Bob Goff

What To Do When Life Isn’t Working.

/ Erin Kirk / 1 Comment

Last night, a Hispanic girl, maybe 17, wearing baggy jeans got up to speak at the Angelus Temple – the LA Dream Center’s church home.

She was trying not to cry and her hands shook as Pastor Tommy Barnett held her arm. It took her a try or two to get the words out and when she did, her voice broke. Immediately, the place erupted with people hollering encouragement and telling her they loved her and she could do it.

She told us the death of her father devastated her so badly she wound up on a crystal meth spiral and without the Dream Center she wouldn’t be here.

“God is so good,” she said and she walked off the stage.

On Wednesday night, I met with Bob Goff, author of Love Does (more on that later). This gracious and hilarious guy, spent 45 minutes with me, before stepping on stage to encourage the students at Pepperdine University to love people extravagantly.

Bob is dedicated to looking for proof that Jesus is alive, much like a detective dusts for fingerprints. He said, when you deliberately look for Jesus, you find him everywhere.

For many years, I didn’t bother to look for Jesus because I thought I didn’t need to. But when my life began to feel like eating a sleeve of saltine crackers, I decided to look. That’s why I picked up The Bible – even though, at the time, it felt foolish and naive.

Now I’m at the Dream Center, a place that sparkles with Jesus, because much of its leadership is composed of people who came through drugs, and jail and the system. But, just like that brave little sister who spoke last night, they were restored piece by piece by Jesus and the Dream Center’s one-year discipleship program.

The bible calls people like this “trophies of grace” because when you come to Jesus just like you are and he gets you cleaned up and then uses you to clean other people up, you’re a huge prize.

So if trusting Jesus feels silly and naive to you, like it did to me, make a point of looking for his fingerprints. Listen to people who would be dead without him and see if that makes you curious what he’s has planned for you.

Don’t Let Him Shake Your Tree.

/ Erin Kirk / 2 Comments

My husband Sam loves the word addled. Truly, it’s a pretty good word with great synonyms like muzzy, woozy and befuddled.

He doesn’t apply it to me very often, because I’m usually steady. But in preparing to spend all this week serving the urban poor at the LA Dream Center, I was shilly-shallying and futzing around so badly, I thought I might have dementia. I even threw my wallet in the kitchen garbage and walked away with a soggy paper towel in hand. I worried about it to Sam.

“It’s because you’re going to LA to do something you’ve never done and you’re scared,” he said.

He’s right. I’ve never wandered under a bridge to hand out hot food to a homeless person. I’ve never played with neglected kids in a gang-infested urban neighborhood. What am I doing?

I’ll tell you what I’m doing, I’m climbing out on a limb, because that’s where the fruit is, and when you’re a new climber, like me, it’s good to follow the professional climbers. The LA Dream Center, which is the single largest food bank in LA County and serves 40,000 people every month in its 273 ministries, not only climbs to the best fruit, but they pick it and toss it down to everyone else.

The Apostle Paul said, the promises of God all find their yes in Jesus, and I’ve decided there are too many people (Bob Goff, Katie Davis, Matthew Barnett) doing impossible, God-promised things to doubt Jesus’ extravagant yes.

But I don’t want to just pig out on the grace of God until I’m bloated from hoarding it. It’s designed for sharing. Jesus wants me on my feet, darting nimbly through the world as his little cracked-pot, ambassador. As Katie Davis says in her lovely memoir from Uganda, where by age 19 she’d adopted the first six of her 14 orphans, we don’t have to be talented, we just have to be available.

The problem with shouting this manifesto is, the enemy hears it. And when you get halfway out your limb, he starts shaking your tree, hoping you’ll turn back. The devil doesn’t want me learning to serve people like Jesus did, and he sure doesn’t want me telling you how to do it. So he opposes me using the only things he has, anxiety, fear, confusion, rejection etc. The Apostle Paul explains it like this:

For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. Eph 6:12.

Yes, it’s tempting to bail out when I’m anxious and shaky, and can’t hold a coherent thought or keep my wallet out of the trash, but then I think, “bail out to where?” Jesus blew up all the bridges behind me. The only way left is forward.

And in this case, it goes through LA.

Chatting With NYT Bestselling Author Bob Goff

/ Erin Kirk / 3 Comments

I’ve been crowing all week about my new favorite book Love Does – Discover a Secretly Incredible Life in an Ordinary World. Do yourself a favor and buy this book, if for no other reason than the proceeds go to build schools in Uganda.

Love Does made it to somewhere around #12 on the New York Times Bestseller list and in keeping of the book’s spirit of whimsy and adventure, the author, Bob Goff, put his cell phone number in the back. That’s crazy. Do you know what’s even crazier? He answers it.

“Hi, This is Bob Goff.”

“Wow, you answered! Hi Bob, this is Erin from Texas. I just wanted to call and tell you how much I loved your book.”

“That is so sweet, thank you.”

“I can’t believe you answer your cell phone, I barely answer mine.”

“Don’t you think we all need to be more connected, instead of less connected” he said.

Bob had just stepped off a 27-hour flight from Uganda. He turned his phone on moments before I called. I asked how many people have called since the book came out and if I heard correctly, he said at least a thousand.

“It’s the best thing I ever did,” he said.

I’m going to Los Angeles next week (more on why later) and I asked if I could bring him a cup of coffee on Tom Sawyer Island. He gave me his email, so we can set it up. He said to make sure and email him because, after three weeks in Uganda, he’ll be walking into a wall of stuff when he gets home and doesn’t want to forget.

Love Does is the reason I decided to go to LA, where I’m going after my own secretly incredible life by doing something new, something that’s a leap of faith for me – or as Bob would put it, a caper.

I told Bob, I had blogged about Love Does (here and here) and he said he was really happy to talk to me. He reiterated how surprising or lucky it was I caught him. But I don’t think luck has anything to do with it.

“When you write your book, you should put your phone number in the back,” he said.

That’s funny, I didn’t tell Bob I was writing a book.