PDF Summary:Everybody Always, by Bob Goff

What does it mean to live like Jesus and become love in the world? That's the question Bob Goff attempts to answer in Everybody, Always. Through spiritual guidance and examples from his own life, Bob provides a blueprint for how to grow deeper in your faith and become the person God meant for you to be. Part of fulfilling your purpose in God’s world is learning to open yourself up to His love and mirror it back to others. If you can find the courage to live as Jesus did, you will experience the power of His love in your life.

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Expand Your Relationship With God and Love

Don’t Fake Your Faith

People often believe that agreeing with Jesus is enough. You’ve likely believed this, too. You see the way Jesus loves and believes in doing good for others. You may even have done a few things for others here and there. But a temporary action or superficial belief is not the same as becoming love. Flipping parts of you over to hide the flaws is not true change or growth. When you move forward as though it is, you fool yourself and others, but you don’t fool God.

You don’t need to understand your faith perfectly to become love. God knows who you are and what you’re capable of and wants you to get there. He delights in your attempts to become love, not in your assertions that you’ve become love. Be honest with yourself and with God about who you are, who you want to become, and where you are with Him, and He will continue to provide the grace you need to get there.

Don’t Keep a Scorecard for God

When you start keeping track of your good deeds as proof of your commitment to God, the actions become more important than your faith. You’re not becoming love but making love about you, not God. God doesn’t care how many people you choose to show love to. He wants your heart, and He wants your honest intention to represent His love to others through your actions.

Consider the example of winning tickets for games played at pizza parlors, such as Showbiz Pizza. You collect these tickets, assuming that the more you have, the greater your reward will be. You start to play only certain games to get the most tickets, rather than the games you actually love to play. But when you finally turn in all those tickets, your reward is a mere trinket, not the expensive gift you were expecting. You inflated the value of your tickets and did what you thought would bring you something equally valuable. If you inflate the value of your actions in the same way, you will never be satisfied in your relationship with God because God’s grace comes in many forms, and you may devalue the grace you’re receiving.

Love for the sake of love, and eventually you will become love. And when you become love, you have pleased God more than any list of accomplishments could.

Have Courage

You likely are similar to most people in that you like to play it safe in life most of the time. You make plans and set expectations for what will happen and seek the answers to your questions before you feel comfortable moving forward. But struggle is what creates change. A life without struggle is a life going nowhere.

God doesn’t provide challenges so He can watch you suffer. He knows you will learn the most lessons when you’re required to be brave. His plan for you has nothing to do with your plans for yourself, and when you wait until everything is figured out before you leap, you miss out on his guidance. You’re not taking a leap of faith when you play it safe. The only thing you need to move forward is faith. Believe in God’s love and His plan for you, and know that as long as you continue to follow the path before you, you will be led to where you’re supposed to be.

Bob Goff learned about his faith while piloting a plane one night. When he activated his landing gear, one of the green lights that signals the proper release of each wheel didn’t light up. It was dark, and there was no way to tell whether the wheel was actually down or not. Bob knew he couldn’t just keep circling the landing strip. He decided to put his faith in God and take the leap. When he touched down, all three wheels of his small plane hit the tarmac. The green light had simply burned out. Don’t let a malfunctioning light keep you from believing in the path before you. Understand that your struggles are what make you stronger.

Becoming love means understanding that the challenges you face along the way are intentional, and if you’re brave enough to keep walking, there will be more love on the other side. You may not always be able to see the next steps ahead, but you don’t have to. Jesus points you in a direction and calls to you from the edge of your life. You don’t need to rush or worry about stumbling. If you fall, Jesus will catch you. And in doing so, He teaches you how to call to others and catch them. When you learn to have blind faith, you will be able to show it to others and point them in the right direction. All you need to do after that is provide encouragement and love, like God has given you.

Offer What You Have to Give

You’re never going to have everything you think you need to become love, but you don’t need to. What you have in your life is what you are meant to have, and God is waiting for you to offer it up so He can show you how to use it. When you focus on what you don’t have, you create limitations for your life and ability to love. You stray from the path because your head has turned away from God’s love and your life followed.

You will experience hardships in life, and you may lose parts of it you feel you need to go on. Love anyway. When you use what you have to become love in your own unique way, your focus is on love, which means it’s on God. When you focus on your faith, you will know that you have everything you need to become the person you’re supposed to be. God wants you to succeed, and He has confidence in your ability to succeed on your own. Don’t fear your limitations. Find strength in what you have and the courage to allow your gifts to be enough to become love.

Treat Everyone Like They Are Jesus

If you ran into Jesus on the street, you would stop everything you were doing and do whatever you could to show Him love. What you may not realize is that you meet Jesus every day. Jesus is inside of everyone, which means you have the opportunity to show Jesus love each time someone is in front of you. Some people will be easier to love than others, but the ones who are harder to love were brought to you on purpose. Those people are who you will prove your faith in God with by loving them unconditionally, the way Jesus loves you.

Loving everybody always is a difficult task. You may lose face, pride, money, and time. You may lose friends and receive backlash from others. You might decide those losses are too high a price to pay to love someone you find difficult. But what price would you pay if you knew you were giving love directly to Jesus? Grace, or the embodiment of open love, is not costly when you love like Jesus. The more grace you give to others, the more grace you will receive. God wants people to see Himself in you, and He wants you to see Him in everyone else. Love without restriction because when you love everyone, you are loving God to your fullest potential.

You Have Nothing to Fear When You Give Love

God wants you to love your enemies because the power of that love is greater than any love you’ve ever known. But loving someone who has wronged you or you feel is a terrible person is scary. It requires you to change who you are and what you believe and move forward blindly in love. That sort of commitment can feel overwhelming. But God does not stop loving people when they mess up or do bad things. His love extends to all at all times. His love is perfect, and if you want to love like God, you must strive for that perfection.

God doesn’t expect you to be perfect, and there is no shame in messing up along the way. What He wants is your honest attempt to love perfectly. When you show your commitment to love perfectly, you don’t have to worry about messing up or be afraid. You can have faith that you are following the path God wants you to be on and trust that He will provide you with everything you need to succeed.

Bob learned about a witch doctor in Uganda who mutilated a 10-year-old boy and left him to die. The boy survived, and Bob used his experience as a lawyer to help with the legal proceedings. The witch doctor was tried and convicted, which was a first for the country. Law enforcement and lawyers are typically too afraid of the witch doctors to prosecute. Bob knew this man was a monster, but he also knew that Jesus would want him to show this man love. So Bob started visiting the man in jail and talking to him about God and becoming love. Over time, those lessons changed both men, and together, they were able to spread God’s word to other prisoners and witch doctors and create lasting changes in the lives of the prisoners and Ugandan people.

Loving your enemies is an unthinkable act, but God gives you the unthinkable to show you the power of his love. When you experience the unthinkable, you know that there are no limits to your love. And when there are no limits to your love, you become perfect, like Jesus.

Where Do You Want to Go?

Right now, decide where you want to go with your faith. Decide what relationship you want with God. Make a commitment to get there through love. Call someone you hurt or who has hurt you and show them love. Go out into the world and find someone who needs your love. Visit with someone you fear or who makes you uncomfortable and love them for 30 seconds at a time. Becoming love is intentional. Hoping for a better you is not the same as acting in a better way. Don’t wait for the answers or a perfect time or place. Start loving everyone right now so you can start living the life God granted you.