Blue Like Jazz

Nonreligious thoughts on Spirituality by: Donald Miller

Finished this book a few days ago. Here are some of my favorite quotes.

"The ability to accept God's unconditional grace and ferocious love is all the fuel we need to obey Him in return. Accepting God's kindness and free love is something the devil does not want us to do. If we hear, in our inner ear, a voice saying we are failures, we are losers, we will never amount to anything, this is the voice of Satan trying to convince the bride that the groom does not love her. This is not the voice of God. God woos us with kindness, He changes our character with the passion of His love." (pg. 86)

"Our behavior will not be changed long with self-discipline, but fall in love and the human will accomplish what he never thought possible." (pg. 86)

"I lay there under the stars and thought of what a great responsibility it is to be human. I am a human because God made me. I experience suffering and temptation because mankind chose to follow Satan. God is reaching out to me to rescue me. I am learning to trust Him, learning to live by His precepts that I might be preserved." (pg. 101)

"If you believe something, passionately, people will follow you. People hardly care what you believe, as long as you believe something. If you are passionate about something, people will follow you because they think you know something they don't, some clue to the meaning of the universe."

"So many years before I made amends to God, but now I had made amends to the world. I was somebody who was willing to share my faith. It felt kind of cool, kind of different. It was very relieving." (pg. 127)

"I mean that to be in a relationship with God is to be loved purely and furiously. And a person who thinks himself unlovable cannot be in a relationship with God because he can't accept who God is; a Being that is love. We learn that we are lovable or unlovable from other people..." (pg. 146-147)

"If we are not able to wake up in the morning and die to ourselves, perhaps we should ask ourselves whether or not we are really following Jesus." (pg. 185)

"On the other hand, however, I felt by loving liberal people, I mean by really endorsing their existence, I was betraying the truth of God because I was encouraging them in their lives apart from God." (pg. 216)

"I hoped that love would work like a magnet, pulling people from the mire and toward healing. I knew this was the way God loved me. God had never withheld love to teach me a lesson." (pg. 220)

"That is, we are supposed to speak truth in love. If both conversations are not true, God is not involved in the exchange, we are on our own, and on our own, we will lead people astray." (pg. 221)

"God's love will never change us if we don't accept it." (pg. 232)

"But I actually believe there is something bigger than me, and I need for there to be something bigger than me, I need someone to put awe inside me; I need to come second to someone who has everything figured out." (pg. 237)