When Love Does first appeared in 2012, Bob Goff was described as “the world’s best-kept secret.” More than 800,000 copies later, he is no longer a secret. But Bob never stops surprising, and in Everybody, Always, his eagerly awaited follow-up to Love Does, he reveals what happens when we stop worrying about a challenging world full of difficult people and instead simply love them: we discover the outsized, unfettered, liberated existence we’ve always dreamed of.
It’s easy to love kind, lovely, humble people. I mean, who wouldn’t? They are the ones I’ve spent much of my life loving. Loving the people who are easy to love made me feel like I was really good at it, because the people I loved were kind and wonderful, they made sure they told me what a great job I was doing loving them. What I’ve come to realize, though, is that I was avoiding the people I didn’t understand and the ones who lived differently than me. Here’s why: some of them creep me out. Sure, I was polite to them, but sadly, I’ve spent my whole life avoiding the people Jesus spent His whole life engaging. God’s idea isn’t that we would give and receive love but that we could actually become love. The way we do this can be summarized like this: His plan is that we would love everybody, always. People who are becoming love see the beauty in others even when their off-putting behavior makes for a pretty weird mask. What Jesus told His friends can be summed up in this way: He wants us to love everybody, always – and start with the people who creep us out. The truth is, we probably creep them out as much as they do us.
Are there people you should give a wide berth to? You bet. There are people in my life and your who are unsafe, toxic, and delight in sowing discord wherever they go. God gave us discernment, and we should use it as we live our lives. He’s also given us love and understanding and kindness and the ability to forgive, which have power we often leave untapped. There’s a difference between good judgment and living in judgment. The trick is to use lots of the first and to go a little lighter on the second if we want to live the big life Jesus talked about.
What I’m learning about love is that we have to tackle a good amount of fear to love people who are difficult. Oftentimes, when I encounter someone who makes me feel afraid, I instantly put up barriers. I put them up with my big words and opinions. I construct them to protect myself. Barriers make me feel right, and that makes me feel safe. I think this is something we all do to some degree, and there’s no shame in that. Except it’s not what Jesus did. He showed us what it means to become love when He spent his last meal with a man who He knew would betray him.
Taken from Everybody Always by Bob Goff Copyright © 2018 by Thomas Nelson
publishers Used by permission of Thomas Nelson. http://www.thomasnelson.com.
Everybody Always is on sale April 17, 2018. You can purchase it here.
More excerpts:
https://cmedia2026.tryangled.online/the-gift-of-hard-things-excerpt-21610-21610/
https://cmedia2026.tryangled.online/excerpt-saving-truth-21590/
https://cmedia2026.tryangled.online/excerpt-zombie-gospel-21538/
