110+ Rob Bell Quotes On Hell, Joy And Inspiring

Rob Bell is an American author, speaker, and former pastor. He is best known for his best-selling book Love Wins, which sparked a national conversation about the afterlife. Bell is also the founder of the multimedia production company, The Rob Bell Show, and the author of several other books, including What We Talk About When We Talk About God and How to Be Here. Following is our collection on famous quotes by Rob Bell on hell, joy, love.

Top 10 Rob Bell Quotes

1. When you forgive somebody, when you are generous, when you withhold judgment, when you love and when you stand up to injustice, you are, in that moment, bringing heaven to earth.
2. Because with every action, comment, conversation, we have the choice to invite Heaven or Hell to Earth.
3. Why blame the dark for being dark? It is far more helpful to ask why the light isn’t as bright as it could be.
4. opening up your soul to someone, letting them into your spirit, thoughts, fears, future, hopes, dreams ... that is being naked.
5. Well, I affirm orthodox Christian faith. I affirm the Nicene Creed. I don't think I'm doing anything terribly new.
6. It takes quite a spine to turn the other cheek. It takes phenomenal fortitude to love your enemy. It takes firm resolve to pray for those who persecute you. (with reference to Matthew 5)
7. If we are serious about loving someone, we have to surrender all the desires within us to manipulate the relationship.
8. The vibrant, real historic Christian faith is very wide and leaves lots and lots of room for varying perspectives. It's very diverse and wide, that's part of it's strength, life and vibrancy.
9. My experience is that lots of people go to church, sing the songs, tell the story, etc but have profound ambivalence about God.
10. The historical orthodox Christian faith is extremely wide and diverse.

Rob Bell Short Quotes

• Your life is a gift and how you respond to it - what you do with it matters. That's where I start.
• If anybody didn't have a messiah complex, it was Jesus.
• If the gospel isn't good news for everybody, then it isn't good news for anybody.
• God is bigger than the Christian faith.
• I believe our world desperately needs Good News.
• The cross is God taking on flesh and blood and saying, Me too.
• It's absolutely crucial that we come face to face with the power of our choices.
• Resurrection is a belief and hope in restoring this world.
• On the Sabbath- we are reminded that we are not human doings, but human beings.
• Two of the most powerful words you can hear someone say are ‘me too.’

Rob Bell Quotes About Hell

For Jesus, heaven and hell were present realities. Ways of living we can enter into here and now. He talked very little of the life beyond this one. — Rob Bell

Often the people most concerned about others going to hell when they die seem less concerned with the hells on earth right now, while the people most concerned with the hells on earth right now seem the least concerned about hell after death. — Rob Bell

What we believe about heaven and hell is incredibly important because it exposes what we believe about who God is and what God is like. — Rob Bell

At the center of the Christian tradition since the first church have been a number who insist that history is not tragic, hell is not forever, and love, in the end, wins and all will be reconciled to God. — Rob Bell

Love demands freedom. It always has, and it always will. We are free to resist, reject, and rebel against God's ways for us. We can have all the hell we want. — Rob Bell

I actually think there is hell because we see hell every day. — Rob Bell

Rob Bell Quotes About Joy

We all want to make a difference, to live in peace, to have joy each morning that we get to live this day and see what it brings. — Rob Bell

God gives us what we want. For people who want nothing to do with peace, joy, reconciliation and peace... God will give you what you want. I see people make unbelievably destructive choices. — Rob Bell

The joy is in the creation. So I've never had a target audience, it's always been about being true to the work as it emerges. — Rob Bell

This is misguided and toxic and ultimately subverts the contagious spread of Jesus' message of love, peace, forgiveness and joy that our world desperately needs to hear. — Rob Bell

Rob Bell Quotes About Love

Agape doesn't love somebody because they're worthy. Agape makes them worthy by the strength and power of its love. Agape doesn't love somebody because they're beautiful. Agape loves in such a way that it makes them beautiful. — Rob Bell

Love is giving up control. It’s surrendering the desire to control the other person. The two—love and controlling power over the other person—are mutually exclusive. If we are serious about loving someone, we have to surrender all the desires within us to manipulate the relationship. — Rob Bell

I believe that God is love. I believe that Jesus came to show us this love, to give us this love, to teach us about this love, so that we could live in this love and extend it to others. — Rob Bell

For many people, God is primitive, behind, trying to drag everything back to some prehistoric era as opposed to spirit, force, love, drawing us into a better future, which to me is - that story has done something in me and I've seen it do things in other people. — Rob Bell

We need to return to the simplicity that God is love. — Rob Bell

To be honest with you, I am passionate about all the people out there who want to know Jesus, they want to know God, and they are sick of a system that is hung up on a bunch of things that have nothing to do with the love of God. — Rob Bell

Grace is when you know you're loved exactly as you are. — Rob Bell

I am for marriage. I am for fidelity. I am for love, whether it's a man and woman, a woman and a woman, a man and a man. I think the ship has sailed and I think the church needs -- I think this is the world we are living in and we need to affirm people wherever they are. — Rob Bell

I am for marriage. I am for fidelity. I am for love, whether it's a man and woman, a woman and a woman, a man and a man. — Rob Bell

I do a meet and greet after every show in which I tell the audience that I would love to thank every single one of them for coming. Which a lot of people take me up on! So I get to meet hundreds and hundreds of people every night, night after night. — Rob Bell

Rob Bell Quotes About Inspiring

A good sermon is going to disturb the comfortable and comfort the disturbed. It inspires you. It provokes you. It should make your soul soar. — Rob Bell

Creating and sharing beautiful things has provided me with the inspiration that we can do things we never thought we could do and that we will get to see wonderful things we never thought we would see. — Rob Bell

The life you want begins by embracing the life you have. — Rob Bell

One truth is that suffering raises profound questions with the universe. The other truth is that grace, gift and generosity also raise profound questions. — Rob Bell

My interest is in what's true, where is the life, where is the heart and what inspires. — Rob Bell

The life that you want begins the moment you embrace the life you have because all of it is a miracle. — Rob Bell

The first word about you is that you received this life. — Rob Bell

It often takes suffering and lost in order to remind us of how precious life is. — Rob Bell

We often rush through the experiences that have the greatest shift. — Rob Bell

Rob Bell Famous Quotes And Sayings

Times change. God doesn’t, but times do. We learn and grow, and the world around us shifts, and the Christian faith is alive only when it is listening, morphing, innovating, letting go of whatever has gotten in the way of Jesus and embracing whatever will help us be more and more the people God wants us to be. — Rob Bell

This breath, and this moment, and this life is a gift and we are all in this together. We all have countless choices every day to close down or stand up straight and open up, and take a big breath and say YES to the gift. — Rob Bell

Your deepest, darkest sins and your shameful secrets are simply irrelevant when it comes to the counterintuitive, ecstatic announcement of the gospel. So are your goodness, your rightness, your church attendance, and all of the wise, moral, mature decisions you have made and actions you have taken. — Rob Bell

When the female voice is repressed and stifled, the entire community can easily find themselves cut off from the sacred feminine, depriving themselves of the full image of god. — Rob Bell

I have been told that I need to believe in Jesus. Which is a good thing. But what I am learning is that Jesus believes in me. — Rob Bell

Many of the most significant moments in our lives come not because it all went right but because it all fell apart — Rob Bell

When the lab rats hear the bell ringing, they freeze. That's what fear does to you - fear stops you dead in your tracks. Fear can keep you from harm, but fear can also rob you of your potential. Fear can rob you of an experience. Fear can rob you of happiness. Fear can rob you of real life... Darkness has a way of scaring us. — Rob Bell

The great German scholar Helmut Thielicke once said that a person who speaks to this hour’s need will always be skirting the edge of heresy, but only the person who risks those heresies can gain the truth. — Rob Bell

Your job is the relentless pursuit of who God made you to be. And anything else you do is sin and you need to repent of it. — Rob Bell

The Christian faith is mysterious to the core. It is about things and beings that ultimately can't be put into words. Language fails. And if we do definitively put God into words, we have at that very moment made God something God is not. — Rob Bell

To say it again, eternal life is less about a kind of time that starts when we die, and more about a quality and vitality of life now in connection to God. Eternal life doesn't start when we die; it starts now. It's not about a life that begins at death; it's about experiencing the kind of life now that can endure and survive even death. — Rob Bell

Whether we are reading the Bible for the first time or standing in a field in Israel next to a historian and an archaeologist and a scholar, the Bible meets us where we are. That is what truth does — Rob Bell

I think what's happened in the modern world, there's a lot of people that sound very smart and it's very compelling and alluring, but it leaves you empty. — Rob Bell

It is better to be fully present and rested and engaged for one thing than rushed, distracted, and scattered for ten. — Rob Bell

That may sound a big vague, but what has struck me in city after city is that despite our differences and diversity, there's a common humanity we all share. In many ways we're all searching and longing for the same things. — Rob Bell

Look at the size of the universe and look at what we're discovering about string theory. There's a wide-eyed sense of we're just getting started here. — Rob Bell

You want people who are both great fans and supporters and believers of your work and people who are also ruthlessly honest. People who will tell you the truth about it. Over the years I've picked up some friends and I know who to show what to and they'll give me the proper read. — Rob Bell

I embrace the term 'evangelical,' if by that we mean a belief that we together can actually work for change in the world, caring for the environment, extending to the poor generosity and kindness, a hopeful outlook. That's a beautiful sort of thing. — Rob Bell

Before anything else, you have received breath - the gift of life itself. The first word about you is GIFT. — Rob Bell

We embrace truth wherever we find it from whoever says it however we come across it. It's a big beautiful exotic heartbreaking mysterious world we live in and it's our home and we get to explore and learn and affirm truth wherever we find it. — Rob Bell

I believe that God is with you, that there is a presence. I believe this God is for you. I don't think the universe is a cold, dead place that is indifferent. — Rob Bell

We need a childlike trust that God is good... ultimately we are OK. That is a simple, beautiful pure thing that can be complicated ferociously by all sorts of intellectual categories. — Rob Bell

For many, 'desire' is a bad word, something we're supposed to 'give up for God.' That kind of thinking can be really destructive because it teaches people to deny their hearts, their true selves. — Rob Bell

I like to say that I practice militant mysticism. I'm really absolutely sure of some things that I don't quite know. — Rob Bell

There's way too much wonder and mystery all around us to not stay open to more that's going on here. You can wake up, and sense and feel and taste and hear a whole world right here within this one, right here in this breath you're about to take. — Rob Bell

A lot of Christians have been taught a story that begins in chapter 3 of Genesis, instead of chapter 1. If your story doesn't begin in the beginning, but begins in chapter 3, then it starts with sin, and so the story becomes about dealing with the sin problem. So Jesus is seen as primarily dealing with our sins. — Rob Bell

One of the oldest aches in the bones of humanity is loneliness. I mean it's one of the things that goes way back; loneliness is not good for the world. And so, whoever you are, gay or straight, it is totally normal, natural, and healthy to want somebody to go through life with. It's central to our humanity. — Rob Bell

The fact that we are loved and accepted and forgiven in spite of everything we have done is simply too good to be true. — Rob Bell

I live with the understanding that truth is bigger than any religion and the world is God's and everything in it. — Rob Bell

Salvation is the entire universe being brought back into harmony with its maker. — Rob Bell

The hardness of the human heart makes no sense. — Rob Bell

As a pastor, you get invited into the most poignant moments of people's lives. Whether it's a wedding or a funeral or a hospital visit, you get invited into the center of the event, whether or not you know the people. — Rob Bell

Many people confuse religion with God and walk away from them both. The point isn't Christianity, the point is being a Christian. — Rob Bell

Love frees us to embrace all of our history, the history in which all things are being made new. — Rob Bell

We live in the midst of a creation that is groaning. — Rob Bell

My parents were both very intellectually honest, straightforward, and for them, faith meant that you were fully engaged. — Rob Bell

You can set your intention to better understand your soul, your spirit, through daily practices like prayer, yoga and meditation, etc. — Rob Bell

Often times when I meet atheists and we talk about the god they don’t believe in, we quickly discover that I don’t believe in that god, either. — Rob Bell

The thought of the word church and the word marketing in the same sentence makes me sick. — Rob Bell

When we deny the spiritual dimension to our existence, we end up living like animals. And when we deny the physical, sexual dimension to our existence, we end up living like angels. And both ways are destructive, because God made us human. — Rob Bell

The Bible tells a story. A story that isn’t over. A story that is still being told. A story that we have a part to play in. — Rob Bell

I got into pastoring because of the art form. I started a church, but I felt the art form needed to be freed for all people. A particular religion over others was never interesting to me. I wanted to talk to people about what it means to be alive and what it means to be human. — Rob Bell

The danger is that in reaction to abuses and distortions of an idea, we'll reject it completely. And in the process miss out on the good of it, the worth of it, the truth of it. — Rob Bell

Jesus is bigger than any one religion. He didn't come to start a new religion, and he continually disrupted whatever conventions or systems or establishments that existed in his day. He will always transcend whatever cages and labels are created to contain and name him, especially the one called "Christianity. — Rob Bell

Something is profoundly wrong and we are desperate for justice, for restoration and for somebody somewhere to do something about this. — Rob Bell

Being a pastor for 20 years I realized that the labels, agnostic, atheist, believer, everybody's human and everybody wants to know what kind of universe we're living in, and everybody's living according to a story. — Rob Bell

The modern world has created airports and hospitals and put 10,000 songs in our pocket. It has built gleaming buildings and computers and advances and innovations that blow our minds. But we have soul, and spirit, and consciousness, and the modern world hasn't done so well at helping us name and understand what it means to be thriving and fully alive with a full heart. — Rob Bell

Hope. People want hope. We crave hope. We long for hope. Hope has been present since the very beginning. And almost in the worst situations of human history, you often find the greatest amount of hope. The very nature of the situation, the way stepped-on people created within them even more hope than when things were going fine. Hope has always been around. — Rob Bell

It's absurd and quite tragic the way people have managed to pit science against faith. They aren't in conflict at all - they're long lost dance partners. I don't divide the world up into Christians and other people - we are all human beings, brothers and sisters, and we embrace truth wherever we find it, whether that's in a lab, a field or a cathedral. Because sometimes you need a scientist and sometimes you need a poet. — Rob Bell

Suffering is traumatic and awful and we get angry and we shake our fists at the heavens and we vent and rage and weep. But in the process we discover a new tomorrow, one we never would have imagined otherwise. — Rob Bell

I think the church needs – I think this is the world we are living in and we need to affirm people wherever they are. — Rob Bell

Enjoy mystery and speculation, but don't drift into dogma. — Rob Bell

The best team does not always win, it's the team that plays the best. — Rob Bell

The peace we are offered is not a peace that is free from tragedy, illness, bankruptcy, divorce, depression, or heartache. It is peace rooted in the trust that the life Jesus gives us is deeper, wider, stronger, and more enduring than whatever our current circumstances are, because all we see is not all there is and the last word about us and our struggle has not yet been spoken. — Rob Bell

If there's any place where you would express your deepest doubts, it would be church. — Rob Bell

The cross is Gods way of taking away all of our accusations, excuses, and arguments. — Rob Bell

Celebrity seems totally at odds with authentic community and honest, real sorts of relationships. — Rob Bell

The lesson that has been hardest for me to learn: there is nothing to prove. — Rob Bell

People have a view of a God who is terrible that they can't even imagine being loving or wanting anything to do with. — Rob Bell

It is such a letdown to rise from the dead and have your friends not recognize you. — Rob Bell

If it is true, if it is beautiful, if it is honorable, if it is right, then claim it. Because it is from God. And you belong to God. — Rob Bell

Any time someone makes you feel guilty about how you are living, that is part of the old system (pre-Christ). — Rob Bell

The resurrection confronts our world with wonder, mystery, and miracles. — Rob Bell

We shape our God, and then our God shapes us. — Rob Bell

Christian is a great noun and a poor adjective — Rob Bell

Questions are not scary. What is scary is when people don’t have any. What is tragic is faith that has no room for them. — Rob Bell

I get ideas about things I want to make and then I throw myself into it with everything I have. — Rob Bell

Jesus is God's way of refusing to give up his dream for the world. — Rob Bell

God has spoken, and everything else is commentary. — Rob Bell

What's interesting is, if you take the scientists and the theologians, the really good ones, they end up both filled with this wide-eyed sense of wonder and awe about look at this world we live in. — Rob Bell

Suffering, it turns out, demands profound imagination. A new future has to be conjured up because the old future isn't there anymore. — Rob Bell

Life Lessons by Rob Bell

1. Rob Bell's work teaches us to think deeply about our faith, to question what we have been taught, and to look for the spiritual truths that can be found in everyday life.
2. He encourages us to be open to new ideas and to be willing to explore different ways of looking at the world.
3. He reminds us that we can find joy and peace in our lives when we are connected to something bigger than ourselves.