Rob Bell Quotes

When you forgive somebody, when you are generous, when you withhold judgment, when you love and when you stand up to injustice, you are, in that moment, bringing heaven to earth.

If the gospel isn't good news for everybody, then it isn't good news for anybody. And this is because the most powerful things happen when the church surrenders its desire to convert people and convince them to join. It is when the church gives itself away in radical acts of service and compassion, expecting nothing in return, that the way of Jesus is most vividly put on display.

Love is what God is, love is why Jesus came, and love is why he continues to come, year after year to person after person...May you experience this vast, expansive, infinite, indestructible love that has been yours all along. May you discover that this love is as wide as the sky and as small as the cracks in your heart no one else knows about, and may you know, deep in your bones, that love wins.

Because with every action, comment, conversation, we have the choice to invite Heaven or Hell to Earth.

Why blame the dark for being dark? It is far more helpful to ask why the light isn’t as bright as it could be.

What we do comes out of who we believe we are.

Times change. God doesn’t, but times do. We learn and grow, and the world around us shifts, and the Christian faith is alive only when it is listening, morphing, innovating, letting go of whatever has gotten in the way of Jesus and embracing whatever will help us be more and more the people God wants us to be.

I would say that the powerful, revolutionary thing about Jesus' message is that he says, 'What do you do with the people that aren't like you? What do you do with the Other? What do you do with the person that's hardest to love?' . . . That's the measure of a good religion, is - you can love the people who are just like you; that's kind of easy. So what Jesus does is takes the question and talks about fruit. He's interested in what you actually produce. And that's a different discussion. How do we love the people in the world that are least like us?

opening up your soul to someone, letting them into your spirit, thoughts, fears, future, hopes, dreams ... that is being naked.

It is trusting that I am loved. That I always have been. That I always will be. I don't have to do anything. I don't have to prove anything, or achieve anything, or accomplish one more thing. That, exactly as I am, I am totally accepted, forgiven, and there is nothing I could ever do to lose this acceptance.

Take faith, for example. For many people in our world, the opposite of faith is doubt. The goal, then, within this understanding, is to eliminate doubt. But faith and doubt aren't opposites. Doubt is often a sign that your faith has a pulse, that it's alive and well and exploring and searching. Faith and doubt aren't opposites, they are, it turns out, excellent dance partners.

The moment God is figured out with nice neat lines and definitions, we are no longer dealing with God.

Well, I affirm orthodox Christian faith. I affirm the Nicene Creed. I don't think I'm doing anything terribly new.

Suffering is traumatic and awful and we get angry and we shake our fists at the heavens and we vent and rage and weep. But in the process we discover a new tomorrow, one we never would have imagined otherwise.

The life that you want begins the moment you embrace the life you have because all of it is a miracle.

Agape doesn't love somebody because they're worthy. Agape makes them worthy by the strength and power of its love. Agape doesn't love somebody because they're beautiful. Agape loves in such a way that it makes them beautiful.

Jesus is bigger than any one religion. He didn't come to start a new religion, and he continually disrupted whatever conventions or systems or establishments that existed in his day. He will always transcend whatever cages and labels are created to contain and name him, especially the one called "Christianity.

Some communities don't permit open, honest inquiry about the things that matter most. Lots of people have voiced a concern, expressed a doubt, or raised a question, only to be told by their family, church, friends, or tribe: "We don't discuss those things here." I believe the discussion itself is divine. Abraham does his best to bargain with God, most of the book of Job consists of arguments by Job and his friends about the deepest questions of human suffering, God is practically on trial in the book of Lamentations, and Jesus responds to almost every question he's asked with...a question.

This breath, and this moment, and this life is a gift and we are all in this together. We all have countless choices every day to close down or stand up straight and open up, and take a big breath and say YES to the gift.

Fear wants us to become obsessed with some event or person in the future, a year, a month, even a day. It also wants us to look backwards not at our successes, but our short-comings and our failures. Fear losses it's grip when we stay in the now.

Often times when I meet atheists and we talk about the god they don’t believe in, we quickly discover that I don’t believe in that god, either.

If we are serious about loving someone, we have to surrender all the desires within us to manipulate the relationship.

That breath that you just took, that's a gift!

The vibrant, real historic Christian faith is very wide and leaves lots and lots of room for varying perspectives. It's very diverse and wide, that's part of it's strength, life and vibrancy.

It takes quite a spine to turn the other cheek. It takes phenomenal fortitude to love your enemy. It takes firm resolve to pray for those who persecute you. (with reference to Matthew 5)

What does happen constantly with all kinds of people I meet is they say "I had this encounter with Jesus, can you help me understand it..." The labels, more than ever, simply aren't big enough to contain what the cosmic Christ is up to in the world.

My experience is that lots of people go to church, sing the songs, tell the story, etc but have profound ambivalence about God.

The historical orthodox Christian faith is extremely wide and diverse.

Your life is a gift and how you respond to it - what you do with it matters. That's where I start.

The world is desperately in need of people who will break themselves open and pour themselves out for the reconciliation of all things- that's what the world needs.

When the female voice is repressed and stifled, the entire community can easily find themselves cut off from the sacred feminine, depriving themselves of the full image of god.

Your deepest, darkest sins and your shameful secrets are simply irrelevant when it comes to the counterintuitive, ecstatic announcement of the gospel. So are your goodness, your rightness, your church attendance, and all of the wise, moral, mature decisions you have made and actions you have taken.

Grace is when you know you're loved exactly as you are.

I am for marriage. I am for fidelity. I am for love, whether it's a man and woman, a woman and a woman, a man and a man.

Missions then is less about the transportation of God from one place to another and more about the identification of a God who is already there [...] You see God where others don't. And then you point him out. So the issue isn't so much taking Jesus to people who don't have him, but going to a place and pointing out to the people the creative, life-giving God who is already present in their midst.

The peace we are offered is not a peace that is free from tragedy, illness, bankruptcy, divorce, depression, or heartache. It is peace rooted in the trust that the life Jesus gives us is deeper, wider, stronger, and more enduring than whatever our current circumstances are, because all we see is not all there is and the last word about us and our struggle has not yet been spoken.

I have been told that I need to believe in Jesus. Which is a good thing. But what I am learning is that Jesus believes in me.

The life you want begins by embracing the life you have.

If anybody didn't have a messiah complex, it was Jesus.

Salvation is the entire universe being brought back into harmony with its maker.

When the lab rats hear the bell ringing, they freeze. That's what fear does to you - fear stops you dead in your tracks. Fear can keep you from harm, but fear can also rob you of your potential. Fear can rob you of an experience. Fear can rob you of happiness. Fear can rob you of real life... Darkness has a way of scaring us.

Many of the most significant moments in our lives come not because it all went right but because it all fell apart

The great German scholar Helmut Thielicke once said that a person who speaks to this hour’s need will always be skirting the edge of heresy, but only the person who risks those heresies can gain the truth.

Jesus is God's way of refusing to give up his dream for the world.

The ancient Hebrews had a word for this awareness of the importance of things. They called it kavod. Kavod originally was a business term, referring to the heaviness of something, which was crucial in weights and measures and the maintaining of fairness in transactions. Over time the word began to take on a more figurative meaning, referring to the importance and significance of something.

I am for marriage. I am for fidelity. I am for love, whether it's a man and woman, a woman and a woman, a man and a man. I think the ship has sailed and I think the church needs -- I think this is the world we are living in and we need to affirm people wherever they are.

I think what's happened in the modern world, there's a lot of people that sound very smart and it's very compelling and alluring, but it leaves you empty.

If the gospel isn't good news for everybody, then it isn't good news for anybody.

The Christian faith is mysterious to the core. It is about things and beings that ultimately can't be put into words. Language fails. And if we do definitively put God into words, we have at that very moment made God something God is not.

I believe our world desperately needs Good News.