Book Week: Everybody Always

In this episode, I’m sharing my thoughts on the book “Everybody Always” by Bob Goff, a bestseller from 2018 that challenges readers to radically love others—especially difficult people and those with differing viewpoints. A topic never more relevant than now!

If you had to summarize the entire Bible in one word, it’s love. If we believe we are who God says we are—loved, valued, and capable—then loving “everybody always” flows authentically from us.

Here are 3 key takeaways:

Love with Boundaries: Love isn’t about being a doormat or accepting harm. It’s about sharing your energy to help people see their value, while also practicing healthy boundaries.

Start with Self-Awareness and Receiving Love: We become capable of healthy authentic love for others by first believing and accepting God’s love for ourselves. You can’t pour from an empty cup.

Extend Grace to All:: Loving beyond your circle means extending grace even to those who are difficult to love. It’s not easy, but it’s possible! Sometimes, start with loving someone for just 30 seconds at a time.

Let’s be people who choose love over everything else. 

Links 

• Join Kelly's Group Coaching Program
• Join Kelly’s Free community on Skool
• Bob Goff

 Let's connect.

I am cheering for you!

Transcript

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Love is patient and kind, but love has good boundaries. Love is not being a doormat. Love is not being injured. Love is taking what God has put inside of us and then going out and using that energy in a way to share with people that they are who God says they are. John 13:34 is what it looks like to be a follower of Jesus. Love one another because we have been so loved Welcome to the Live a Vibrant Life Podcast. I'm life coach Kelly Tibbits, and each week I'll be here to encourage and equip you with the tools you need to grow in self-awareness and invest your best energy in your dreams and your purpose. I believe self-awareness changes everything. Let's get started. You had to choose just one word to describe the entire Bible, what would you choose? How many of you have thought maybe the best word to describe all of scripture is grace? Maybe for you, the word is truth. For many of us, the word is hope. Today, we are talking about Everybody Always and the author, Bob Goff, says you can summarize all of scripture in the word love. It's a book that will change your life. I had the opportunity with my daughter, Katie to go to Gordon College and meet Bob Goff, and he, if you know anything about him, is exactly what you would expect him to be. He is completely full of joy, and he's also one of the most humble people. He had arrived the night before from Afghanistan, and even though he could have used the time before he spoke to sit in the back and rest. When we came in, there he was, putting his own PowerPoint presentation together right in front of us. And as he stepped onto the stage, you would have no idea if he was tired or not, because his joy just overflowed. And before you knew it, he had a New England congregation laughing out loud over and over and over again. And I think that's because, to the core of who he is, he knows that he is loved. The way we're gonna be able to love everybody always is if we believe that we really are who He, God, says we are. I'm such a big fan. My daughter said he has given her verses that have gotten her through her first two years of college. One of them, can be paraphrased love everybody, always. How are we gonna do that? I hope to share that with you. We're gonna start today talking about, how do we love the people closest to us? How do we love our family and friends always? You know, of all the people to love, it seems like family and friends should be the easiest to love, right? Theoretically anyway, that those should be the ones that are easy to love. And love one another is so simple, but it's also hard to do. Love one another goes back to what Jesus gave as His command. This is what He said to His disciples, His followers. The night that He was about to be betrayed, He had a meal with them. He was in the upper room. He got down on His knees and He washed the feet of His friends. And when He finished that, He sat with them and He said to them As I have loved you, love one another. And that command is not only for his friends, it is for you and it is for me. As God has loved us, let's go out and love one another. We're gonna look at John chapter 13 together, verses 34 and 35, and this is Jesus speaking. "I give you a new commandment: Love each other. Just as I have loved you, you should love each other. Your love will prove to the world that you are my disciples." See, it's not our grace or our truth or our hope that changes the people around us. It is our love, and we are only able to love one another if we first receive the love of God. I think it's the starting point. If you travel somewhere, you know the starting point matters, right? If you use Waze and you put the wrong starting point in, you're not probably gonna get to where you need to go. The starting point matters, and the starting point for you and I today is love. Receiving the love of Christ in our life allows us to go out and be who He created us to be, His loved children. One of the most amazing things about Jesus is He doesn't just ask us to love one another. He asks us to be who He is, and He is love. God is calling you and I to be love. As we grow in Him, what He does is He transforms us. He takes the old and He makes it new. He makes us fall more and more in love with Him. But I want you to hear this clearly. Love is patient and kind, but love has good boundaries. Love is not being a doormat. Love is not being injured. Love is taking what God has put inside of us and then going out and using that energy in a way to share with people that they are who God says they are. John 13:34 is a call for you and for me. What it looks like to be a follower of Jesus is to love one another because we have been so loved But when you think about your friends and family, I know some of you are saying, "That's not the word I would use to describe how people treat me." I want you to know that how people treat you is less about you and more about them, right? Loved people are able to love one another, but hurt people hurt other people. So I want you to know that you are not responsible for the other people around you. God is just saying, "Receive my love, and out of that love, go out and love people." A quote that Bob has is that, "When joy is our habit, love will become our reflex." That first thought, that's not our responsibility. Our habits are our responsibility. Our habits, we can change. We can invest in joy and in peace and in sitting at the feet of Jesus and believing that we are who He says we are, and out of that, we become people who love one another. What I'm asking us today is to choose to believe that we are loved so that we can go out and love everybody, always. If we're called to love everybody always, we're called to love our friends and our family. We're called to love the stranger. Be people who love everybody always, Psalm 68:6, there's a beautiful verse. It says, "God places the lonely in families." It's so important to God that we as His people love one another, that we love everybody always. When we look in the Book of Deuteronomy, we see God creating a nation, and He's making a promise to Abraham in the Book of Genesis that we're starting to see fulfilled in the Book of Deuteronomy. He's making this people into a family, and this family has some rules. Does your family have some rules? In my house, we have one big mission statement. It is to be kind and loving to one another. That was the goal of our family. God has a goal, and He ha- talks about it all through Deuteronomy. And in verses 17 to 19, He says this For the Lord your God is God of gods and Lord of lords. The great God is mighty and awesome, and He shows no partiality, and He accepts no bribes. He defends the fatherless and the widow, and He loves the foreigner residing among you, giving them food and clothing, and you are to love those who are foreigners, for you yourself were foreigners in Egypt. As He's creating this nation, He's reminding them "You were once a stranger, but you were cared for. And as I've provided for you, you are called to go and care for one another." This verse means a lot to me because when I was growing up, my family actually was homeless for a few months. We lived in our church parsonage. So I know what it feels like to have nothing. But you know who provided for us? Our family, our church. They brought us new clothes, they brought us furniture, but most of all, they gave us love. And that's why I love the church. Every church that I have ever been a part of has loved me well, and my children have had the privilege of growing up in churches surrounded by spiritual aunts and uncles and cousins that speak life over them. And that's my prayer that we won't see one another as this stranger. We'll see each other as family we just haven't met yet. What does it look like in our place of work to take one strong, scary, faith-filled step and invite someone to coffee or to lunch? Because I think God's desire is for us to be a people who no longer treat each other like strangers but love everybody always. This is what God does. He gives His best, the sun to warm and the rain to nourish, and He gives it to everyone.". Live out of your God-created identity. What would it look like if we decided to, on purpose, love our enemies? Enemies are people who are across from us and they're something different. I love being nice. When there's the grace and truth lens to land on, I tend to just wanna stay over here in grace even if I'm walking away from truth. And people who love to walk in grace without truth, we can end up lying. And people who like to walk in truth without grace can accidentally become cruel. And Jesus, in perfect love, is grace and truth, and that's what He's calling us to, and these words matter. How do we love our enemy? Well, to go back to everybody always, Bob Goff says, "Talk grace behind each other's back." See, it's so easy to talk the opposite of grace behind people's back, isn't it? It's where we get really confident, when the person's not in the room. But Jesus is calling all of us today to love our enemies, to look at them and see the good that He sees, because every person is made in the image of God. There's something beautiful inside them. There was a time I was a teacher, and as such, as a third grade teacher, I held great power. If in my classroom I said something, my children believed it, and their parents would come in and say, "Could you tell them all to make their beds? Because if you say it, it means more than when I do." And so because I held that power, I tried very hard to talk grace behind the back of my students. As their parents would come pick them up, I would try to say something positive and good over them as they were going to their parents. What would it look like if we choose not to have enemies? We choose to find what's in common, and we choose to speak grace over each other. We're not saying it's not hard, but here's a suggestion. When that person in front of you is just so hard to love, can you ask yourself, "Can I love them for 30 seconds? Can I close my eyes and take a deep breath and remember who I am, and out of that, love the other?" We love because God first loved us. 1 John 4:7-8 says this, "Beloved," That's who you and I are. We are God's beloved. "Let us love one another, because everyone that loves is born of God and knows God. And he that doesn't love, and she that doesn't love, doesn't know God, because God is love." Our encouragement today is be people who love everybody always. Thank you for joining the Live a Vibrant Life podcast. I hope our time together encouraged you and will equip you with the tools you need to live a brave, creative, purpose-filled life. And if you'd like to learn more, you can follow me on Instagram or Facebook, Kelly Tibbits Life Coach, or visit my website, kellytibbitts.com. I look forward to connecting again soon