Rob Bell Quotes

We can choose the way of compassion, the way of forgiveness, the way of generosity. Or we can choose other paths and those have very real consequences in the world. This is absolutely crucial.

Before anything else, you have received breath - the gift of life itself. The first word about you is GIFT.

Doctrine is a wonderful servant and a horrible master.

It's absolutely crucial that we come face to face with the power of our choices.

You turn the light on, you get all kinds of bugs.

Two of the most powerful words you can hear someone say are ‘me too.’

We need a childlike trust that God is good... ultimately we are OK. That is a simple, beautiful pure thing that can be complicated ferociously by all sorts of intellectual categories.

Christian is a great noun and a poor adjective

What you believe about the future shapes, informs, and determines how you live now.

On the Sabbath- we are reminded that we are not human doings, but human beings.

Resurrection is a belief and hope in restoring this world.

I believe that God is with you, that there is a presence. I believe this God is for you. I don't think the universe is a cold, dead place that is indifferent.

Freedom is not having everything we crave, it's being able to go without the things we crave and being OK with it.

The fact that we are loved and accepted and forgiven in spite of everything we have done is simply too good to be true.

I like to say that I practice militant mysticism. I'm really absolutely sure of some things that I don't quite know.

We're rediscovering Christianity as an Eastern religion, as a way of life.

If your faith is threatened by something that's true, then it wasn't much of a faith to begin with, was it?

For many, 'desire' is a bad word, something we're supposed to 'give up for God.' That kind of thinking can be really destructive because it teaches people to deny their hearts, their true selves.

What we believe about heaven and hell is incredibly important because it exposes what we believe about who God is and what God is like.

If there's any place where you would express your deepest doubts, it would be church.

The thought of the word church and the word marketing in the same sentence makes me sick.

Love demands freedom. It always has, and it always will. We are free to resist, reject, and rebel against God's ways for us. We can have all the hell we want.

It is such a letdown to rise from the dead and have your friends not recognize you.

The best team does not always win, it's the team that plays the best.

Suffering, it turns out, demands profound imagination. A new future has to be conjured up because the old future isn't there anymore.

No one has the last word other than God.

You can set your intention to better understand your soul, your spirit, through daily practices like prayer, yoga and meditation, etc.

I live with the understanding that truth is bigger than any religion and the world is God's and everything in it.

The cross is Gods way of taking away all of our accusations, excuses, and arguments.

Many people need a new rewiring of their heart and mind.

This is misguided and toxic and ultimately subverts the contagious spread of Jesus' message of love, peace, forgiveness and joy that our world desperately needs to hear.

We often rush through the experiences that have the greatest shift.

One truth is that suffering raises profound questions with the universe. The other truth is that grace, gift and generosity also raise profound questions.

Any time someone makes you feel guilty about how you are living, that is part of the old system (pre-Christ).

The first word about you is that you received this life.

I think the church needs – I think this is the world we are living in and we need to affirm people wherever they are.

It often takes suffering and lost in order to remind us of how precious life is.

Every generation has to ask difficult questions about what does it mean to follow Jesus.

For a lot of people in our world today, God has become about believing the right stuff so you don't get in trouble.

Celebrity seems totally at odds with authentic community and honest, real sorts of relationships.

I believe God gives people the right to say no, to resist, to refuse, to reject, to cling to their sins, to cling to their version of their story.

Many people confuse religion with God and walk away from them both. The point isn't Christianity, the point is being a Christian.

Swords appear strong, but they're actually quite weak. Jesus appears weak, but he's actually quite strong.

God has spoken, and everything else is commentary.

Love frees us to embrace all of our history, the history in which all things are being made new.

I'm very comfortable in a room with thousands of people.

To elevate abstract doctrines and dogmas over living, breathing, embodied experiences of God's love and grace, then, is going the wrong direction. It's taking flesh and turning it back into words.

My parents were both very intellectually honest, straightforward, and for them, faith meant that you were fully engaged.

It's as if Thomas Kinkade and Dante were at a party, and one turned to the other sometime after midnight and uttered that classic line "You know, we really should work together sometime.

We shape our God, and then our God shapes us.