Top 280 Bob Goff Quotes (2025 Update)
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201. “He said we would identify ourselves simply by how we loved people. It’s tempting to think there is more to it, but there’s not. Love isn’t something we fall into; love is someone we become.”

— Bob Goff

202. “If you are a sincere friend, folks around you will quickly understand that there’s no hidden agenda and nothing on the other side of the equals sign – just you.”

— Bob Goff

203. “I think His plan all along has been for us to meet the people He made and feel like we just met Him.”

— Bob Goff

204. “When people realize there’s no agenda other than friendship and better understanding, it changes things.”

— Bob Goff

205. “Accepting the invitation to show up in life is about moving from the bleachers to the field. It’s moving from developing opinions to developing options. It’s about having things matter to us enough that we stop just thinking about those things and actually do something about them. Simply put, Jesus is looking for us to accept the invitation to participate.”

— Bob Goff

206. “I trust God because He’s the best author. I think God doesn’t spell out everything for us in life, but He does tell us how we can write our lives better; and trusting Him implicitly is always the right place to start.”

— Bob Goff

207. “Following Jesus means climbing, tripping, dusting ourselves off, and climbing some more. Faith isn’t a business trip walked on a sidewalk; it’s an adventure worked out on a steep and sometimes difficult trail.”

— Bob Goff

208. “Selfless love has the power to transform even the darkest places into meadows.”

— Bob Goff

209. “Memorize grace. Make it your finger memory. Lose the stages. Your faith isn’t a recital. Speak some jazz into people’s live when they miss a couple of notes. Run to them. Don’t give them advice, say their names. And if you don’t know their names, don’t say a thing. Because God makes people, and people make issues, but people aren’t issues. They’re not projects either. People are people.”

— Bob Goff

210. “We’ve all seen bad movies where the audio track isn’t quite synced up with the video track. What you hear isn’t aligned with what you see people saying. It’s usually not a big difference, but it can become a big distraction.”

— Bob Goff

211. “God’s idea isn’t that we would just give and receive love but that we could actually become love. People who are becoming love see the beauty in others even when their off-putting behavior makes for a pretty weird mask.”

— Bob Goff

212. “Yet, the incredible message Love came to earth to give was that we’re all tied for first in God’s mind. While we’re still trying to get our arms around this idea, God doesn’t want us to just study Him like He’s an academic project. He wants us to become love.”

— Bob Goff

213. “When we keep track of the good we’ve done or love people with an agenda, it’s no longer love; it’s just a bunch of tickets. We can either keep track of all the good we’ve done or all the good God’s done. Only one will really matter to us. In the end, none of us wants to find out we traded the big life Jesus talked about for a box full of worthless acknowledgment.”

— Bob Goff

214. “They don’t take the bait and collect what has no value to God. They shun all the attention because they don’t need it anymore. They realize bright lights don’t need spotlights. Instead, they see every act of selfless love as a declaration of their faith. They’ve come to see love as its own reward simply because it pleases God.”

— Bob Goff

215. “But I’ve always wondered if, when we want to do something that we know is right and good, God places that desire deep in out hearts because He wants it for us and it honors Him. Maybe there are times when we think a door has been close and, instead of misinterpreting the circumstances, God wants us to kick it down. Or perhaps just sit outside of it long enough until somebody tells us we can some in.”

— Bob Goff

216. “We don’t need a plan to do these things. We don’t need to wait for just the right moment. We just need to show up, grab a parachute, and when it’s time, jump out of our shoes after people the way Jesus jumped out of heaven to be with us. Sometimes, we make loving people a lot more complicated than Jesus did.”

— Bob Goff

217. “And when each of us looks back at all the turns and folds God has allowed in our lives, I don’t think it looks like a series of folded-over mistakes and do-overs that have shaped our lives. Instead, I think we’ll conclude in the end that maybe we’re all a little like human origami and the more creases we have, the better.”

— Bob Goff

218. “Every day God invites us on the same kind of adventure. It’s not a trip where He sends us a rigid itinerary, He simply invites us. God asks what it is He’s made us to love, what it is that captures our attention, what feeds that deep indescribable need of our souls to experience the richness of the world He made. And then, leaning over us, He whispers, “Let’s go do that together.”

— Bob Goff

219. “Words of encouragement are like that. They have their own power. And when they are said by the right people, they can change everything. What I’ve found in following Jesus is that most of the time, when it comes to who says it, we each are the right people. And I’ve concluded something else. That the words people say to us not only have shelf life but have the ability to shape life.”

— Bob Goff

220. “Like my friend, they do this because they have developed completely unrealistic ideas about what their faith can do in the world when it’s expressed in love. They decided to spend more time loving people than trying to game the system by just agreeing with Jesus. You see, they wanted to follow Jesus’ example; instead of telling people what Jesus meant, they just loved people the way He did.”

— Bob Goff

221. “It’s easy to agree with what Jesus said. What’s hard is actually doing what Jesus did. For me, agreeing is cheap and obeying is costly. Obeying is costly because it’s uncomfortable. It makes me grow one decision and one discussion at a time. It makes me put away my pride. These are the kinds of decisions that aren’t made once for a lifetime; they’re made thirty seconds at a time.”

— Bob Goff

222. “Following Jesus is about having your paradigms shift as you navigate a wide range of emotions while living the big life Jesus invites us into.”

— Bob Goff

223. “The problem is, the Bible said the only weapon any of us really has is love. But it’s love like a sword without a handle and because of that, sometimes we’ll get cut when we pick it up. It’s supposed to be close contact, though. Love always is that way. I don’t think Bible verses were meant to be thrown like grenades at each other. They were meant for us to use to point each other toward love and grace and invite us into something much bigger.”

— Bob Goff

224. “He continues to rewrite our lives the way I rewrote my book- in beautiful and unexpected way, knowing the next version of us will usually be better than the previous one.”

— Bob Goff

225. “If we did that, we wouldn’t get confused about who was really making things happen. Not surprisingly, we’d get a lot more done too, because we wouldn’t care who’s looking or taking credit. All that energy would be funneled into awesomeness. Even then, though, don’t take the bait that if we do incredible things Jesus will dig us more. He can’t. He already digs us more. And more than that, our pictures are already in His wallet.”

— Bob Goff

226. “We don’t need more facts to find the purpose and kindness and unselfishness we long for; we need a firmly seated faith, a few good friends, and a couple of trustworthy reminders.”

— Bob Goff

227. “Instead, Jesus modeled that we don’t need to talk about everything we’ve done. It’s like He was saying, what if we were just to do awesome, incredible stuff together while we’re here on earth and the fact that only He knew would be enough?”

— Bob Goff

228. “I think God pays attention to our hearts and enjoys when people want to get close to Him. He knows our sadness and the brokenness we want to hide from Him, and He sends people to look for us.”

— Bob Goff

229. “Paul was one of the people who talked about Jesus. He explained grace in this way: He said neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither present nor future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation could ever separate us from the love of God.”

— Bob Goff

230. “We make loving people a lot more complicated than Jesus did. Every time I try to protect myself by telling somebody about one of my opinions, God whispers to me and asks about my heart. Why are you so afraid? Who are you trying to impress? Am I really so insecure that I surround myself only with people who agree with me? When people are flat wrong, why do I appoint myself the sheriff to straighten them out? Burning down others’ opinions doesn’t make us right. It makes us arsonists.”

— Bob Goff

231. “What is it that you don’t think you can do? What do you think is too big for you? Or too scary, or too risky? Sometimes God whispers it, and sometimes, he shouts it. Whatever the volume, I bet he’s always using the same three words with us: Be Not Afraid.”

— Bob Goff

232. “But extravagant love often means coloring outside the lines and going beyond the norms.”

— Bob Goff

233. “God created you with unique gifts and ignited the passions He put in your heart for a reason – don’t let fear steal your opportunities and leave you on the sidelines wishing you’d tried. Do what you believe you were created to do. Is it possible it won’t work? You bet. Fail trying, don’t fail watching.”

— Bob Goff

234. “Obstacles that seems insurmountable aren’t. Impediments that we believe disqualify us don’t.”

— Bob Goff

235. “Jesus never said doing these things would be easy. He just said it would work.”

— Bob Goff

236. “Finding things and losing things is what the Bible is all about. God even seemed to encourage it. He talked about losing your job, or even your life, if you want to find it. He talked about losing your status to find real power.”

— Bob Goff

237. “Jesus doesn’t invite us on a business trip. Instead, He says let’s go after those things that inspire and challenge you and let’s experience them together. You.”

— Bob Goff

238. “Faith isn’t a business trip walked on a sidewalk; it’s an adventure worked out on a steep and sometimes difficult trail.”

— Bob Goff

239. “No one is remembered for what they only planned to do.”

— Bob Goff

240. “If you can shred on a Fender or won ‘Best Personality,’ you’re not disqualified – it just doesn’t make you more qualified. You see, God usually chooses ordinary people like us to get things done.”

— Bob Goff

241. “Think the thoughts you would think if you wholeheartedly trusted God’s promises.”

— Bob Goff

242. “The people you spend time with will play the largest part in the ambitions you achieve, not the minutes you saved each day by avoiding them. Be available. Talk to everyone. Become their student, not their teacher. Love’s goal isn’t ever efficiency; it’s presence.”

— Bob Goff

243. “I wondered if maybe all Christians operated this way. I didn’t think so, because most of them I had met up until that time were kind of wimpy and seemed to have more opinions about what or who they were against than who they were for.”

— Bob Goff

244. “You see, they wanted to follow Jesus’ example; instead of telling people what Jesus meant, they just loved people the way He did.”

— Bob Goff

245. “He continues to tell us through our successes and our mistakes who we are, and here’s what He wants us to know – we are His.”

— Bob Goff

246. “Turn your mountains into molehills by discussing God more than your difficulties.”

— Bob Goff

247. “God doesn’t give us a recipe for living as a community, but He gives us great ingredients: He gives us everybody, always. If we’re going to get it right, it’s going to take everybody to pull it off. It won’t get done in a day or two either. It’s going to take always.”

— Bob Goff

248. “You’ll be able to spot people who are becoming love because they want to build kingdoms, not castles. They fill their lives with people who don’t look like them or act like them or even believe the same things as them. They treat them with love and respect and are more eager to learn from them than presume they have something to teach.”

— Bob Goff

249. “In the Bible there’s a guy named Timothy who gets a letter from another guy named Paul. Paul is like an older brother to Timothy. In the letter, Paul tells him to watch out for people who act holy but don’t get their holiness from Jesus but from the stuff they’ve done, which is pure delusion. Paul called this kind of religious devotion a form of godlessness, meaning it’s the exact opposite of what it’s pretending to be.”

— Bob Goff

250. “When joy is a habit, love is a reflex.”

— Bob Goff