Friendship is such an easy word but such a hard relationship to keep. A true relationship with someone is hard, and it takes effort. Bob Goff touches on all sorts of relationships in his book, “Love Does.” These descriptions not only talk about life, but they talk about what it means to truly live—especially with a new year and fresh start in the making.

“It’s only after you have lost everything that you are free to find out what you were missing.”

“The thing I love about God is He intentionally guides people into failure.”

I know what you're thinking. Why would our sweet savior guide people into hurt and pain in this world? Well, sometimes that's what it takes. Sometimes when you're so blind to what is not best for you, he makes it clear. He closes off pathways that we were not meant to travel down. This even includes friendships and relationships. God may cut off contact with someone. That may be painful, even excruciating, but it's for a reason. It may take time, but you will soon see why you were driven away from something that did not push you into who you're meant to be.

“I’ve learned that Go sometimes allows us to find ourselves in a place where we want something so bad we can’t see past it. Sometimes we can’t even see God because of it. When we want something that bad, it’s easy to mistake what we truly need for the thing we really want. When this sort of thing happens, and it seems to happen to everyone, I’ve found it’s because what God has for us is obscured from view, just around another bend in the road.”
“Instead, I think we’ll conclude in the end that maybe we’re all a little human origami and the more creases we have, the better.”

“When people realize there’s no agenda other than friendship and better understanding, it changes things.”

You know when someone seems like they care so much? they'll ask so many questions, and they'll seem so interested. But later, when it comes down to the dirty and the grit, they seem to disappear somewhere along the way. These people are what I like to call curious. You don't want to merely be "curious" about someone's life. You want to care. You want to invest yourself into every single person you're in relation with, and you want for them to see how much you care. When your friendship becomes more about investing your heart and soul into the other person rather than about feeding your gossip addiction, it will truly be life-giving.

“I used to think I needed an invitation to get into some places, but now I know I’m already invited…. Turning down this invitation comes in lots of flavors. It looks like numbing yourself or distracting yourself or seeing something really beautiful as just normal. It can also look like refusing to forgive or not being grateful or getting wrapped around the axle with fear or envy. I think every day God sends us an invitation to live and sometimes we forget to show up or get head-faked into thinking we haven’t really been invited. But you see, we have been invited—every day, all over again.”

“We just need to decide to get fully engaged. I that way, life can be like a sweepstakes--one where you must be present to win.

“The one who has invited you is way more powerful than any of the impediments we think we’re facing and He has just one message for us. He leans forward and whispers quietly to each of us, ‘There’s more room.’”

“The words people say to us not only have self-life but have the ability to shape life.”

“It’s like a guy with a cowboy hat, one duck, one cow, and a tractor calling himself a rancher. We don’t want to be all hat and no cattle when it comes to faith.”

“Jesus is asking me and the rest of the people in the world to stop faking it. He wants us to fight the temptation to merely have the right wrapper and instead be exactly who He made us to be and who we are right where we are.”

“I’ve found one of the best filters you can use to trust someone is when there’s nothing for them to gain from their advice.”

“Faith isn’t an equation or formula or a business deal that gets you what you want. In short, there’s nothing on the other side of the equals side, just Jesus.”

“Words spoken by kind people have the ability to endure in our lives.”

“You become like the people you hang around, and to a great degree, you’re going wherever they’re headed.”

“When Jesus invites us on an adventure, He shapes who we become with what happens along the way.”

“The kind of adventure Jesus has invited us on doesn’t require an application or prerequisites. It’s just about deciding to take up the offer made by a father who wants us to come.”