Quotes about Acceptance

To fully appreciate the Bible, you have to let it be what it is.

We cannot earn what we have always had. What we can do is trust that what God keeps insisting is true about us is actually true.

Grace is when you aren't striving or controlling or trying to change or manipulate or make something happen. Grace is when you find yourself carried along, when all that's left to do is receive. Grace is when you know you're loved, exactly as you are. Grace is an entirely different way of experiencing life.

Forgiveness is unilateral. God isn't waiting for us to get it together, to clean up, shape up, get up - God has already done it.

Gospel is the divine announcement that you are loved and accepted exactly as you are, that everything has been taken care of, that everything you've been striving to earn has been yours the entire time, that you belong, in exactly this condition that you are currently in, nothing additional required or needed.

Gospel is the announcement of who God insists you are. You're a child of God, not because of how great you are but because God has all kinds of kids and you're one of them.

If the only answer ever to anything is You really need to do more and try harder your heart will eventually wear out. Along with your body. And your soul.

Neither son understands that the father's love was never about any of that. The father's love cannot be earned, and it cannot be taken away. It just is.

gospel that has as its chief message avoiding hell or not sinning will never be the full story. A gospel that repeatedly, narrowly affirms and bolsters the "in-ness" of one group at the expense of the "out-ness" of another group will not be true to the story that includes "all things and people in heaven and on earth.

How we respond to what happens to us—especially the painful, excruciating things that we never wanted and we have no control over—is a creative

And whenever people claim that one group is in, saved, accepted by God, forgiven, enlightened, redeemed- and everybody else isn't- why is it that those who make this claim are almost always part of the group that's in?

I felt this new life surging up within me. I don't need people to be anywhere else. I can meet everybody where they are.