Top 280 Bob Goff Quotes (2024 Update)
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201. “If you are a person of faith, at some point you’ll need to decide whether you want to be right or if you want to be Jesus.”

— Bob Goff

202. “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

203. “God can use anyone, for sure. If you can shred on a Fender or won “Best Personality,” you’re not disqualified-it just doesn’t make you more qualified.”

— Bob Goff

204. “He said people who followed Him should think of themselves more like ushers rather than the bouncers, and it would be God who decides who gets in. We’re the ones who simply show people to their seats that someone else paid for.”

— Bob Goff

205. “But like my BB gun, what Christ-followers lack in velocity, they make up for in intensity. They are people who have experienced an intensely intimate friendship with Jesus and move forward with an intensity to parallel that experience.”

— Bob Goff

206. “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

207. “Jesus told the people He was with that it’s not enough to just look like you love God. He said we’d know the extent of our love for God by how well we loved people.”

— Bob Goff

208. “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

209. “The sad fact is, many of us have lost our way trying to help people find theirs. Arguments won’t change people. Simply giving away kindness won’t either. Only Jesus has the power to change people, and it will be harder for them to see Jesus if their view of him is blocked by our big opinions.”

— Bob Goff

210. “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

211. “These people haven’t tried to save up love like they’re going to need it later; they know we’re rivers, not reservoirs.”

— Bob Goff

212. “What Jesus said we could do is leave typical behind. We could leave all of the comparisons and all of the trappings and all of the pretending of religion. Jesus told the people He was with that it’s not enough to just look like you love God. He said we’d know the extent of our love for God by how well we loved people.”

— Bob Goff

213. “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

214. “Grace works that way. It’s a kind word from a gentle person with an impossible prayer.”

— Bob Goff

215. “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

216. “I’ve spent my whole life avoiding the people Jesus spent His whole life engaging.”

— Bob Goff

217. “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

218. “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 and then willingly died a criminal’s death.”

— Bob Goff

219. “God searches for us, no matter what dark place we’re in or what door we’re behind. He hears our impossible, audacious prayers for ourselves and others. And He delights in forgiving us and then answering those prayers by letting us return home to Him.”

— Bob Goff

220. “Big faith doesn’t need big words. We also don’t need to make faith easier, because it’s not; we need to make it simpler, because it is.”

— Bob Goff

221. “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

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

— Bob Goff

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

— Bob Goff

224. “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

225. “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

226. “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

227. “If you want to make a big impact in the world, stop throwing pine on the fire in your life and burn the oak instead. Play the long game.”

— Bob Goff

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

— Bob Goff

229. “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

230. “In the end, love doesn’t just keep thinking about it or keep planning for it. Simply put: love does.”

— Bob Goff

231. “They give away love like they’re made of it.”

— Bob Goff

232. “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

233. “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

234. “When the heavens themselves declare His glory, He doesn’t need our endorsement.”

— Bob Goff

235. “Could God speak to me audibly if He wanted to? You bet, and I hope He does sometime; I’ll let you know. Probably in a book called ‘God Talked to Me’. Until then, it seems that what God does most the time when He has something to say is this... He doesn’t pass us messages, instead He passes us each other.”

— Bob Goff

236. “People who follow Jesus, though, are no longer typical – God is constantly inviting them into a life that moves away from typical.”

— Bob Goff

237. “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

238. “I want to be doing things today, not just flipping through crinkled and yellowed mental pictures of what happened a long time ago.”

— Bob Goff

239. “We’re not held back by what we don’t have, but by what we don’t use.”

— Bob Goff

240. “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

241. “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

242. “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

243. “Friends do – they don’t just think about it.”

— Bob Goff

244. “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

245. “I enter each day assuming there’s a thirty-eighth miracle waiting for me if I’ll fully engage life and the people around me with love, honesty, and an unreasonable, almost annoying heap of expectation. What would happen in your life if you started doing the same?”

— Bob Goff

246. “Son, you need to look through the scope at the things that are far away, but you also need to take your eye away long enough to see what’s close.”

— Bob Goff

247. “Every day God invites us on an adventure. It’s not a trip where He sends us a rigid itinerary, He simply invites us.”

— Bob Goff

248. “The people who creep us out aren’t obstacles to having faith; they’re opportunities to understand it.”

— Bob Goff

249. “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

250. “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