Life Is _____. Quotes

“God is with us, loves us, and wants us to be fulfilled and satisfied. God wants our lives to be awesome in every way.”
― Judah Smith, Life Is _____.: God's Illogical Love Will Change Your Existence

“Worry is useless. Worry saps our strength and steals our focus. It causes us to be more awestruck and dumbfounded by storms than by the one who silences storms with a word.”
― Judah Smith, Life Is _____.: God's Illogical Love Will Change Your Existence

“Many of us live with incredible tension and anxiety because we think that our dreams will come true if we just get the right degree, if we just meet the right people, if we just get the right job. We assume our happiness is tied to our success, and our success depends on our performance. So we sweat and struggle and scheme and strategize, and we wonder why we aren’t enjoying life.”
― Judah Smith, Life Is _____.: God's Illogical Love Will Change Your Existence

“Storms happen. I can’t promise that you won’t get wet. I can’t promise that you won’t go through tough times. But I can promise that Jesus is bigger than your storm and that he is with you. The storm will end. The wind will cease. The waves will be still. Jesus will see you safely through to the other side.”
― Judah Smith, Life Is _____.: God's Illogical Love Will Change Your Existence

“God loves us with never-ending love and unconditional passion.”
― Judah Smith, Life Is _____.: God's Illogical Love Will Change Your Existence

“Jesus is giving us an invitation to life. The invitation is to truly live: not just to exist, not just to breathe, but to live life as it was meant to be lived. But his invitation to this existence is paradoxical. God’s invitation to life comes through death.”
― Judah Smith, Life Is _____.: God's Illogical Love Will Change Your Existence

“Everything that tastes awesome makes you look huge. And everything that tastes horrible makes you look awesome. Why, God, why?”
― Judah Smith, Life Is _____.: God's Illogical Love Will Change Your Existence

“Who can this be, that even the wind and the sea obey Him!”
― Judah Smith, Life Is _____.: God's Illogical Love Will Change Your Existence

“Remember, God is what makes the four statements at the heart of this book work: 1. Life is to be loved and to love. 2. Life is to trust God in every moment. 3. Life is to be at peace with God and yourself. 4. Life is to enjoy God.”
― Judah Smith, Life Is _____.: God's Illogical Love Will Change Your Existence

“But what is remarkable and even overwhelming is that because these people are so fixated on the law, they can’t celebrate the fact that this man is now standing and walking. All they can see is that someone healed him on the Sabbath, and now he is carrying his bed on the Sabbath.”
― Judah Smith, Life Is _____.: God's Illogical Love Will Change Your Existence

“I’m a big fan of Disney’s animated movies, or at least of most of them. I don’t know what it is, but the songs get stuck in my head. There is a Disney song for every situation you encounter in life. Some people quote The Godfather. Some quote Monty Python and the Holy Grail. I quote Walt Disney. Those are the true classics.”
― Judah Smith, Life Is _____.: God's Illogical Love Will Change Your Existence

“Sometimes we treat God like an antique chair, when, in fact, God is a lot more like an IKEA couch. I don’t mean in his worth or his beauty or his grandeur, of course—in every category he is beyond compare. But in terms of relationship, we often treat God more like an expensive antique, when he invites us to treat him like an IKEA couch.”
― Judah Smith, Life Is _____.: God's Illogical Love Will Change Your Existence

“But Martha was distracted with much serving, and she approached Him and said, “Lord, do You not care that my sister has left me to serve alone? Therefore tell her to help me.” And Jesus answered and said to her, “Martha, Martha, you are worried and troubled about many things. But one thing is needed, and Mary has chosen that good part, which will not be taken away from her.” (verses 38–42)”
― Judah Smith, Life Is _____.: God's Illogical Love Will Change Your Existence

“1. Life is to be loved and to love. 2. Life is to trust God in every moment. 3. Life is to be at peace with God and yourself. 4. Life is to enjoy God.”
― Judah Smith, Life Is _____.: God's Illogical Love Will Change Your Existence

“If we follow Jesus, our status before God is righteous. The gavel has come down and our righteousness is secure in the work of Jesus Christ. God’s verdict is not subject to change based on our performance. We didn’t become righteous because of our performance, and we can’t lose our righteousness because of our performance. We don’t have to worry about getting escorted off God’s premises. We have access, we have resources, and we have blessings because of Jesus. It is easy to hear this sort of message and get excited about it. We hear a preacher talking about God’s forgiveness and grace on Sunday, and we’re like, “Woohoo! I’m in! This is great!” But then Monday comes around, and it’s really hard to apply this reality when we’re having one of those moments when we lose our minds, or make dumb decisions, or go off on somebody, or do that stupid, ridiculous thing we swore we’d never do again. Suddenly, here comes the negative emotion. Here come the bad feelings. Here comes that sense that our status cannot possibly be the same as it was in church yesterday. That’s what the Bible calls condemnation. It’s a very real phenomenon. If you are a follower of Jesus, a Christian, and have never experienced condemnation, you might be God. For the rest of us mortals, we’ve all experienced it. Guilt. Shame. A sense that our status has changed. I’m going to take this a step further. This might sound weird at first, but I think we actually, in a very sadistic way, enjoy condemnation. Why? Because condemnation is logical; and in a weird, twisted, dark sense, it gratifies our flesh. It actually feels right to feel horrible, to feel depressed, to feel dejected, to feel despair. “I messed up. I did something so stupid. This serves me right.” But in fact, condemnation doesn’t serve us at all. In the verses above, the Bible says that condemnation should have no part in our existence on this planet if we belong to Jesus. As humans, we are experts at confusing our feelings with reality. We take our negative emotions and thoughts at face value, and we think, I feel bad, so I must be bad. I feel guilty, so I must be guilty. And if I’m disappointed and mad at myself, God must be way more disappointed and mad at me. Since we feel condemned, we think we are condemned. And since we think we are condemned, we work harder to regain our lost status. Instead of going confidently to God and asking for his grace to get back up and move forward in life, we try to patch ourselves up and put ourselves back together so we can attain the status of righteous before God again. Ironically, since we will never measure up to perfection, the more we try to earn our righteousness, the worse we feel. It’s the cycle of condemnation. I find it’s far easier to believe we are sinners than to believe we are righteous. But we are already righteous through Jesus. It’s a gift, and it’s called grace. How much time do we waste as Jesus followers trying to recover what we have had all along?”
― Judah Smith, Life Is _____.: God's Illogical Love Will Change Your Existence

“Life does not consist of what should have happened, what might have happened, or what hopefully will happen. Life is what is happening—right now.”
― Judah Smith, Life Is _____.: God's Illogical Love Will Change Your Existence

“We need the joy of our salvation most when we feel like we deserve it the least.”
― Judah Smith, Life Is _____.: God's Illogical Love Will Change Your Existence

“Working in God’s field, by the way, is not meant to be a metaphor for how hard it is to follow God. Jesus is actually saying the opposite: that following God is about his generosity and grace, not about what we do or don’t do. It is a joy to follow God. It is rewarding to obey him. His goodness toward us is far beyond anything we could earn or deserve. We relate to God according to his rich measures of grace and generosity. We don’t have to worry about whether we measure up or whether we are working hard enough to please him. We don’t have to stress out about the future. We don’t have to waste our energy envying other people. We can simply enjoy God and trust God and love God. By the way, this will completely change the way we relate to others. It will make for great friendships. When we trust God to give us what is right, we can celebrate the good things God does for other people. That’s where we really begin to enjoy life. Instead of complaining that you got a cat and Bill got an Escalade, take your cat over for a ride in Bill’s Escalade.”
― Judah Smith, Life Is _____.: God's Illogical Love Will Change Your Existence

“It’s not wrong to do what is in our power to make things right. I’m not advocating laziness or irresponsibility. But our lives must start and end with a dependence on God. They must start and end in the love and grace and mercy of God. Everything else will flow from that.”
― Judah Smith, Life Is _____.: God's Illogical Love Will Change Your Existence

“just because Jesus is in the boat doesn’t mean we won’t go through storms.”
― Judah Smith, Life Is _____.: God's Illogical Love Will Change Your Existence

“He is a today God. He is a now God. And he is here for you.”
― Judah Smith, Life Is _____.: God's Illogical Love Will Change Your Existence

“The formal living room was uniquely and exclusively something to look at. Perfect vacuum lines were to always be engraved in the carpet, unmarred by human footsteps. Pillows were to be delicately fluffed. Furnishings were always to be color coordinated. It was the formal living room. No one dared to actually live life in the formal living room—that was unthinkable.”
― Judah Smith, Life Is _____.: God's Illogical Love Will Change Your Existence

“The opposite of love is not hate; it is selfishness. Adam and Eve chose self over love. They chose self over God.”
― Judah Smith, Life Is _____.: God's Illogical Love Will Change Your Existence

“I think that what Jesus is saying is that what we are expected to be doing is not necessarily what God wants us to be doing. Jesus seems to be implying to Martha, “I know you’re doing what you’re supposed to be doing, but sometimes you need to stop doing anything and just be with me.”
― Judah Smith, Life Is _____.: God's Illogical Love Will Change Your Existence

“have friends who are almost insulted if I do not respond to their text message within the proper five-minute window. That’s the expectancy now. They’re like, “You took seven minutes to respond to my text. Are we still friends?”
― Judah Smith, Life Is _____.: God's Illogical Love Will Change Your Existence

“The answer to our frequent identity crises is not first and foremost focusing on who we are, but focusing on who God is. God is essentially saying, “Moses, I’ve got you covered. I am here. I am available. I have all the supply and surplus you could ever need. I am self-existent. I have no beginning and no end. I just am.” That changes everything. When Jesus says to Martha, “I am the resurrection and the life,” he is reminding her that he is all she really needs. In her grief and desperation, Jesus is the answer. His “I am” is more than enough for her “I need.”
― Judah Smith, Life Is _____.: God's Illogical Love Will Change Your Existence