Bob Goff is a New York Times Best Selling Author, a husband, dad, adventurer and lover of life. Goff is an author of two books, as well as a founder of a nonprofit that does important work for women and children around the world. If you ever had the pleasure to meet him, I am sure the first thing he would want you to know about himself is his overwhelming and contagious love for Jesus. His life is in full pursuit of joy and loving other people. You can’t help but be inspired by his heart and his way with words after reading this book Everybody, Always. It was published last year and has been changing the world in little ways ever since. This book was a joy to read, so good to discuss with a friend, and opened my eyes to many ways I could be loving people better. The title sums up the way who and when we are to love people in our lives: everybody always. That’s whether they are our favorite people and are oh-so-easy to love or they are the ones who make us work a little harder to be loving. Here are just a few of the quotes that really stole my heart. I hope they inspire you, too.
- “They give away love like they’re made of it.”
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This book is about more than loving people well. It’s about being love. To be love is to be consumed by it so much so that you can’t do anything, but love someone. It’s a process and you might never completely get to the end result, but the person you will become while trying is the best version of yourself you could possibly be.
- “Loving the neighbors we don’t understand takes work and humility and patience and guts.”
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Loving people in this crazy world does not always come easy or natural. Sometimes it takes a lot of effort and courage, but that doesn’t mean we should give up trying. It means we should try even harder.
- “Be. Not. Afraid. These words have exactly as much power as we give them in our lives. People who are becoming love experience the same uncertainties we all do. They just stop letting fear call the shots.”
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Love comes with a caveat of fear and risk. Life is messy and complicated and hard. There is never going to be a time in life when fear doesn’t try to keep you from doing what’s right. Fear and anxiety don’t let up. That doesn’t mean they are stronger than love. Become love and then there is no way that fear can take it away from you because it is part of who you are.
- “No one expects us to love them flawlessly, but we can love them fearlessly, furiously, and unreasonably.”
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Everyone has realistic expectations about love. They don’t expect you to love them perfectly 100% of the time. They just expect you to show up and be there. Being present is the easiest, yet most meaningful way to show love.
- “I don’t know if the streets of heaven are paved in gold, but I’m kind of hoping they’re lined with balloons. And at the end of the parade, I bet we’ll find Jesus blowing us kisses, rubbing our noses, and welcoming us to our next neighborhood.”
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Heaven can seem so far away. We have a million questions about the logistics of it all and what it will be like. Who’s to say it isn’t filled with balloons? It is after all, filled with celebration and love.
- “I’ve always thought that people who didn’t want to be with people here are going to hate heaven. Truly, it will be everybody, always there.”
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Now this is Bob spilling the tea. This is one of those convicting, toe-stepping, “oof” moments where he really puts it into perspective.
- “I want people to meet you and me and feel like they’ve just met everyone in heaven.”
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How cool would this be? What if this is how someone felt after meeting you?
- “People who are becoming love keep it real about who they are right now, while living in constant anticipation about who God’s helping them become.”
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You don’t have to be perfect to begin living a life that radiates love. You just have to know that every day you’re getting a little better and if you slip up, you can get back up again and start where you left off. Someone wise once said, “just keep swimming.” And I think that applies to loving people even when you lose patience and slip up.
- “They don’t memorize the good or bad they or anyone else have done. Jesus didn’t do any of the relational math either. He just became Love, and the world’s never been the same.”
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Often times, we look at relationships as give and take. What am I receiving from this relationship and what am I giving? What if we stopped thinking like that and started loving recklessly and boundlessly until we forgot that there was any give and take at all?
- “What I’ve come to learn so far about my faith is Jesus never asked anyone to play it safe… Loving people we don’t understand or agree with is just the kind of beautiful, counterintuitive, risky stuff people who are becoming love do.”
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In a world as wild as ours, love doesn’t really make a whole lot of sense. It defies all the rules and changes everything for the better. It requires bravery. Jesus also requires a significant amount of bravery, which makes sense why Jesus and love go hand in hand.
- “He brings joyful, beautiful, fun people into our lives and a few difficult ones too.”
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God is good because He gives us our most favorite people. However, He makes no mistakes when putting those difficult people in our lives as well. Trust me, I’ve had my own fair share of “hard to love” people and I am still in the process of the forgiveness that has to come before the love. We all have those people. Maybe we can all take a little baby step towards loving them more today.
- “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 he 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.”
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Jesus calls us to love people that we might otherwise forget about. He says that loving the smallest people is a reflection of our love for Him. Love is the most powerful, mind-blowing, ridiculously beautiful force in this world and it can move mountains.
- “Loving my neighbors, even when they’re the punishingly slow rental-car guy, means I have to find a new way to engage them. To pull this off, I need to do it with an unreasonable amount of patience and kindness and understanding.”
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Y’all, sometimes loving people is hard. You know exactly who I am talking about? Loving those people is it’s own kind of difficult, but try to perserve in pursuit of that patient love.
- “I’ve never related to scripted prayers. It would be like my kids talking to me, or Jesus talking to His friends, using 3×5 inch note cards. When I do it right, my prayers feel like a conversation with a friend and my words feel more like breaths of air than fancy speeches.”
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This perspective on prayer is beautiful and often uncommon. It makes the task less daunting and more approachable. Prayer is a direct line to the God of the universe, but that doesn’t mean it has to be super formal. Talk to Him like He’s your dad and your friend and your comforter and secret keeper all at once.
- “God isn’t always leading us down the safest route forward but to the one where we’ll grow the most.”
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Whether you are in a safe and comfortable place and loving people is fun and sweet or you’re in a tough spot of stretching and learning, God wants you to grow where you are. He wants us to love people whether we feel like we are walking a tightrope or wrapped up in a blanket.
There are many lessons to be learned from this beautiful book. There are plenty of quotes to be aesthetically added to your bedroom wall. Whatever you’re looking for about life and love and Jesus, this book is a good place to start.