Rob Bell Quotes

Your marriage will only be as healthy as the least healthy one of you.

What does it mean to never be separated from love? Is that how you live every day? In every thought, are you constantly reminded that love is the ground of your being?

You can be very religious and invoke the name of God and be able to quote lots of verses and be well versed in complicated theological systems and yet not be a person who sees. It’s one thing to sing about God and recite quotes about God and invoke God’s name; it’s another be aware of the presence in every taste, touch, sound, and embrace.

With Jesus, what we see again and again is that it’s never just a person, or just a meal, or just an event, because there’s always more going on just below the surface.

I can’t find one place in the teachings of Jesus, or the Bible for that matter, where we are to identity ourselves first and foremost as sinners.

People wrote these stories down because they found in them something that helped restore their dignity; the stories gave them a sense of identity; they helped give voice to their pain.

Pain has a way of making us more honest.

Love is giving up control. It’s surrendering the desire to control the other person. The two — love and controlling power over the other person — are mutually exclusive. If we are serious about loving someone, we have to surrender all the desires within us to manipulate the relationship.

"It is possible for music to be labeled "Christian" and be terrible music. It could lack creativity and inspiration. The lyrics could be recycled cliches. That "Christian" band could actually be giving Jesus a bad name because they aren't a great band. It is possible for a movie to be a "Christian" movie and to be a terrible movie. It may actually desecrate the art form in its quality and storytelling and craft."

Churches and religious communities and organizations can claim to speak for God while at the same time actually being behind the movement of God that is continuing forward in the culture around them . . .

without their participation.

"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."

If we want hell,
if we want heaven,
they are ours.

That's how love works. It can't be forced, manipulated, or coerced.
It always leaves room for the other to decide.
God says yes,
we can have what we want,
because love wins.

Why would we ever be surprised when truth turns up in strange places?

That’s why the Bible is not a book about going to heaven. The action is here. The life is here. The point is here. It’s a library of books about the healing and restoring and reconciling and renewing of this world. Our home.

God has to punish sinners, because God is holy, but Jesus has paid the price for our sin, and so we can have eternal life. However true or untrue that is technically or theologically, what it can do is subtly teach people that Jesus rescues us from God.

If you feel stuck in your life, like it’s passing you by, like there’s something way better for you somewhere out there and you’re missing it, try this — try throwing yourself into the small things and repeating to yourself: This is where I start.