• my desire in worship is to gaze so deeply into the face of God that I may experience His presence as much as I can here on earth. Then hopefully when I get to Heaven, I might recognize His face. -kari jobe
• Indeed, if we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that Our Lord finds our desires, not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased. - cs lewis
• All great artists draw from the same resource: the human heart, which tells us all that we are more alike than we are unalike. - Maya Angelou, Letter To My Daughter
• Walk tall, kick ass, learn to speak Arabic, love music and never forget you come from a long line of truth seekers, lovers and warriors. - Hunter S. Thompson
• We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars. - Oscar Wilde
• You may forget but let me tell you this: someone in some future time will think of us. - Sappho
• "you were the blessing & i was the curse" - wilco
• "Faith is not the clinging to a shrine but an endless pilgrimage of the heart. Audacious longing, burning songs, daring thoughts, an impulse overwhelming the heart, usurping the mind--these are all a drive towards serving Him who rings our hearts like a bell. It is as if He were waiting to enter our empty, perishing lives." - Abraham Joshua Heschel
• "If ever there should come a wretched day when all our pulpits be full of modern thought, and the old doctrine of substitutionary sacrifice shall be exploded, then there will remain no word of comfort for the guilty or hope for the despairing."- C.H. Spurgeon
• "If we live, we live to the Lord; and if we die, we die to the Lord. So, whether we live or die, we belong to the Lord. - Romans 14:8
• "I never liked jazz music because jazz music doesn't resolve. But I was outside the Bagdad Theater in Portland one night when I saw a man playing the saxophone. I stood there for fifteen minutes, and he never opened his eyes. After that I liked jazz music. Sometimes you have to watch somebody love something before you can love it yourself. If is as if they are showing you the way.I used to not like God because God didn't resolve. But that was before any of this happened." -Donald Miller, Blue Like Jazz]
• If it came from a plant, eat it; if it was made in a plant, don’t.
• He is looking for voluntary lovers: people who long to know Him more than anything else; people who will live lifestyles of prayer, fasting and meditation on the Word of God because they hunger to know a holy God; people who will seek the knowledge of God because they want to be transformed and invited into the deep things of God’s heart.
• “Do not be too moral. You may cheat yourself out of much life so. Aim above morality. Be not simply good; be good for something. Henry David Thoreau
• “Friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another: “What! You too? I thought I was the only one. C.S. Lewis
• “I am so clever that sometimes I don’t understand a single word of what I am saying. Oscar Wilde
• “Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don’t matter, and those who matter don’t mind. Dr. Seuss
• “This is my command - be strong and courageous! Do not be afraid or discouraged. For the Lord your God is with you wherever you go.” [Joshua 1:9 NLT]
• "A painter paints pictures on canvas. But musicians paint their pictures on silence." --Leopold Stokowski
• "GOD WANTS YOUR PRAISE, NOT JUST YOUR SONG.HE WANTS YOUR HEART, NOT JUST YOUR WORDS."
• No matter how careful you are, there's going to be the sense you missed something, the collapsed feeling under your skin that you didn't experience it all. There's that fallen heart feeling that you rushed right through the moments where you should've been paying attention. Well, get used to that feeling. That's how your whole life will feel some day. This is all practice. None of this matters. We're just warming up. - Chuck Palahniuk
• All paths do not lead to God, but God can be found on all paths. - Dr Wilbur P. Stone
• I am always doing that which I can not do in order that I may learn how to do it. - Pablo Picasso
• A man only learns in two ways, one by reading, and the other by association with smarter people. -Will Rogers
• ...music is about as physical as it gets: your essential rhythm is your heartbeat; your essential sound, the breath. We're walking temples of noise, and when you add tender hearts to this mix, it somehow lets us meet in places we couldn't get to any other way. ― Anne Lamott, Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith
• The depth of the feeling continued to surprise and threaten me, but each time it hit again and I bore it...I would discover that it hadn't washed me away. ― Anne Lamott, Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith
• You will lose someone you can’t live without,and your heart will be badly broken, and the bad news is that you never completely get over the loss of your beloved. But this is also the good news. They live forever in your broken heart that doesn’t seal back up. And you come through. It’s like having a broken leg that never heals perfectly—that still hurts when the weather gets cold, but you learn to dance with the limp. ― Anne Lamott
• Lighthouses don’t go running all over an island looking for boats to save; they just stand there shining. ― Anne Lamott
• If we did all the things we are capable of doing, we would astonish ourselves. - Thomas Edison
• My heart's desire is that EVERYTHING I do is overflow. It's just an expression of my love for Him. I was made to love and be loved. - Steffany Frizzel
• I feel like when we worship, our worship goes straight to God and He receives it. And as that happens, I see Him send our praise back onto us, like a boomerang, and sending His name over all the Earth in proclamation. - Jenn Johnson
• What could be more dangerous to the enemy of our hearts than women with hearts that are fully awake? - Emily Freeman
• Tears are tiny messengers sent to make you realize what makes you come alive. - Emily Freeman
• Our influence is wrapped up in what makes us come alive. – Emily Freeman
• Your art wakes up something in people. If it doesn’t, then it isn’t your art. - Emily Freeman
• Show up and be who you already are, you bring the spirit of a LIVING God with you. – Emily Freeman
• Once our eyes are opened, we can’t pretend we don’t know what to do. God, who weighs our hearts and keeps our souls, knows what we know, and holds us responsible to act. - Proverbs 24:12
• Peace is relational, not circumstantial. If you need peace in your life, spend time with Jesus. - Jessica McInnis
• The whole purpose for which we exist is to be thus taken into the life of God. - CS Lewis, Mere Christianity
• If you think you are too small to be effective you have never been in bed with a mosquito. - Betty Reese
• We must develop and maintain the capacity to forgive. He who is devoid of the power to forgive is devoid of the power to love. There is some good in the worst of us and some evil in the best of us. When we discover this, we are less prone to hate our enemies. - Martin Luther King, Jr
• Surround yourself with the dreamers and the doers, the believers and thinkers, but most of all, surround yourself with those who see the greatness within you, even when you don’t see it yourself. - Edmund Lee
• And there is something profoundly humbling about knowing God. I’m not talking about the trinket God or the genie-in-a-lamp God. I mean the God who invented the tree in my front yard, the beauty of my sweetheart, the taste of a blueberry, the violence of a river at flood. There are a lot of religious trends that would have us controlling God, telling us that if we do this that and the other, God will jump through our hoops like a monkey. But this other God, this real God, is awesome and strong, all-encompassing and passionate, and for reasons I will never understand, he wants to father us. - Donald Miller
• Experience: the most brutal of teachers. But you learn, my god do you learn. - C.S. Lewis
• The happiest people are those who think the most interesting thoughts. Those who decide to use leisure as a means of mental development, who love good music, good books, good pictures, good company, good conversation, are the happiest people in the world. And they are not only happy in themselves, they are the cause of happiness in others. — William Phelps
• Grace is the power of God coming to you at no cost to you, to do through you what you can't do by yourself - Joyce Meyer
• Grace is the transformative substance that eradicates evil and compels you toward good living. - John Crowder
• We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience. - Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
• Heaven is that greater glory of which Nature is only the first sketch. - CS Lewis
• Faith is the confidence that what we hope for will actually happen; it gives us assurance about things we cannot see. - Hebrews 11:1
• Isn't it funny how day by day nothing changes but when you look back everything is different... - CS Lewis
• You can't get a cup of tea big enough or a book long enough to suit me. - CS Lewis
• You are never too old to set another goal or dream another dream. - CS Lewis
• There are far better things ahead than anything we left behind. - CS Lewis
• We read to know we are not alone. - CS Lewis
• To be a Christian means to forgive the inexcusable because God has forgiven the inexcusable in you. - CS Lewis
• I believe in Christ like I believe in the sun - not because I can see it, but by it I can see everything else. - CS Lewis
• You meet thousands of people and none of them even touch you and then you meet one and your life changes forever. - One Tree Hill
• When we make room for silence, we make room for ourselves. Silence invites the unknown, the untamed, the wild, the shy, the unfathomable – that which rarely has a chance to surface within us. - Gunilla Norris, Sharing Silence
• Wait quietly in My presence while My thoughts form silently in the depths of your being. Do not try to rush this process, because hurry keeps your heart earthbound. - Sarah Young, Jesus Calling
• I connect best with others when I connect with the core of myself. When I am able to disengage myself from others and allow the Lord to liberate me from an unhealthy dependence on people, I can exist more for them, listen more attentively, love more unselfishly, speak more compassionately, play more playfully, take myself less seriously, and become more aware that my face is bright with laughter in the midst of a game I thoroughly enjoy. - Brennan Manning, Souvenirs of Solitude
• Love a horse and talk to plumbers. Ask questions of everybody and don’t hide your ignorance, for ignorance is simply the unlit side of curiosity and the outside of the door to wisdom and knowledge. Be a limitless person to others and maybe you will stretch them more than your art does. Let’s hope. - Harold Best’s letter to artists as recorded in Scribbling in the Sand by Michael Card
• Worry and fear are simply the belief that I have gotten myself into a place where God is not. And so that brings us to the truth, that God, through his determination to share his heart with me, was willing to go to my ungracious place to be with me. He would rather die than live without me, even if it means ungracious places.”- Presten Gillham, Grace in Ungracious Places
• Having vision beyond your resources is synonymous with dreaming big. And it may feel like you’re setting yourself up for failure, but you’re actually setting God up for a miracle. How God performs the miracle is His job. Your job is drawing a circle around the God-given dream. - Mark Batterson, The Circle Maker
• I write because there are stories that people have forgotten to tell, because I am a woman trying to stand up in my life. I write because to form a word with your lips and tongue or think a thing and then dare to write it down so you can never take it back is the most powerful thing I know. I am trying to come alive, to find the distances in my own recesses and bring them forward and give them color and form. - Natalie Goldberg, Writing Down The Bones
• I knew that we were sharing something with our eyes, but I didn’t know what, and I didn’t know if it mattered. — Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
• A couple of times in your life, it happens like that. You meet a stranger, and all you know is that you need to know everything about them. - Lisa Kleypas
• We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit. - Aristotle
• In retrospect, all revolutions seem inevitable. Beforehand, all revolutions seem impossible. - Michael McFaul
• But the wisdom that comes from heaven is first of all pure; then peace-loving, considerate, submissive, full of mercy and good fruit, impartial and sincere. Peacemakers who sow in peace reap a harvest of righteousness. - James 3:17-18
• You may forget that you are at every moment totally dependent on God. - CS Lewis
• May your week be filled with the secret things of the Spirit. May your difficulties, disappointments, and deeply felt pain hold within them the chief goal of reminding you how deeply you long for God. Listen to the whisper of desire, the kind that comes from your new heart. There is no depth or height or family dispute that can separate you from the love of God. Enjoy your week, friends. - Chat at The Sky
• A woman would be much better off if she could distinguish the difference between a man who flatters her and a man who compliments her, a man who spends money on her, and a man who invests in her, a man who views her as property and a man who views her properly, a man who lusts after her and a man who loves her, a man who believes he is God’s gift to women & a man who remembers a woman was God’s gift to man. - Kris Vallotton
• Heaven is your reward, but Heaven on earth is your ministry. - Kris Vallotton
• We are not supposed to reflect our culture; we are commissioned to transform it. - Kris Vallotton
• Excellence is the result of caring more than others think is wise, risking more than others think is safe, dreaming more than others think is practical and expecting more than others think is possible. - Kris Vallotton
• And when at last you find someone to whom you feel you can pour out your soul, you stop in shock at the words you utter— they are so rusty, so ugly, so meaningless and feeble from being kept in the small cramped dark inside you so long. — Sylvia Plath
• I am gone quite mad with the knowledge of accepting the overwhelming number of things I can never know, places I can never go, and people I can never be. — Sylvia Plath
• It’s not simply about knowing your worth. It’s about having the strength to never accept less. — Paul Carrick Brunson
• I think it's very healthy to spend time alone. You need to know how to be alone and not be defined by another person. - Oscar Wilde
• It was her love for the Lord Jesus, with whom she walks every day, that made me want to love Him and walk with Him like that - Anne Graham Lotz, referring to Ruth Graham
• We’ve come to understand that sacrificial generosity is more life-giving to us than easy generosity. - the tiny twig
• Stop regarding all the unpleasant things as interruptions in one’s own or real life. The truth is, of course, that what one regards as interruptions are precisely one’s life. - cs lewis
• If we are to be aware of life while we are living it, we must have the courage to relinquish our hard-earned control of ourselves. - madeleine l’engle
• It matters not what my abilities may be then, provided that I possess you, Lord. Do what you will with this insignificant creature. Whether it be that I should work, or become inspired, or be the recipient of your impressions, it is all the same. Everything is yours, everything is from you and for you … Mine is to be satisfied with your work and not to demand the choice of action or condition, but to leave everything to your good pleasure. - Jean-Pierre deCaussade, The Joy of Full Surrender
• When the darkness breaks, it will be glory itself that wakes with the human cry of a small baby, blinking up at his Mother in the sudden light and seeing in her face and reading in her heart, the hope and promise that God will triumph over fear, will deliver us from evil and will bring his kingdom at last. –N.T. Wright, The Lord and His Prayer
• Let yourself be silently drawn by the strange pull of what you really love. It will not lead you astray. ~ Rumi
• Let us spend our lives chasing the tiny moments of grace that hide in borrowed breaths, stolen glances, and the last instant before smiling lips come to rest. - Tyler Knott Gregson
• I wonder if we knew back then we would be this way? We'd be savers, collectors and the keepers of memories? We are now; our hands grab onto the tangible and textured talismans of every place we find ourselves in and my love, why wouldn't they? It is only when you worked so completely and exhaustively that you truly appreciate the weight of the trophy in your tired hands. - Tyler Knott Gregson
• But I want first of all — in fact, as an end to these other desires — to be at peace with myself. I want a singleness of eye, a purity of intention, a central core to my life that will enable me to carry out these obligations and activities as well as I can. I want, in fact — to borrow from the language of the saints — to live ‘in grace’ as much of the time as possible. - Anne Morrow Lindbergh, Gift from the Sea
• There only one celebrity that deserves to be celebrated and that's the Lord Jesus Christ. - Lecrae
• God is not a belief to which you give your assent. God becomes a reality whom you know intimately, meet everyday, one whose strength becomes your strength, whose love, your love. Live this life of the presence of God long enough and when someone asks you, “Do you believe there is a God?” you may find yourself answering, “No, I do not believe there is a God. I know there is a God. - Ernest Boyer, Jr.
• I would like to be known as an intelligent woman, a courageous woman, a loving woman, a woman who teaches by being. — Maya Angelou
• Never be so focused on what you’re looking for that you overlook the thing you actually find. - Ann Patchett
• Art can revive us, wake our souls from slumber, remind us we are built for more than just to consume, but to create. - David Helms
• Home, then, is a powerful but elusive concept. The strong feelings that surround it reveal some deep longing within us for a place that absolutely fits and suits us, where we can be, or perhaps find, our true selves. - Prodigal God
• Love is not passion. It is the pulse of sacrifice. - A Holy Experience
• Let us make a lasting impact on those Jesus places in front of us, and be ever more filled with his joy. - Danae Moran
• I have found the paradox, that if you love until it hurts, there can be no more hurt, only more love. - Mother Teresa
• Until we have seen someone’s darkness, we don’t really know who they are. Until we have forgiven someone’s darkness, we don’t really know what love is. - Marianne Williamson
• We do not believe in ourselves until someone reveals that deep inside us something is valuable, worth listening to, worthy of our trust, sacred to our touch. Once we believe in ourselves we can risk curiosity, wonder, spontaneous delight or any experience that reveals the human spirit. - E.E. Cummings
• I was by myself for a pretty long time. I needed to do that. I think everyone that I know has wanted to do that or needed to do that at some point. I think when you spend enough time when it’s quiet around you and you don’t open your mouth for three or four days, there’s parts of your brain that can kind of rest. I think when we’re out in the world and we have to talk to people, we edit ourselves. You know, we have to like, act a little bit. As honest as we may be as humans, when we’re out here, we’re all kind of wearing mirrors on our faces. You know, constantly reacting to how to react to the people around you. And I think when you’re alone for a long enough time, you can feel a lot more peace. - Justin Vernon
• We gotta start teaching our daughters to be somebodies instead of somebody’s. - Kifah Shah
• But who prays for Satan? Who, in eighteen centuries, has had the common humanity to pray for the one sinner that needed it the most? - Mark Twain
• Hope, wonderful hope! The bright sun in the morning, the ring of twelve-string guitars, fresh red strawberries, sleeping puppies, giggling babies, inspiring choruses that never end, and the way the air smells giddy on a surprising warm afternoon in March after a long frozen winter. That’s how your dream of fulfilled hope feels, only better. But first, the scary. Do you really want change? You know you have a longing, a hope. Maybe you don’t even know exactly what it looks like. But you yearn and you dream for something beyond your reach. You have the hope, but do you want the change? - Gary Morland, Scary Hope
• Good Friday promises otherwise. Good Friday promises that nothing can separate us from the love of God because love chose to be separated from Himself instead. God turned on himself for our sakes. He tore himself apart so that our brokenness, our betrayal and our addictions wouldn’t be the end of our stories. Jesus was separated so you will never have to be separate again. Even when it seems like you’re fighting a losing battle. Even when it seems like hope is dead. Hope did die. But Hope didn’t stay dead.- chatting at the sky
• As we enter more and more deeply into this experience of being humbled and exalted, our knowledge of God increases, and with it our peace, our strength, and our joy. God help us, then, to put our knowledge about God to this use, that we all may in truth “know the Lord.- J.I. Packer
• You’ll need coffee shops and sunsets and road trips. Airplanes and passports and new songs and old songs, but people more than anything else. You will need other people and you will need to be that other person to someone else, a living breathing screaming invitation to believe better things. - Jamie Tworkowski
• Sometimes in life, tears are our 'glasses' to see Jesus. - Pope Francis
• Literature is invention. Fiction is fiction. To call a story a true story is an insult to both art and truth. Every great writer is a great deceiver, but so is that arch-cheat Nature. Nature always deceives. From the simple deception of propagation to the prodigiously sophisticated illusion of protective colors in butterflies or birds, there is in Nature a marvelous system of spells and wiles. The writer of fiction only follows Nature’s lead. —Vladimir Nabokov
• A bottle of wine contains more philosophy than all the books in the world. - Louis Pasteur
• [The utility maximizing consumer] is a pathetically narrow and arid version of what humans actually are and want. -Carne Ross
• Opening our hearts to God means facing our fears. In order for Him to mold and change us to become more like Him, we must first be revealed of the ways in which we need our hearts to change. Look at it as a blessing. God is revealing to us ways in which He can redeem us, so that we can spread His love and truth even further and deeper into this world. Let Him work inside of our hearts, and He will shine even brighter through our lives.
• …although we may have something unhealthy deep inside of us, those in whom Christ dwells also have something deeper. Something whole. Something so infinitely healthy that, if it would but invade the rest of us, we would be healed. — So Long Insecurity, Beth Moore
• So then, just as you received Christ Jesus as Lord, continue to live your lives in him, rooted and built up in him, strengthened in the faith as you were taught, and overflowing with thankfulness. See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the elemental spiritual forces of this world rather than on Christ. — Colossians 2:6-8
• Real prayer comes not from gritting our teeth but from falling in love. - Richard Foster
• but it's not supposed to be easier, is it. The beauty is in the struggle after all. Bravery can only come from having something to be brave about. And the same with strength, tenderness, integrity, self sacrifice, and all the most noble things about being human. We only become who we are in the face of them. --Katherine Center
• Sometimes the circumstances at hand force us to be braver than we actually are, and so we knock on doors and ask for assistance. Sometimes not having any idea where we’re going works out better than we could possibly have imagined. -Ann Patchett, What Now?
• The problem of sin is not merely external to us, but is a radical problem—it goes to the core of our being. Consequently, the solution to the problem must be equally radical. -Stanley Grenz
• "The problem with comparison is that you always feel either better than someone else or worthless compared to someone else." - Dillon Burroughs
• “Happiness can only be achieved by looking inward & learning to enjoy whatever life has –and this requires transforming greed into gratitude.” - John Chrysostom
• God will make a way where there is no way. Through our Red Seas, God makes roads. - Ann Voskamp
• Worship is the strategy by which we interrupt our preoccupation with ourselves and attend to the presence of God. -Eugene Peterson
• “We must trust in God and surrender completely to Him. He will not deceive us. Never tire of doing even the smallest things for Him, because He isn’t impressed so much with the dimensions of our work as with the love in which it is done. And we should not be discouraged if we fail in the beginning. The practice would eventually cause our efforts to become a pleasurable habit that we would do without thinking.” - The Practice of the Presence of God
• “Knowing God and knowing self are both necessary for wholeness and holiness . . . Christian maturity demands that we know God and ourselves, recognizing that deep knowing of each supports deeper knowing of the other.” - David G. Benner, Sacred Companions
• You don’t practice His presence. You practice being present to His presence in this present moment. Practicing the presence of God is the practice of self-discipline. - Ann Voskamp
• Your way of living art is one of the million little ways God wants to show himself in the world. - Emily Freeman
• "In my life, vulnerability has been the difference between friendship and community. You can be transparent with your friends. You can let them see your mess, you can be honest and you can be free. But it becomes community when you open yourself up and invite them in. Now, its not just your mess, it’s their mess too." - Jessi Cross, Suzie Studios
• “Every girl is expected to have caucasian blue eyes, full Spanish lips, a classic button nose, hairless Asian skin with a California tan, a Jamaican dance hall ass, long Swedish legs, small Japanese feet, the abs of a lesbian gym owner, the hips of a nine-year-old boy, the arms of Michelle Obama and doll tits. This is why everyone is struggling.” -Tina Fey
• "There is no pit of hell so deep that Gods love does not go deeper." - Corrie Ten Boom
• "We are inclined to think that when we are sad we cannot be glad, but in the life of a God-centered person, sorrow and joy can exist together. That isn’t easy to understand, but when we think about some of our deepest life experiences, such as being present at the birth of a child or the death of a friend, great sorrow and great joy are often seen to be parts of the same experience. Joy does not simply happen to us. We have to choose joy and keep choosing it everyday. It is a choice based on the knowledge that we belong to God and have found in God our refuge and our safety and that nothing, not even death, can take God away from us.”- Henri J.M. Nouwen, Here and Now
• "It's much easier to spend a lot of time making your microphone louder than it is working on making your message more compelling." - Seth Godin
• "It’s dangerous faith in our untamed Savior that leads us to the joy we crave." -Randy Alcorn
• "I would not choose to become a child again but I am looking to children and searching in them for a simplicity and ordinariness that makes being an adult easier to accept and miracles easier to see.” -Macrina Wiederkehr, Seasons of Your Heart
• The Bible’s purpose is not so much to show you how to live a good life. The Bible’s purpose is to show you how God’s grace breaks into your life against your will and saves you from the sin and brokenness otherwise you would never be able to overcome… religion is ‘if you obey, then you will be accepted’. But the Gospel is, ‘if you are absolutely accepted, and sure you’re accepted, only then will you ever begin to obey’. Those are two utterly different things. Every page of the Bible shows the difference. — Tim Keller
• "But the kind of community that brings raw and real intimacy is not convenient. It is not always going to fit within a neat and tidy schedule. It's not something that comes naturally or easily, but it's something I believe has the power to change our lives. And moving against the grain of the culture I know it has the power to change the world. Jesus prayed for it because He knew it would. (John 17)" Read more of @jessiccross's story on @thetapestrylife blog
• The devil on his best day did not take you out on your worst day, you're still here. Greater is He that is in you! - Christine Caine
• "Music is personal taste, worship is what comes from our relationship with Christ." - sandi patty
• Too many people have laid down their life for Jesus, or are currently laying down their life every day for Jesus, for me to not do the same. Obviously Jesus hasn't taken me home yet so my work for the Kingdom on earth isn't done yet, and I won't truly rest until I am not on this earth any longer. - me lol
• “Lord, help me to appreciate this person without elevating him (or her) above You in my heart. Help me to remember that no human can ever take Your place in my life. You are my strength, my hope, my joy, and my ultimate reward. Bring me back to reality, God; give me an undivided heart." - Joshua Harris, I Kissed Dating Goodbye
• “God has seen our unloveliness—the deep brokenness and rebellion in our hearts—and instead of withdrawing, he pursues us to the beautiful end.” - The Mingling of Souls by Matt Chandler
• I’ve found each time I start to get stressed and anxious, if I pause and start whispering, “Jesus, help me,” my pulse slows and I can think more rationally. Our souls were designed to recognize and respond to the name of Jesus.- Lysa TerKeurst
• Relationships sharpen us, and genuine love makes way for challenge. Invite the people who love you to call you to more, to help you break through the patterns of sin you've lived with so long you don't even notice them anymore. Where there's genuine love, challenge doesn't call the relationship or your identity into question, but affirms them. Genuine love says, "I see who you really are, who God made you to be, and I want more for you." - Jacey, Naptime Diaries
• Just as water ever seeks and fills the lowest place, so the moment God finds you abased and empty, His glory and power flow in.' - Andrew Murray
• When you don't see any startling marks of your own religious condition or your usefulness to God, think of the baby in the stable and the little boy in the streets of Nazareth. The very life was there which was to change the whole history of the human race. There was not much to show for it. But there is entire continuity between the stable and the Easter garden and the thread that unites them is the will of God. The childlike simple prayer of Nazareth was the right preparation for the awful privilege of the Cross. Just so the light of Spirit is to unfold gently and steadily within us, till at last our final stature, all God designed for us, is attained. It is an organic process, a continuos divine action, not a series of jerks. So, on one hand there should be no strain, impatience, self-willed effort in our prayer and self-discipline; and on the other, no settling down." - Evelyn Underhill
• God doesn't get in a hurry when He works on birthing something new in our lives.- Kari Jobe
• “To fall in love with God is the greatest romance; to seek Him the greatest adventure; to find Him, the greatest human achievement.” - Augustine of Hippo
• “Faith is a place of mystery, where we find the courage to believe in what we cannot see and the strength to let go of our fear of uncertainty.” ― Brené Brown, The Gifts of Imperfection
• lukelezon: You can't fully commit to God without fully surrendering to God. Often times we try to hold onto other areas of our life and simultaneously hold onto God. We get caught up in trying to please people, that sin we can't seem to shake, idolizing a relationship, and so many other things instead of surrendering it all over to God and committing to Him entirely. He can do more in a moment than our minds could ever comprehend. Surrender those roadblocks, dead ends, things in your life over to God that keep you from seeing Him clearly, feeling His love, and understanding that He is able to do immeasurably more in your life. The Bible reminds us of this: When it feels like there are no moves to be made, that's when God moves the most. Trust in Him, surrender it all to Him. You're loved with a love that surpasses knowledge, is beyond understanding, and knows you by name. You're loved by Love.
• “If you feel, when you are interacting with God, that it is high stakes. If you tell yourself ‘If I miss it or make the wrong decision here, my whole destiny is ruined.’ Or if you tell yourself ‘There is only one way to get to who God wants to me be and if I choose the wrong door, I’m not going to get there.’ That is not the voice of God. Wouldn’t it be a cruel joke if it was dependent on us to get everything right? What would be the point of Jesus dying on the cross if we could eventually then ‘earn it again’?” - Abi Stumvoli
• Words you will never hear God say: "The depth of my affection for you is dependent on you." "I expected you to do better." "If you don't say the magic words, my hands are tied...sorry about that." "I don't like being with you when things get messy." "I will allow evil because it will make you a better person." "You aren't allowed to participate until you are perfect." "I would rather you attempt to be holy than be honest." "You are more deaf than my ability to communicate." - Abi Stumvoli
• In art we are once again able to do all the things we have forgotten; we are able to walk on water; we speak to the angels who call us; we move, unfettered, among the stars.- Madeleine L'Engle
• We have to be braver than we think we can be, because God is constantly calling us to be more than we are. -

Madeleine L'Engle

• If we commit ourselves to one person for life, this is not, as many people think, a rejection of freedom; rather, it demands the courage to move into all the risks of freedom, and the risk of love which is permanent; into that love which is not possession but participation.

-Madeleine L'Engle

• I like to take the time out to listen to the trees, much in the same way that I listen to a sea shell, holding my ear against the rough bark of the trunk, hearing the inner singing of the sap. It's a lovely sound, the beating of the heart of the tree.- Madeleine L'Engle
• To pray is to listen, to move through my own chattering to God, to that place where I can be silent and listen to what God may have to say. - Madeleine L'Engle
• “In prayer it is better to have a heart without words than words without a heart. ” - John Bunyan
• God must strengthen the light in us before the spotlight is placed on us.- Lysa TerKeurst
• "First of all - Congratulations! Proud of you! I'm sure there are nuggets across the whole village, but my thoughts would be - remember to take a regular day off, remember to fuel your own fire - keep investing in your own relationship with Jesus. Remember you need time in see friends, date, do life - don't neglect you or your life on the altar of ministry. Remember you don't need to have all the answers - some situations will be beyond you , will need professional help etc - don't be afraid to acknowledge your limitations, and make sure you know all the resources around you. And finally - have a team - and make sure alongside serving together, you celebrate, eat and play together once in awhile. A middle school team that plays together, doesn't kill the children...." - Jo Saxton
• "My advice... Surround yourself with healthy easy friends who can remind you that it is all going to be ok." - Jennie Allen
• "Now is your time. Become, believe, try. Walk closely with people you love, and with other people who believe that God is very good and life is a grand adventure. Don’t spend time with people who make you feel less than you are. Don’t get stuck in the past, and don’t try to fast-forward yourself into a future you haven’t earned yet. Give today all the love and intensity and courage you can, and keep traveling honestly along life’s path." - Shauna Niequist
• "Prayer: 'a subversive activity
  
  involves a more or less open act of defiance against any claim by the current regime." - eugene peterson
• "A lot of grace is given to those who give a lot of grace. Judgmental folks, though, have to live under a microscope." - Donald Miller
• “Next to the Word of God, music deserves the highest praise. The gift of language combined with the gift of song was given to man [and woman] that he should proclaim the Word of God through Music.” - Martin Luther
• "People will argue theology to the point that they won't sing together, they won't sit at the table together. It's not really how right you are. What is more important, is that people get together and sing." - John Mark McMillan
• I would feel more optimistic about a bright future for man if he spent less time proving that he can outwit Nature and more time tasting her sweetness and respecting her seniority. E. B. White
• "“The only opportunity you will ever have to live by faith is in the circumstances you are provided this very day..." - EugenePeterson
• "It feels so insignificant, and yet this is the liberating secret: I am precisely the gift God wants—in my full and humble surrender to my ordinariness—which ironically is my eternal specialness. All I can give back to God is who I really and fully am! That is all God wants. Yet this seems so boring and pedestrian to us, if we want to be high flyers." -Richard Rohr
• "You don't become good by trying to be good but by finding the goodness that is already within you & allowing that goodness to emerge." -Eckhart Tollé