One of my favorite books I read this year was Gentle and Lowly: The Heart of Christ for Sinners and Sufferers by Dane Ortlund. The whole book oozes with gospel goodness. I read it during a tough season (hello 2020!) and found myself so encouraged by it and drawn to a deeper view of who God is and his heart for me. 

If you haven’t already, you should read the book.

If you’re still on the fence or need some encouragement today, here are my 16 favorite quotes from the book:

1. The posture most natural to Jesus is not a pointed finger but open arms.
2. Matthew 11:28 tells us explicitly who qualifies for fellowship with Jesus: “all who labor and are heavy laden.” You don’t need to unburden or collect yourself and then come to Jesus. Your very burden is what qualifies you to come.
3. If we are asked to say only one thing about who Jesus is, we would be honoring Jesus’s own teaching if our answer is gentle and lowly.
4. What elicits tenderness from Jesus is not the severity of the sin but whether the sinner comes to him.
5. In the biblical gospel, we are not given a thing; we are given a person.
6. When we sin, the very heart of Christ is drawn out to us.
7. Seeing God’s greatness is not our deepest need, but seeing his goodness.
8. When we come to Christ, we are startled by the beauty of his welcoming heart. The surprise is itself what draws us in.
9. In Jesus Christ, we are given a friend who will always enjoy rather than refuse our presence.
10. The Spirit causes us actually to feel Christ’s heart for us.
11. The label “Father of mercies” is the Bible’s way of taking us into the deepest recesses of who God the Father is.
12. We tend to project our natural expectations about who God is onto him instead of fighting to let the Bible surprise us into what God himself says.
13. Repent of your small thoughts of God’s heart. Repent and let him love you.
14. God is not poor in mercy. He is rich in mercy.
15. Nowhere else in the Bible is God described as rich in anything. The only thing he is called rich in is mercy. What does this mean? It means that God is something other than what we naturally believe him to be. It means the Christian life is a lifelong shedding of tepid thoughts of the goodness of God.
16. There are two ways to live the Christian life. You can live it either for the heart of Christ or from the heart of Christ. You can live for the smile of God or from it.