Jesus Prom.

"The quality of your life is tied to the quality of the love you give to others. God has placed many people around you who need to be exposed to a higher quality of love."
               -Jon Weece, Jesus Prom.


I read a lot. The summer between seventh & eighth grade I read somewhere around 30 books. English & writing have always been my strongest subjects in school, numbers are not my thing at all. Right before my Jesus summer, which I'll probably blog about at some point, I started reading Christian books. You know, like, other than the bible. Being the extremely color coordinated person I am, the Jesus books I own are marked with basically every color of highlighter Sharpie makes, & underlined terribly so that it's almost hard to read some parts. Yes, I am quite the dork. It's a thing.


One of the first Jesus books I read was Love Does. Bob Goff tells numerous tales of the absolutely incredible life he lives, and how love is something that actually does things, not just proclaims them. It's one of my top books I've ever read, religious or not, & I highly recommend it.


Going off of that, the day after Christmas I was in Barnes & Noble, Starbucks in hand (judge me), looking for new books that needed a little more color between their covers. If you go book shopping, you know how overwhelming it can be searching for a new read when you have no idea what you're looking for. Somewhere in the sea of "guides to new life" & "find the soulmate God wants" & "my dog is a prophet" I saw a spine that read Jesus Prom.


I'm sorry.. what?


Once I realized this was the actual title & not something I had made up in my brain, I picked it up. Jesus Prom: Life Gets Fun When You Love People Like God Does. I was extremely skeptical until I saw some small print at the bottom: Foreword by Bob Goff, New York Times Best-Selling Author of Love Does.


I was pretty much sold at that point.


I'm not finished reading Jesus Prom yet, but I'm pretty close. Today in class I read a few chapters that made me feel so much I couldn't wait to type out what I thought. I only want to say a little about it right now, & follow up once I've finished the whole thing. But you guys.. this book is absolutely incredible.


One of the things I mentioned in my first post was how interested I've been in the concept of love lately (& how badly I screw it up on a daily basis). It really has been on my heart & mind a lot how much love is so underestimated today. This book focuses on how nouns need verbs to function properly. A Christian (n.) is a person who loves (v.) & talks (v.), & a church (n.) is a place for people who love (v.), give (v.), & go (v.).


The quote at the top is what my mind has been thinking about since I read it. The quality of your life is tied to the quality of your love. The type of love you give out to people is directly connected to the type of life you live. I don't know about you, but based on that truth my life could definitely be a lot better. If we're called to be like Jesus, doesn't that include loving who He loved? The man who dined with the poor & spoke with the sick & used sinners as His closest companions is who we're called to model our lives after. How we would treat Jesus Himself is the same way we're called to treat those who society deems unworthy of any love at all.


The book asks what would happen if we all invited an extra person to our dinner table, someone others wouldn't necessarily expect you to hang out with. Personally, I can talk the ear off anyone I meet.. but that's if I'm willing to do so. I'm so guilty of only giving love to people who I think deserve it. I don't reach out to others like I should but it's definitely something I'm working on. They say the best way to love like Jesus is to understand how you're loved by Jesus, & I think I'm finally starting to.


I hope that with some extra effort on my part I can do a better job of loving people the way I'm loved by Jesus. Feel free to hold me accountable to that, seriously. If you ever have questions about something in a post or have something you want me to post about or just want someone to talk to in general, you know where to find me. (Twitter, obviously.)


"& you'll see why who we love is always more important than what we love."