Rob Bell
Rob Bell
Robert Holmes "Rob" Bell Jr.is an American author, motivational speaker and former pastor. Bell was the founder of Mars Hill Bible Church located in Grandville, Michigan, which he pastored until 2012. Under his leadership Mars Hill was one of the fastest-growing churches in America. He is also the author of the New York Times bestseller Love Wins and the writer and narrator of a series of spiritual short films called NOOMA. In 2011 Time Magazine named Bell on its list...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionReligious Author
Date of Birth23 August 1970
CountryUnited States of America
There are moments when we have to return to our roots.
It is such a letdown to rise from the dead and have your friends not recognize you.
The fundamental story arc of the Bible is God is passionate about rescuing this world, restoring it, renewing it.
Like a mirror, God appears to be more and more a reflection of whoever it is that happens to be talking about God at the moment.
God has spoken, and everything else is commentary.
Any time someone makes you feel guilty about how you are living, that is part of the old system (pre-Christ).
It often takes suffering and lost in order to remind us of how precious life is.
One truth is that suffering raises profound questions with the universe. The other truth is that grace, gift and generosity also raise profound questions.
We often rush through the experiences that have the greatest shift.
When we get to what happens when we die, we don't have any video footage. So let's at least be honest that we are speculating, because we are.
When Isaiah predicted that spears would become pruning hooks, that's a reference to cultivating. Pruning and trimming and growing and paying close attention to the plants and whether they're getting enough water and if their roots are deep enough. Soil under the fingernails, grapes being trampled under bare feet, fingers sticky from handling fresh fruit. It's that green stripe you get around the sole of your shoes when you mow the lawn. Life in the age to come. Earthy.
My parents were both very intellectually honest, straightforward, and for them, faith meant that you were fully engaged.
To elevate abstract doctrines and dogmas over living, breathing, embodied experiences of God's love and grace, then, is going the wrong direction. It's taking flesh and turning it back into words.
We live in the midst of a creation that is groaning.