So it turns out there’s only so much time to go from point A to point B, so this is some of what you’ve really got to tuck in your pocket, Kid, before you head out into this big ole world:
The only life worth really living is the scandalous one: scandalous love, offensive mercy, foolish faith.
Live by this one line everyday, especially when it’s hard: This is how I get to love.
So right out of the gate: be radical about grace, and relentless about truth, and resolute about holiness and vows and the real hills worth dying on.
Go ahead and be really different and know everything you do matters. It’s what the Christ followers know: One soul with God can change a culture. God didn’t put people in your path to make your life easier, He puts you in theirs to make their life better.
Live by this one line everyday, especially when it’s hard: This is how I get to love.
No matter what anyone else tries to tell or sell you?
Real leadership is: not climbing higher towards power and status, but bending down in prayer and service. Be dead to all ladders and keep going lower, to the least and the lonely and the lost.
Grab a lifeline by stepping offline. You’ll see your true self when you look for your reflection in the eyes of souls, not the glare of screens.
And that’s true north, wherever you go: The Bible’s true. Every infallible, sword-sharp, breathing word of it. Don’t let anyone ever rationalize one beautiful iota of it away. Hold on to the reality that the miraculous thing about miracles – is that they really do happen.
And never forget that happiness is when His Word and your walk are in harmony. Never stop keeping company with Christ– and all the sinners, tax-collectors and cast-offs. Be an evangelist, and use your words with your hands and your feet as often as necessary to tell the Best News, because you’re part of a Body and never stop loving God with all your heart, mind and soul, and loving others as a gift. Make that your creed.
Kiss babies. Remember how your Mama taught you to make your bed first thing so at least that’s one good thing you get to come back to at the end of things. Make it a priority to laugh with at least one little kid everyday. Sing to no one, and to everyone, on the front porch in the rain and laugh so much folks question your sanity — no, really. Really, count a thousand blessings more, never stop. Why wouldn’t you want joy?
No matter how loud and crazy and broken this ole world is, you get to choose every day to let joy live loud in your soul.
Be okay with not being seen or heard. It’ll let you hear and see far better.
Do it often as a gift to yourself: Grab a lifeline by stepping offline. You’ll see your true self when you look for your reflection in the eyes of souls, not the glare of screens.
Be okay with not being liked: life’s not about applause, but about altars.
Be okay with not being seen or heard. It’ll let you hear and see far better.
Be the kind of person who apologizes first because that’s the only way any real happiness can last.
Stubbornly pray for your enemies till you see enemies are illusions, and everyone is a friend and somehow grace.
Because?
Grace isn’t some soft, ethereal notion. Grace is a noun, it’s a verb, it’s concrete, it’s like air. Just try living without it.
So feel freed to let go of defences and shields and all the tightfisted formulas for some life that doesn’t exist, and give away beautiful pieces of yourself, because the only way to own a life worth having is to give away your own life.
You’ve got to know this is how love works: The depth of pain we feel is only a mirror of the depths of love we got to feel.
The only life worth living is the one given away.
This is what you always need to know: You have nothing to prove to anyone – if you’re in Him, you are already approved
Believe with every breath that you are His beloved – it’s only when you trust how He loves you that you really begin to fully live.
Real love is always crazy love, and love is the most horrible, and the most wonderful because it will make you strong and it will make you weak and it will make you vulnerable, which is the perfection of both strong and weak together.
Don’t ever be afraid of the pain that comes when you love, or you’ve lost what, or who, you love.
Love large. Don’t fight the hurt of love at all. Surrendering to love in its totality is what makes you totally real.
You’ve got to know this is how love works: The depth of pain we feel is only a mirror of the depths of love we got to feel.
So go ahead: Love large. Don’t fight the hurt of love at all. Surrendering to love in its totality is what makes you totally real.
And the reality is, none of us knows how long we have to keep getting to love. Remember that a pail with a pinhole loses as much as the pail pushed right over. A whole life can be lost in minutes wasted… in the small moments missed.
None of this is forever grace. That’s why it’s all called amazing grace.
Think of eternity — and live backwards from that.
Don’t waste a minute of your life on anything less than eternity — and that’s. what. love. is.
Eternal, without end.
Relationship is the only reality — so go love it all, and love large, Kid!
Pages Full of Grace: Reads for the Restoring
Words to hold onto when you’re carrying the ache and beauty of loving people deeply… whatever your family looks like, these are pages for the tender work of restoration, grace, reflection, and becoming more like Christ.
As we move into the season of reflecting on motherhood, fatherhood and our families — there’s a life-giving invitation to keep making space to stay close to the heart of Jesus — the One who restores, reconnects, and gently re-stories us all.
