Love Does: Discover a Secretly Incredible Life in an Ordinary World Quotes

“I used to think God guided us by opening and closing doors, but now I know sometimes God wants us to kick some down.”

“Grace works that way. It’s a kind word from a gentle person with an impossible prayer. It’s a force sometimes transmitted best hand to hand in a dark place.”

“Thinking about work as a day job has made a big difference in the way I approach what I do. It also helped me not to confuse who I am with what I do.”

“When we want something that bad, it’s easy to mistake what we truly need for the thing we really want. When this sort of thing happens, and it seems to happen to everyone, I’ve found it’s because what God has for us is obscured from view, just around another bend in the road.”

“That’s what love does - it pursues blindly, unflinchingly, and without end. When you go after something you love, you’ll do anything it takes to get it, even if it costs everything.”

“The thing I love about God is He intentionally guides people into failure.”

“I used to be afraid of failing at something that really mattered, but now I’m more afraid of succeeding at things that doesn’t matter.”

“People who follow Jesus, though, are no longer typical - God is constantly inviting them into a life that moves away from typical.”

“Failure is just part of the process, and it’s not just okay; it’s better than okay. God doesn’t want failure to shut us down. God didn’t make it a three-strikes-and-you’re-out sort of thing. It’s more about how God helps us dust ourselves off so we can swing for the fences again. And all of this without keeping a meticulous record of our screw-ups.”

“Living a life fully engaged and full of whimsy and the kind of things that love does is something most people plan to do, but along the way they just kind of forget. Their dreams become one of those “we’ll go there next time” deferrals. The sad thing is, for many there is no “next time” because passing on the chance to cross over is an overall attitude toward life rather than a single decision.”

“Wouldn’t it be a horrible thing if we studied the ones we loved instead of bonding in deeper ways to doing things with them?”

“It has always seemed to me that broken things, just like broken people, get used more; it’s probably because God has more pieces to work with.”

“Most people need love and acceptance a lot more than they need advice.”

“We were all meant to save many lives. God is always trying to save lives, and it seems like He usually uses the least likely people to do it.”

“Love is never stationary in the end. Love doesn’t just keep thinking about it or keep planning for it. Simply put: love does!”

“I learned that faith isn’t about knowing all the right stuff or obeying a list of ruled. It’s something more, something more costly because it involves being present and making a sacrifice. Perhaps that’s why Jesus is sometimes called Immanuel - ‘God with us.’ I think that’s what God had in mind, for Jesus to be present, to just be with us. It’s also what He has in mind for us when it comes to other people.”

“Actually, the real game of Bigger and Better that Jesus is playing with us usually isn’t about money or possessions or even our hopes. It’s about our pride. He asks if we’ll give up that thing we’re so proud of, that thing we believe causes us to matter in the eyes of the world, and give it up to follow Him. He’s asking us, ‘Will you take what you think defines you, leave it behind, and let Me define who you are instead?‘”

“I don’t think anyone aims to be typical, really. Most people even vow to themselves some time in high school or college not to be typical. But still, they just kind of loop back to it somehow. Like the circular rails of a train at an amusement park, the scripts we know offer a brand of security, of predictability, of safety for us. But the problem is, they only take us where we’ve already been. They loop us back to places where everyone can easily go, not necessarily where we were made to go. Living a different kind of life takes some guts and grit and a new way of seeing things.”

“Finally, and definitely the coolest part, is that you get a card from the State Department that gives you diplomatic immunity. I wasn’t exactly sure what diplomatic immunity meant, so I asked around to see if I could kill someone. Not someone important, of course, but someone normal - like Doug. I never got a call back on the question so I’m operating under the assumption that I can.”

“I think God sometimes uses the completely inexplicable events in our lives to point us toward Him. We get to decide each time whether we will lean in toward what is unfolding and say yes or back away. The folks who were following Jesus in Galilee got to decide the same thing each day because there was no road map, no program, and no certainty. All they had was this person, an idea, and an invitation to come and see.”