humility are inseparable. When serving is combined with humility, the serving becomes almost pleasurable. You are thankful for any gift given you. In contrast, pride can’t bear the weight of unequal love. Imagine a very different Ruth with a modern, victim-fed attitude. She comes to the field seething at Naomi for ignoring her yesterday and not helping her today, and irritated at God that he has put her in a situation where she is alone and vulnerable. So when Boaz offers to help, she is only grudgingly thankful, since he doesn’t know how hard her life is or what she’s given up. How could his small gifts ever make up what she’s lost? Her simmering bitterness, her wounded sense of injustice, saps the joy out of life. Pride makes others’ joy, or even the possibility of our own joy, feel phony. It is an odd sort of authenticity where we demand that others be as depressed as we are.”
― Paul E. Miller, A Loving Life: In a World of Broken Relationships

“Self-sacrificing love that isn’t shaped by truth ends up as just another expression of human self-will.”
― Paul E. Miller, A Loving Life: In a World of Broken Relationships

“As Jesus says in the Sermon on the Mount, “If you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same?” (Matt. 5:46). In other words, if I love only when I feel like it, then I’ve really not understood love.”
― Paul E. Miller, A Loving Life: In a World of Broken Relationships

“broken up by life” is the place where we get to know God. His”
― Paul E. Miller, A Loving Life: In a World of Broken Relationships

“According to Paul, our shame is God’s vessel for glory (1 Cor. 4:9). Ruth’s”
― Paul E. Miller, A Loving Life: In a World of Broken Relationships

“When I said ‘for better or for worse’ that included mental illness and meanness. I’ve got to play out the hand that the Lord has given me.” As”
― Paul E. Miller, A Loving Life: In a World of Broken Relationships

“Ruth’s walk through the city gates, ignored and unthanked, vividly portrays the cost of love. Ruth bears the weight of Naomi’s life. We usually recoil from the cost of love, thinking it is an alien substance, but it is the essence of love. This is strangely encouraging because when the pressure of love builds, we think that somehow we showed up for the wrong life. This isn’t what we signed up for. But no, this is the divine path called love.”
― Paul E. Miller, A Loving Life: In a World of Broken Relationships

“We usually recoil from the cost of love, thinking it is an alien substance, but it is the essence of love. This is strangely encouraging because when the pressure of love builds, we think that somehow we showed up for the wrong life. This isn’t what we signed up for. But no, this is the divine path called love.”
― Paul E. Miller, A Loving Life: In a World of Broken Relationships

“Accepting ambiguity is immensely helpful in the work of love, because when we encounter this strange mixture of good and bad in another person, we tend to lock onto the evil and miss the good. We don’t like ambiguity. We prefer the clarity of judging.”
― Paul E. Miller, A Loving Life: In a World of Broken Relationships