How to Find Little Moments of Delight with Bob Goff

April 09, 2020

Jennie Allen

Bible teacher, founder of IF:Gathering

Today we have one of your very favorite people, Bob Goff.  I specifically wanted him to be here with us today because he embodies delight.

Bob, you and I have talked about this before, but I want to talk about what it looks like in this new context.  

Totally. It feels like they threw the sock drawer on the floor and we're saying, "what matches now?" Where do we go? A lot of people are confused. But I love that we're talking about delight! This is my love language. 

That's why you are the only person we could call because I was like nobody embodies this more than you and sweet Maria. I love that. When you are in the midst of good, when you're in the midst of bad, you say this always matters. I want to read a quote out of Love Does: "living a life fully engaged and full of whimsy and the kind of things that love does is something most people plan to do. But along the way they just kind of forget." This morning I woke up knowing we were going to talk today, and I told Zac we had to do something fun today. It's Bob Goff day! I want to give people ideas of what it looks like to have delight in our life even though we don't have a lot of freedom. 

These reminders, like in the Old Testament when they stacked rocks, it wasn't like they ran out of paper and said they wanted to remember that God showed up. I think what we can do is at this time we're in a little bit tight corridors and maybe you've been walking around in your sweats and eating Girl Scout Thin Mints, we can still do what Paul tells us to do. I think some of our delight comes from being  a little bit more curious about other people's stuff than we are about our stuff. You can definitely do the deep work of figuring out who you are and who God is to you...sometimes we think it's going to be these big and glorious things that we would do for Jesus. He said, eyes fixed on me, author and perfector of our faith. That's what brings him delight. This has been hard for a person that's on the move. You and I are cut from the same cloth and we've had our wings clipped a little bit. But we can change gears a little bit and have some delight in the new circumstances. We can see where God's on the move.  

I actually want to go into your brain a minute. Will you go here with me? I want to talk about how you think of things because I've read your books and I know your life and I watch how you live. I just want you to take us into where you think of things like that. Because I think for a lot of us, we just get stuck and we want to think about other people and we want to be creative with our lives and we want to be creative with what God's given us. But I would love to even just hear what it looks like in your mind to have ideas and to think of what it would look like to bless other people.

If your listeners are hip to the Enneagram, they'll understand this, but I'm a seven. Which is the enthusiast, and I would imagine you've got a big dollop of that. One of the hallmarks of a seven would be that there's a veneer of "hippy skippy" and balloons and all that. But underneath that is a mile of strategy. You know why you're doing what you're doing, when we're operating in a really healthy place. I want to be super intentional about what I have. When the friends lowered their friend through the roof, Jesus says "the faith of your friends have made you well." Somebody had the idea of taking the roof off. If you want applause, go join the circus. If you want Jesus, join the hurting people. Get outside yourself, engage them, find them, and say let's go do this thing....I don't want to just talk, you know, like all hat, no cattle. I want to be a person that actually has the kind of faith that I aspire to have. It starts in those really small ways - an act of service, an act of love Take some of the pressure off. Take a deep breath. Get a puppy if you're on edge. The word conspire actually means to take a deep breath. Isn't that crazy? Conspiring together just means taking a deep breath together. What if we all just conspire with each other, take a deep breath, and spur one another on our faith...I hope if you're listening you know that God delights in you taking a small step, just shuffle your feet forward. 

Okay I want to play a little game, but I didn't tell you I was doing this. I want you to be creative for different types of people. I'm going to say a person and their situation, and I want you to think of something crazy they could do today that's totally out of the box, but within their limitations. So let's start with a medical worker that is headed into her 20th day of a long shift, she's exhausted, and she's just feeling ill-equipped. 

I actually got a call from a medical worker who was supposed to get married. I said, I've got a boat and I'm ordained. I'll meet you on the dock, we'll nose the boat up, and I'll officiate this thing. So finding some joy in the middle of these circumstances. It's just trying to find in a new context where that joint could be. So I would say if you're exhausted, just a cool glass of water from somebody. If you're a medical worker, let people know what you need...What if we created these zones where we could just have three minutes of authenticity - where we just put it all out there. The only rule is this: don't try to fix me. When Sweet Maria and I get discouraged and we know the Bible verses, but they just aren't sticking, we create a safe space and have three minutes of authenticity. I would say to a worn out medical health provider, to a worn out mom or dad, to a stressed out somebody, three minutes of just keeping it super real.

What would you say to the young single that is alone in her house right now that feels isolated? She has capacity to help but doesn't know how. 

What I'd say to the young and single is delight in your youth and in your singleness. Talk to somebody that's actually not young or single in the state. What advantages do I have now that you don't feel like you have right now? Almost trade places with them, and you'll understand some of the things that are possible for me. But I would also use this time to be super intentional. I wouldn't be alone. Get outside yourself and let people know you're available. 

Another one that's common right now is a lot of moms that are homeschooling, and this might be a short season that they're their kid's teacher for the first time. So what would you say to those parents, mom or dad, that's helping with homeschooling and has a bunch of kids that need them every day all of a sudden? 

I would say to be creative and do the opposite of whatever would be predictable because that will be the memorable stuff. I would get some magnifying glasses. I would get magnifying glasses and look closely at stuff. Memorize your kid's thumbprints or something. Wouldn't that be awesome? 

Is anything hard for you in this season that makes you sad or that makes you stuck? I think a lot of people are feeling that emotion of anger or fear. You're so positive, but I'd love to know if that has been part of this season for you.  

People that are just acquainted with me think I'm just happy-go-lucky. I've got 3,000 kids in 7 countries and 5 of them are in the middle of civil wars...We've had some setbacks and people have passed away. I have not had a day yet this week that there hasn't been somebody that's called me with a death of a loved one. We can empathize with that, but I don't want it to strip me of my joy. I want to be fully present in the grief. Then I want to return to my resting position of joy, hope, and anticipation. There are things I don't understand on this side of heaven...I've been teaching a class the last year or two at San Quentin penitentiary and the prisoners, I'm not quite sure how they get the phones, but they've been calling me concerned about how I'm doing because they don't have the virus in there because there's no visitors. But they're concerned with me and I'm like telling you, these men are more free than I've ever been. There was a moment where we were having a conversation. We were sitting in a circle and we were talking about how long each guy had left on his sentence. The average remaining time was a hundred years. I said, what's something you need to get off your chest? And each person went around, the guy next to me was the last one to go. He said, "I've been in here for 20 years so far, and I've got a hundred left. I've been telling everybody for 20 years that I was framed. I didn't do it. And I got to get some off my chest." And he paused for a second. He said, "I did it." I'm telling you, there's just something really freeing about just getting real. And so I would say in this time where there's a lot of stress and a lot of really difficult things happen, I would just get real. Ephesians 4 says let your request be made known to God. Get specific. The benefit of getting specific is those requests will be known to you too, not just a general feeling of stress or sadness. Get out a pencil and start writing what it's like, just name it. Don't camp out there, but we need to see it so we can bring it to Jesus. You might feel like you have a roommate not a spouse anymore. Or you feel like you have kids who are customers, not flesh of my flesh. You might feel far from Jesus. Bring that to Jesus, and don't fake it. 

I feel like we all need people to show us that there's a different way to do this. You can love God and be kind and it's helpful. I want to talk about what it looks like for the church going forward, because everything's changing and I know we don't know and it's hard to even take a guess, but what are some  the good things that you see could come out of this for us?

One of the things is that we see people innovating and that's beautiful. I want to continue to innovate in our friendships. We've figured out how to talk to people through sliding glass doors, whether they're little grandkids learning how to walk, and you just don't want to miss a minute of it, but you actually want to do that in the best way possible. I think innovation will be part of it. With each wave, there's a front side and a backside, so the front side will be innovation. Learning about this thing that most of us didn't know about called zoom. The backside of that will be, I don't want us to become comfortable doing only this, right? I want people to still seek the gathering, because that's the best part of church. So I don't want a bunch of people getting familiar with sitting around in their boxers being entertained. That's just Netflix. So what I want to do is rally together, think of the ways that we can be together, take all that innovation, and then celebrate the real version of that. We're just itching to be back together. I don't want to get comfortable with this, because comfortable people don't need Jesus. Desperate people do. The church is amazing when we come together.