As we experience this love, there is a temptation at times to become hostile to our earlier understandings, feeling embarrassed that we were so "simple" or "naive, " or "brainwashed" or whatever terms arise when we haven't come to terms with our own story. These past understandings aren't to be denied or dismissed; they're to be embraced. Those experiences belong. Love demands that they belong. That's where we were at that point in our life and God met us there. Those moments were necessary for us to arrive here, at this place at this time, as we are. Love frees us to embrace all of our history, the history in which all things are being made new. . Rob Bell
About This Quote

God made us who we are now, with all that we have inside. He loves us just as we are. We don't have to keep on hiding, denying, or pretending to be something that we're not. We can embrace our pain and use it to help others. When we do this, God is free to make us more like himself.

Source: Love Wins: A Book About Heaven, Hell, And The Fate Of Every Person Who Ever Lived

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More Quotes By Rob Bell
  1. Freedom is not having everything we crave, it's being able to go without the things we crave and being OK with it.
  2. The moment God is figured out with nice neat lines and definitions, we are no longer dealing with God.
  3. Our tendency in the midst of suffering is to turn on God. To get angry and bitter and shake our fist at the sky and say, "God, you don't know what it's like! You don't understand! You have no idea what I'm going through. You...
  4. As we experience this love, there is a temptation at times to become hostile to our earlier understandings, feeling embarrassed that we were so "simple" or "naive, " or "brainwashed" or whatever terms arise when we haven't come to terms with our own story. These...
  5. Jesus is God's way of refusing to give up his dream for the world.
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