“The Bible is primarily truth, not emotional stimuli. Thus I must never first ask, “How do I feel this?” But, “Do I believe it?" -Mahaney
“You know those things about yourself that you’re self conscious of? Those quirks that you’re trying to hide? Those are not your weaknesses, those are your strengths.” -Terry Border
“Girls like it when you nickname them something smaller than a bread box. Chickadee. Pat of Butter. Baby Mouse. This makes us feel tiny and adorable. Space Heater and Minivan do not.” -Mindy Kaling [The Office]
“But God doesn’t call us to be comfortable. He calls us to trust Him so completely that we are unafraid to put ourselves in situations where we will be in trouble if He doesn’t come through." -Francis Chan
"Words mean more than what is set down on paper. It takes the human voice to infuse them with deeper meaning." Maya Angelou
"I pray because I can't help myself. I pray because I am helpless. I pray because the need flows out of me all the time -waking and sleeping. It doesn't change God -it changes me." C.S. Lewis
"When you are arguing against Him you are arguing against the very power that makes you able to argue at all." -C.S. Lewis
“Imagine yourself as a living house. God comes in to rebuild that house. At first, perhaps, you can understand what He is doing. He is getting the drains right and stopping the leaks in the roof and so on: you knew that those jobs needed doing and so you are not surprised. But presently he starts knocking the house about in such a way that hurts abominably and does not seem to make sense. What on earth is He up to? The explanation is that He is building quite a different house from the one you thought of—throwing out a new wing here, putting on an extra floor there, running up towers, making courtyards. You thought you were going to be made into a decent little cottage: but He is building a palace. He intends to come and live in it Himself.” -C.S. Lewis [Mere Christianity]
"When I say, “I love you,” it’s not because I want you or because I can’t have you. It has nothing to do with me. I love what you are, what you do, how you try. I’ve seen your kindness and your strength. I’ve seen the best and the worst of you. And I understand with perfect clarity exactly what and who you are." -Joss Whedon
“I am the Author of true love. I am the Creator of romance. I know your heart’s every desire. I want to script a beautiful tale just for you, but first you must give the pen to Me. You must let Me become the center of your existence.You must let Me have total control of your love life, and every other area of your life as well.” -When God Writes Your Love Story
"Chin up. Put your shoulders back, walk proud, strut a little. Don’t lick your wounds, celebrate them. The scars you bear are the signs of a competitor. You’re in a lion fight. Just because you didn’t win doesn’t mean you don’t know how to roar." -Grey’s Anatomy
“Suddenly the world is filled with a beauty that’s almost painful to behold. Or maybe it’s always been like this. And you’re just noticing it for the first time.” -I Wrote This For You
"I don’t follow Jesus because I think Christianity is the best religion. I follow Jesus because he leads me into the ultimate reality. He teaches me to live in tune with how reality is. When Jesus said, “No one comes to the Father except through me”, he was saying that his way, his words, his life is our connection to how things truly are at the deepest levels of existence. For Jesus then, the point of religion is to help us connect with the ultimate reality, God. I love the way Paul puts it in the book of Colossians: These religious acts and rituals are shadows of the reality. “The reality…is found in Christ." -Rob Bell [Velvet Elvis]
"Lend me your hand and we’ll conquer them all. But lend me your heart and I’ll just let you fall. Lend me your eyes I can change what you see. But your soul you must keep, totally free.”- Awake My Soul, Mumford and Sons
“Never stare at your problems and glance at God. You must stare at God and glance at your problems." -RevRunWisdom
“Find time to realize that God is everywhere with you and it’s not just about fitting him into 15 minutes a day. you can find him all day, whether you’re in class, whether it’s starbucks. it doesn’t matter what you’re doing, serve Him.” -Hayley Williams
“Pride is spiritual cancer: it eats up the very possibility of love, or contentment, or even common sense." -C.S. Lewis
"It's not a pretty, clean, hollywood, hot pink love. its a kind of love that's willing to love things that are messy... and willing to love even the difficult...and the sort of gross stuff." -John Mark Mcmillan
"You’re the only you and I’m the only I when I say I Love You." -by Tyler Knott Gregson
"When did we see each other face-to-face? Not until you saw into my cracks and I saw into yours. Before that, we were just looking at ideas of each other, like looking at your window shade, but never seeing inside. But once the vessel cracks, the light can get in. The light can get out." -John Green [Paper Towns]
"And as we touch, I can never tell if you are touching me or I am touching you." -I Wrote this For You
"There are many things in life that will catch your eye, but only a few will catch your heart. Pursue those." -Michael Nolan
"I get up every morning determined to both change the world and have one hell of a good time. Sometimes this makes planning my day difficult." -E.B. White
"Child, you see how beautiful she looks in that gown? I am returning and on that day, you will be far more beautiful than she looks now. Child, you see how happy he looks as he sees her coming to him? I am returning and I will be far more glorious and delighted as I come to see you. Child, you see their joy as they are united? Child, nothing can tear us apart and the day is coming where eternity begins with you in My presence for eternity.” [God]
"The weight of waiting to spend this life together is crushing my chest.”- Tyler Knott Gregson
“It’s laughing with your friend at a time when you shouldn’t. It’s the sweat in your palms wanting to know someone you see and the pit in your stomach when they actually see you. It’s being touched by hands that aren’t your own. It’s the thrill of an escape that almost wasn’t. It’s the embarrassment you feel, naked for the first time. It’s helping a friend find something they lost. It’s a smile, a joke, a song. It’s what someone does that they like doing. It’s what someone does that they like remembering. It’s the thinking of things you may never do and the doing of things you may never have thought. It’s the road ahead and the road behind. It’s the first step and the last and every one in between, because they all make up the good life.”-The Good Life
“The more we let God take over, the more truly ourselves we become—because He made us. He invented all the different people that you and I were intended to be… It is when I turn to Christ, when I give up myself to His personality that I first begin to have a real personality of my own.”-C. S. Lewis
"In a place far away from anyone or anywhere, I drifted off for a moment.” -Haruki Murakami
"The Bible says God's word is a lamp to our feet (Psalm 119:105), not a floodlight beaming to our destination." -Steven Furtick
"Falsehood has an infinity of combinations, but the truth has only one mode of being." -Jean Jacques Rousseau
"It is all for you. The words that I write and the life that I will live." -Tyler Knott Gregson
"Some people feel the rain. Others just get wet." -Bob Dylan
"I still believe in paradise. But now at least I know it’s not some place you can look for, ‘cause it’s not where you go. It’s how you feel for a moment in your life when you’re a part of something, and if you find that moment… it lasts forever…" -Leonardo Di Caprio [The Beach]
"He’s not after your talent, or your beauty, or how he can use you. He’s after your heart." -Misty Edwards
“Whenever you feel like criticizing anyone, just remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages that you’ve had.” -The Great Gatsby
"Some of the world’s greatest feats were accomplished by people not smart enough to know they were impossible." -Doug Larson
"It is only when you witness something truly inhuman that you discover what being human really means." -I Wrote This For You
"Love means to commit oneself without guarantee, to give oneself completely in the hope that our love will produce love in the loved person. Love is an act of faith, and whoever is of little faith is also of little love.” -Erich Fromm
“I love that feeling. You know, the one you get when you take a deep breath and suddenly everything feels like it’s going to be okay. When you’re hopeless as can be, and life is going nowhere, there’s those moments we have every now and then where we just stop, and we get this feeling, that can’t be described, but you just.. you just feel like everything really is going to be okay. Like the world stopped spinning for a second, and everything was clear. I need more of those moments.” -The X
“Don’t go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first.” -Mark Twain
"The devil’s fears are always falsehoods. His suggestions are always lies, and if lies, they cannot harm. If fear comes from Satan, then we can conclude there is nothing to fear." -John G. Lake
"Learn your way around loneliness. Make a map of it. Sit with it, for once in your life. Welcome to the human experience. But never again use another person’s body or emotions as a scratching post for your own unfulfilled yearnings." -Elizabeth Gilbert
"Your place in heaven will seem made for you alone, because you were made for it, stitch by stitch as a glove for a hand." -C. S. Lewis
“God cannot give us happiness and peace apart from Himself, because it is not there. There is no such thing." -C.S. Lewis
“You never come back, not all the way. Always there is an odd distance between you and the people you love and the people you meet, a barrier thin as the glass of a mirror, you never come all the way out of the mirror; you stand, for the rest of your life, with one foot in this world and no one in another, where everything is upside down and backward and sad.” -Mary Hornbacher
“I just think that some things are meant to be broken. Imperfect. Chaotic. It’s the universe’s way of providing contrast, you know? There have to be a few holes in the road. It’s how life is.” -Sarah Dessen [The Truth About Forever]
"The “we” we were then could never understand the“we” we could become." -by Tyler Knott Gregson
“My heart stopped. It just stopped beating. And for the first time in my life, I had that feeling. You know, like the world is moving all around you, all beneath you, all inside you, and you’re floating. Floating in midair. And the only thing keeping you from drifting away is the other person’s eyes.” -Wendelin Van Draanen [Flipped]
"There are things I miss, things about yourself that you have never noticed." -Tyler Knott Gregson
"Jesus. You have taken me so far from where I used to be. You have molded me, shaped me, stretched me, broken me, lifted me, loved me. Thank you for always caring for me even when I’ve been selfish and ignorant. Thank you for never giving up on me. Your love is beautiful and penetrating. You have blessed me SO much. I’m realizing this more and more everyday. You have completely changed my life. You’ve been changing it my whole entire life, and I know that you’ll never stop for as long as I live. Love always." -A Beauty
"The biggest heart break - There is no forever love. People eventually change and grow. For a while together. Eventually apart." -Malaprops bathroom stall
“Please forgive my hands when they can’t stop finding you. Please forgive my lips.” -Tyler Knott Gregson
“For a long time it seemed to me that real life was about to begin, but there was always some obstacle in the way. Something had to be got through first, some unfinished business; time still to be served, a debt to be paid. Then life would begin. At last it dawned on me that these obstacles were my life.” -Bette Howland
"When will the day come where all the waiting will stop and your heart is mine?" -Tyler Knott Gregson
"The most beautiful discovery true friends make is that they can grow separately without growing apart." -Elisabeth Foley
“A few times in my life, I’ve had moments of absolute clarity. When for a few brief seconds the silence drowns out the noise and I can feel rather than think… And things seem so sharp and the world seems so fresh. I can never make these moments last. I cling to them, but like everything, they fade. I have lived for these moments. They pull me back to the present, and I realize that everything is exactly the way it was meant to be.” -A Single Man
“Love, in the Christian sense, does not mean an emotion. It is a state not of the feelings but of the will; that state of the will which we have naturally about ourselves, and must learn to have about other people." -C.S. Lewis
“When you fall inlove and you give your all.. don’t expect you will have the same in return. When you fall inlove and you didn’t give your all… don’t expect you will have it all.” -truehearts
“And so with the sunshine and the great bursts of leaves growing on the trees-just as things grow fast in movies-I had that familiar conviction that life was beginning over again with the summer.” -The Great Gatsby
"True friendship comes when silence between two people is comfortable." -Dave Tyson Gentry
“It’s so hard to forget pain, but it’s even harder to remember happiness. We have no scar to show from happiness. We learn so little from peace.” -Chuck Palahniuk
"I’ve been making a list of the things they don’t teach you at school. They don’t teach you how to love somebody. They don’t teach you how to be famous. They don’t teach you how to be rich or how to be poor. They don’t teach you how to walk away from someone you don’t love any longer. They don’t teach you how to know what’s going on in someone else’s mind. They don’t teach you what to say to someone who’s dying. They don’t teach you anything worth knowing." -Neil Gaiman
"Men are never duly touched and impressed with a conviction of their insignificance, until they have contrasted themselves with the majesty of God." -R.C. Sproul
"To say someone is called to full-time ministry suggests that others are permitted to do part-time ministry. But Jesus didn't die on a part-time cross, He doesn't love us with a part-time love, He doesn't cover us with a part-time pardon for sins. There's no such thing as a part-time Christian, so there's no such thing as part-time ministry. -Steven Furtick
"Every once in awhile, you’ll find someone who’s iridescent. And when you do, nothing will ever compare." -Flipped
"There are people whom one appreciates immediately and forever. Even to know they are alive in the world is quite enough." -Nancy Spain
“I think that if I ever have kids, and they are upset, I won’t tell them that people are starving in China or anything like that because it wouldn’t change the fact that they were upset. And even if somebody else has it much worse, that doesn’t really change the fact that you have what you have. Good and bad.” -The Perks of Being a Wallflower
"May your coming year be filled with magic and dreams and good madness. I hope you read some fine books and kiss someone who thinks you’re wonderful, and don’t forget to make some art — write or draw or build or sing or live as only you can. And I hope, somewhere in the next year, you surprise yourself."-Neil Gaiman
“The most authentic thing about us is our capacity to create, to overcome, to endure, to transform, to love and to be greater than our suffering.” -Ben Okri
“Promise you won’t forget me, because if I thought you would, I’d never leave.” -Winnie the Pooh
"You can kiss your family and friends good-bye and put miles between you, but at the same time you carry them with you in your heart, your mind, your stomach, because you do not just live in a world but a world lives in you." -Frederick Buechner [Telling the Truth]
“Miracles are a retelling in small letters of the very same story which is written across the whole world in letters too large for some of us to see.” -C.S. Lewis
"God is a verb." -Buckminster Fuller
“ Anywhere I see suffering, that is where I want to be, doing what I can." -Princess Diana
"The worst part of life is waiting. The best part of life is having someone worth waiting for." -Jessica Brumley
"Life is not about intelligence, it’s about perspective." -Barbs Reyes
"Kindness is in our power, even when fondness is not." -Samuel Johnson
"We can only hope for what we desire." -C.S.Lewis
"we become more real when we are authentic. when its what we want to do, when its our actual thoughts, not what we perceive others to want us to say... thats when we become who we are. Not intimidated by the thoughts or actions of others, not living our lives as a ghost puppet show of what we perceive to be what everyone else wants. We aren't what everyone else wants." -Josh Blaney
“The man for me is the cherry on the pie. But I’m the pie and my pie is good all by itself. Even if I don’t have a cherry.” -Halle Berry
“She wants to know if I love her, that’s all anyone wants from anyone else, not love itself but the knowledge that love is there, like new batteries in the flashlight in the emergency kit in the hall closet.” -Jonathan Safran Foer
“Life has taught us that love does not consist in gazing at each other but in looking outward together in the same direction.” -Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
"We are only asked to love, to offer hope to the many hopeless. We don't get to choose all the endings, but we are asked to play the rescuers. We won't solve all mysteries and our hearts will certainly break in such a vulnerable life, but it is the best way. We were made to be lovers bold in broken places, pouring ours...elves out again and again until we're called home." -TWLOHA
"To love involves time and sacrifice... and love will change the world..." -Benji Block
"So here we go, young in age, rich in passion, and tired of living average..." -Benji Block
"When King Lear dies in Act V, do you know what Shakespeare has written?
He's written "He dies." That's all, nothing more. No fanfare, no metaphor, no brilliant final words. The culmination of the most in fluential work of dramatic literature is "He dies."
It takes Shakespeare, a genius..., to come up with "He dies." And yet every time I read those two words, I find myself overwhelmed with dysphoria. And I know it's only natural to be sad, but not because of the words "Hedies." but because of the life we saw prior to the words."
-Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium
“Single life is spent looking for that perfect someone, while Married life is spent getting along with that someone you thought was perfect” -truehearts
“Too often we underestimate the power of a touch, a smile, a kind word, a listening ear, an honest compliment, or the smallest act of caring, all of which have the potential to turn a life around.” -Leo Buscaglia
"If you are neglecting things you should be doing, forgetting your purpose in life because of the relationship you’re in, then you’re on the wrong path. A healthy relationship is one in which two people encourage each other to reach their respective goals while sharing each other’s hopes and dreams. A relationship should be a source of inspiration, invigoration and hope." -Daisaku Ikeda
"Your happiness and victory in life hinge on whether you can grasp, while you are still young, the fact that happiness lies within. That’s why there is no need for you to compare yourselves to others but instead strive powerfully and cheerfully to develop your state of life, aiming to improve yourselves each day. From that struggle will bloom noble flowers of mission, flowers of happiness that are yours and yours alone. Shine as you are, live true to yourselves and advance in your own unique way." -Daisaku Ikeda
"Unless we view things with our heart, we can see nothing. If we look at the world with a love of life, the world will reveal its beauty to us." -Daisaku Ikeda
"There is a desire within each of us, in the deep center of ourselves that we call our heart. We were born with it, it is never completely satisfied, and it never dies...Our true identity, our reason for being, is to be found in the desire." -Gerald May
“If we never see each other again, and one day, you feel a certain presence beside you…that would be me, loving you wherever I am.” -My Sassy Girl
"Lets pray that the human race never escapes Earth to spread its iniquity elsewhere." -C.S. Lewis
"You never know how much you really believe anything until its truth or falsehood becomes a matter of life and death to you." -C.S. Lewis
“Our dilemma is that we hate change and love it at the same time; what we really want is for things to remain the same, but get better." -Sydney J. Harris
"What you are to me nothing can summarize and no words can define." -
Tyler Knott Gregson
“ The BEST way to approach the day is with ANTICIPATION & not anxiety; with HOPE & not despair! God is able!" -Brian Houston
"Often it is simply the right question at the right time that propels us into the journey of awakening" -Sue Monk Kidd
“I know just how it feels to think of the right thing to say too late." -Robert Frost
“True love isn’t just expressed in passionately whispered words or an intimate kiss or an embrace; before two people are married, true love is expressed in self-control, patience, and even words left unsaid." -Joshua Harris
"The thing is we are not meant to live our lives waiting for that stuff. We are meant to live our lives living that stuff. The only thing to be waiting for is Christ’s coming." -Wisdom from the lovely Sarai
“It is not good for all our wishes to be filled; through sickness we recognize the value of health; through evil, the value of good; through hunger, the value of food; through exertion, the value of rest." -Dorothy Canfield Fisher
"I do not believe one can settle how much we ought to give. I am afraid the only safe rule is to give more than we can spare. In otherwords, if our expenditure on comforts, luxuries, amusements, etc. is up to the standard among those with the same income as our own, we are probably giving away too little…. There ought to be things we should like to do and cannot do because our charitable expenditures exclude them." -C.S. Lewis
"Have confidence in God's mercy, for when you think He is a long way from you, He is often quite near." -Thomas A Kempis
"Courage is the capacity to go ahead in spite of the fear." -Scott Peck
"It is difficulties that show what people are." -Epicurus
"Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind." -Dr. Suess
"A burden, even a small one, when carried alone and in isolation can destroy us, but a burden when carried as part of God's burden can lead us to new life. That is the great mystery of our faith." -Nenri Nouwen
"If I want something to the point that I can’t conceive being content without it, then it owns me." -Rob Bell
"Never think that God's delays are God's denials. hold on; hold fast; hold out. Patience is genius." -Comte De Buffon
"Resolve to see the world on the sunny side, and you have almost won the battle of life at the outset." -Sir Roger L'Estrange
"It is not what happens that matters, but how you take it." -Hans Selye
"Have courage for the great sorrows of life and patience for the small ones; and when you have laboriously accomplished your daily tasks, go to sleep in peace. God is awake." -Victor Hugo
"Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, vision cleared, ambition inspired, and success achieved." -Helen Keller
"Sometimes, the smallest things take up the most room in your heart." -Winnie the Pooh
"We need time to dream, time to remember, and time to reach in infinite. Time to be." -Gladys Taber
"Guard your heart. Don’t give your heart away to anyone until the Lord makes it absolutely clear. Ask the Lord to give you someone who loves Jesus more than you, who is stronger and deeper and more committed to the faith than anyone you can possibly imagine. I did, and it has made all the difference in our marriage." -Joel Rosenberg
"Each of us may be sure that if God sends us on stony paths He will provide us with strong shoes, and He will not send us out on any journey for which He does not equip us well." -Alexander Maclaren
"God isn’t going to let you see the distant scene either. So you might as well quit looking for it. He promises a lamp unto our feet, not a crystal ball into the future. We do not need to know what will happen tomorrow. God is leading you. Leave tomorrow’s problems until tomorrow." -Max Lucado
"Don't let life discourage you; everyone who got where he is had to begin where he was." -Roger L. Evans
"Our greatest glory consists not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall." -Oliver Goldsmith
"God came to us because God wanted to join us on the road, to listen to our story, and to help us realize that we are not walking in circles but moving toward the house of peace and joy." -Thomas Merton
"When we face the worst that can happen in any situation, we grow. When circumstances are at their worst, we can find our best." -Elizabeth Kubler-Ross & David Kessler
"When difficulties and disappointments come my way, I ask myself two questions:
How can this be used for good?
and What is the lesson in this for me?
Of course, I always ask a third question as well: Why me?
But there is really no answer to that question. So I go back to the first two questions. They help me accept the situation; they show me the positive side; they direct me toward concrete action. Most of all, they help me to move on." -Viola Ruelke Gommer
"I didn’t go to religion to make me happy. I always knew a bottle of Port would do that. If you want a religion to make you feel really comfortable, I certainly don’t recommend Christianity."
-C.S. Lewis
"You never know God is all you need until God is all you have." -Rick Warren
"Her face is your canvas. Make it beautiful." -Kelly
“Some day you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again.” -C.S. Lewis
"When you love the unloving, you get a glimpse of what God does for you.” -Max Lucado
"Love the life you live, live the life you love" -Bob Marley
"God is always present. We’re the ones who show up." -Rob Bell
A.N.O.N.Y.M.O.U.S"To be loved is to live forever in someones heart."
"Some of the greater things in life are unseen, that's why you close your eyes when you kiss, cry, or dream."
“Sometimes people are beautiful. Not in looks. Not in what they say. Just in what they..."
"I hope you know you’re beautiful; today, tomorrow and for every day I remember you."
"What's worth the price is always worth the fight."
"Christ is my love. He is not my first. He is not my second. He is not my 50%. He is not my 100%. He simply is."
"I love that You knew everyone’s handwriting would be different, and I love how You knew the world would turn to hate, but still died for us anyways. I love how You knew daisies would be my favorite flower, and I love how You know I am trying, so You are graciously helping me along the way."
“The test of love is not when we are together. It comes when we are not together and realize that despite the distance, love is still there."
"God doesn't always give us what we think we want, but He promises to give us more of Himself (the greatest gift He could give) so that we may get through any situation."
"Think of your life as a book, move forward, close one chapter and open another."
"...and in our honesty, together we will rise out of our night minds and into the light at the end of the fight."
today, i am a bride. i am something beautiful.
today, i am not alone. today, i am known. today, i am filled with the breath of my Creator. today, i am being chased by the eyes of my Lover. today, i am delighted in. i rejoice that i am small. i rejoice that i no longer have to sit in ruin. i rejoice that my heart has been laid bare before Him. i rejoice that i am no longer who i once was, and that i am continually being changed.
i am wearing love today. i am wearing joy. and purpose. and beauty. and purity. this day belongs to the Lord, so rejoice and be glad in it. (no option.)
"A good friend is a connection to life - a tie to the past, a road to the future, the key to sanity in a totally insane world."
"You are LOVED in ways you cannot imagine. In ways that don't depend on you. In ways that don't depend on your performance. In ways that cannot be lost. Remember Remember Remember."
“The more difficult something is, the more spiritually beneficial we will find it to be, for it will build our character."
"The best kind of friend is the one you could sit on a porch with, never saying a word, and walk away feeling like that was the best conversation you've had."
"If i can't hear your heartbeat, your too far away."
"You should meet my girlfriend, I bet she could teach you how to be pretty."
"If my heart had a face, it would be smiling"
"Our ultimate and foremost calling is the glorify God with our lives. If that doesn't give us vision and purpose, I don't know what does."
"Create in me a powerful craving for Your heart, Lord.
I love you, I need you, I want you….
But I’m sick of this complacency.
I do put so many things before you on a daily basis.
Everything I am and have comes from you;
Take all of it and all of me.
I want to desire you so much more."
“Never let go of hope. One day you will see that it all has finally come together. What you have always wished for has finally come to be. You will look back and laugh at what has passed and you will ask yourself... 'How did I get through all of that?”
“The most important thing in life is to learn how to give out love, and to let it come in.”
"Sometimes the lies you tell are less frightening than the loneliness you might feel if you stopped telling them."
"I don’t know your story or your dreams or the things that steal your sleep, but I know they matter. I hope your story is rich with other characters, rich with friends and conversation. I hope you know some people who will carry you and I hope you get to carry them. I hope that there is beauty in your memories and I... hope it doesn’t haunt you. And if it does, then I hope there is someonewho will talk you through the night and remind you of the promise of the sunrise, that beauty keeps coming, that there are futures worth waiting for and fighting for and that you were made to dream."
"Your smile sends a surge of happiness through me. Every.Smile.Time."
"Whatever dream makes your heart beat, pursue that, because God is going to use that dream of yours to change the world you live in"
"A broken heart is the worst. It’s like having broken ribs. Nobody can see it, but it hurts every time you breathe."
"Love is when you’re sitting around doing nothing, but you still feel perfectly happy."
"All you want in this moment is all of me."
"I hate not talking to you."
"People who shine from within don't need the spotlight."
“Hell is not only in a reality in eternity. It’s a prison we choose now, that simply carries on.”
"I was going to save the world today, but something glittery caught my eye."
"beautiful boy, there aren’t words to describe you yet. but don’t worry, i’m on the lookout."
"
After all this time, God gave me my heart's desire. Or should I say, His heart’s desire. :)
"Few of us do patience very well, and none of us do it naturally. But wise men and women will pursue it as an essential part of relationships."
"The world always looks brighter from behind a smile."
“Don't rely on someone else for your happiness and self worth. Only you can be responsible for that. If you can't love and respect yourself - no one else will be able to make that happen. Accept who you are - completely; the good and the bad - and make changes as YOU see fit - not because you think someone else wants you to be different.”
"i laugh, i love, i hope, i try, i hurt, i need, i fear, i cry. and i know you do the same things too. so we're not that different, me and you."
"we come to love not by finding a perfect person, but by learning to see an imperfect person perfectly."
"its hard to pretend that you love someone when you don't but its harder to pretend that you don't love someone when you really do. "
"i don't regret the things i've done. i just regret the things i didn't do when i had the chance."
"fall in love when you're ready, not when you're lonely."
"there are no limits, preferences, or favorites when it comes to the love of Christ. so why should there be limits when it comes to His love flowing in and through me?"
"if i had never met you, i wouldn't like you. if i had never liked you, i would have never loved you. if i had never loved you, i'd never miss you. but i did, i do, and i will."
"I believe everything happens for a reason. People change, so that you can learn to let go. Things go wrong, so you can learn to appreciate them when they're right. You believe lies, so you can eventually learn to trust no one but yourself. And sometimes good things fall apart, so better things can fall together."
"never say 'i like you' if you don't care. never talk about feelings if they're not there. never touch a life if you mean to break a heart."
"Letting go isn't a one-time thing, it's something you have to do everyday, over and over again."
"i myself am made entirely of flaws, stitched together with good intentions"
"I was made for joy and hope, not for empty promises and confusion and abandonment. I was made for Love and freedom and sweetness of spirit.Lord, thank You for Your Love, for Your hope, for Your joy, for Your faithfulness.Thank You for not letting me bask too long in my selfishness and in my sadness and anger. You are a God of peace."
"i think we all wish we could erase some dark times in our lives. but all of life's experiences, bad and good, make you who you are. erasing any of life's experiences would be a great mistake. trying to make things right, and hopes for a second chance."
"we put time and effort in to things and people hoping that in the end good things will come about but sometimes we forget that not everything has a happy ending. these are the times when we get made who we are today. be strong!"
"the word
courage comes from the Latin word for
heart- and courage is born in the heart. courageous acts come from the heart. and a courageous life is lived from the heart. so live your life from your heart, and you will find the courage you need entwined in your living."
"your heart is beating with God's love; open it to others. He has entrusted you with gifts and talents; use them for His service. He goes before you each step of the way; walk in faith. take courage. step out into the unknown with the One who knows all."
"to encourage means to: STRENGTHEN. FORTIFY. INSPIRE. CHEER. NOURISH. NUDGE. REASSURE"
"I hope you know some people who will carry you and I hope you get to carry them. I hope that there is beauty in your memories and I hope it doesn’t haunt you. And if it does, then I hope there is someone who will talk you through the night and remind you of the promise of the sunrise, that beauty keeps coming, that there are futures worth waiting for and fighting for and that you were made to dream."
"wake each morning with a sense of hope. God has amazing things in store for you. and He does all things well."
"when we take time to notice the simple things in life, we never lack for encouragement. we discover we are surrounded by limitless hope that's just wearing everyday clothes."
"don't get so busy that you forget to simply
be. sometimes the best way to stop being overwhelmed by life is to simply step back, take a day...or an hour...or a moment, and notice all that God is doing in your life."
"you can't discover new oceans until you have the courage to lose sight of the shore."
"even when you are discouraged, hold on to your dreams. they have no expiration date."
"be encouraged- for the Giver of Good Things, the Renewer of Hope, and the Dispenser of Wonderful Surprises is on your side. He loves you...and He never fails."
"the greatness comes not when things go always good for you. but the greatness comes when you're really tested, when you take some knocks, some disappointments, when sadness comes. because only if you've been in the deepest valley can you ever know how magnificent it is to be on the highest mountain."
"bitterness is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die"
"God wouldn't allow something to happen if He didn't plan to use it"
"Music suggests it's okay to be honest and music reminds us that we're alive."
"Tell her something true when all she’s known are lies. Tell her God loves her. Tell her about forgiveness, the possibility of freedom, tell her she was made to dance in white dresses. All these things are true."
N.I.C.O.L.E...J.O.H.N.S.ON [Keeping a Princess Heart in a not-so-fairy-tale World]
"The death of our dreams calls us to find bigger ones. The kind of dreams that can't be stained or tainted or stolen by the world."
"Unless we maintain a firm belief in the ultimate triumph of good over evil, we have no assurance of anything."
"God has the ending in mind at the beginning and the beginning in sight while the end is unfolding". :]
"To be courageous doesn't mean that you are not afraid: it means that fear doesn't win by changing your course."
J.O.H.N...E.L.D.R.E.D.G.E [Journey of Desire. Captivating. Wild at Heart]
"There is a secret set within each of our hearts. It often goes unnoticed, we rarely can put it into words, and yet it guides us throughout the days of our lives."
"We are desire. It is the essence of the human soul, the secret of our existence. Absolutely nothing of human greatness is ever accomplished without it."
"There are only two things that pierce the human heart -beauty and affliction. Moments we wish would last forever and moments we wish had never begun."
"...life comes to all of us as a mystery. The longing for life within us seems uncongruent with the life we find around us."
"The greatest human tragedy is to give up the search. Nothing is of greater importance than the life of our deep heart. To lose heart is to lose everything."
"Our days come to us as a riddle, and the answers aren't handed out with our birth certificates. We must journey to find the life we prize."
"At some deep level, we refuse to accept the fact that this is the way things are, or must be, or always will be."
"The place that God calls us is that place where the world's deep hunger and our deep desire meet."
"You really won’t understand your life as a woman until you understand this:You are passionately loved by the God of the universe.You are passionately hated by his Enemy."
T.O.M.M.Y...T.E.N.N.E.Y [Hadassah: One Night with the King]
"Intimacy was the joy we felt in each other's company- joy we could have felt walking together or having a deep conversation- as well as the trust, the mutual understanding, the romantic feelings of tenderness, the visual attraction, the longing to be cherished. It was all these things and more."
"First, you must be someone who knows who she is and how she fits into the world, who needs no one but God to make her a whole person. Neediness can be highly seductive, but only for a very short incendiary period, and usually only with a man who is flawed in his own right. After that first blush, a healthy man will want to shrug you off as quickly as he can. What attracks him the most, and the longest, is a woman who does not need him to be complete yet chooses out of her wholeness and completeness to give herself utterly to him."
"Secondly, you must approach him with a sincere and delicate mixture of qualities."
"It was the man himself i focused on.
Who he was, not what he did or what he owned or what he could do for me. I was interested in
him- his thoughts, his fears, his memories, his hopes, and I expressed my interest in those matters very quickly. That curiosity, along with my inner confidence, somehow set me apart from all the others. I put him at ease. I truly loved him."
"Influence flows from intimacy- true influence based on the deepest trust flows out of the richest intimacy."
"Bears gifts; do not ask for them. Keep your motives sincere and pure. Remember that this is not about you- your beauty, your charm, your allure. It is about
him. Focus on the King. Delight in his presence, and you'll already have all the attractiveness you need."
"Cultivate true intimacy, not just sensuality, and influence will come with it."
"The King's favor is worth more than all the titles and pomposities a person could ever hoard."
P.A.U.L...Y.O.U.N.G [The Shack]
"Living unloved is like clipping a bird's wings and removing its ability to fly. Not something I want for you."
"Pain is a way of clipping our wings and keeping us from being able to fly. And if it's left unresolved for very long, you can almost forget that you were ever created to fly in the first place."
"Everything is about Him [Jesus]. And freedom is a process that happens inside a relationship with Him. Then all that stuff you feel churnin' around
inside will start to work its way out."
"Love always leaves a significant mark."
"Most birds were created to fly. Being grounded for them is a limitation
within their ability to fly, not the other way around. You, on the other hand, wer created to be loved. So for you to live as if you were unloved is a limitation, not the other way around."
"The problem is that many folks try to grasp some sense of who I am by taking the best version of themselves, projecting that to the nth degree, factoring in all the goodness they can perceive, which often isn't much, and then calling
that God. And while it may seem like a noble effort, the truth is that it falls pitifully short of who I really am. I'm not merely the best version of you that you can think of. I am far more than that, above and beyond all that you can ask or think."
"When we three spoke ourselves into human existence as the Son of God, we became fully human. We also chose to embrace all the limitations this entailed. Even though we have always been present in the created universe, we now became flesh and blood. It would be like this bird, whose nature it is to fly, choosing only to walk and remain grounded. He doesn't stop being a bird, bit it does alter his experience of is significantly."
"Jesus, as a human being, had no power within himself to heal anyone. Only as he rested in his relationship with me, and in our communion- our co-union -could he express my heart and will into any given circustance."
"A bird is defined not by being grounded but by his ability to fly. Remember this, humans are defined not by their limitations, but by the intentions I have for them; not by what they seem to be, but by everything it means to be created in my image."
"All love and relationship is possible for you
only because it already exits within me, within God himself. Love is
not the limitation; love is the flying. I
am love."
"The God who is- the I am who I am -cannot act apart from love!"
"Relationships are never about power, and one way to avoid the will to hold power over another is to choose to limit oneself- to serve."
"
Being always transcends appearence- that which only seems to be. Once you begin to know the being behind the very pretty or very ugly face, as determinded by your bias, the surface appearances fade away until they simply no longer matter."
"My purpose from the beginning was to live in you and you in me." -Jesus
"Humans are so lost and damaged that to you it is almost imcomprehensible that people could work of live together without someone being in charge."
"Hierarchy imposes laws and rules and you end up missing the wonder of relationship that we intedend for you."
"When you chose independence over relationship, you become a danger to one another. Others become objects to be manipulated or managed for you own happiness. Authority, as you usually think of it, is merely the excuse the strong ones use to make others conform to what they want."
"The 'will to power and independence' has become so ubiquitous that it is now considered
normal...It
is the human paradigm."
"As the crowning glory of creation, you were made in our image, unencumbered by structure and free to simply 'be' in relationship with me and one another. If you had truely learned to regard one another's concerns as significant as your own, there would be no need for hierarchy." -Jesus
"We want to share with you the love and joy and freedom and light that we already know within ourselves. We created you, the human, to be in face-to-face relationship with us, to join our circle of love. As difficult as it will be for you understand, everything that has taken place is occuring exactly according to this purpose, without violating choice or will." -The Trinity
"There are millions of reasons to allow pain and hurt and suffering rather than to eradicate them, but most of those reasons can be understood only within each person's story. I am not evil. You are the ones who embrace fear and pain and power and rights so readily in your relationships. But your choices are also not stronger than my purposes, and I will use every choice you make for the ultimate good and the most loving outcome."
"Broken humans center their lives around things that seem good to them but will neither fill them nor free them. They are addicted to power, or the illusion of security that power offers. When a disaster happens, those same people will turn against the false powers they trusted. In their disappointment, either they become softened toward me or they become bolder in their independence. If you could only see how all of this ends and what we will achieve without the violation of one human will- then you would understand. One day you will."
"You really don't understand yet. You try to makes sense of the world in which you live based on a very small and incomplete picture of reality. It is like looking at a parade through the tiny knothole of hurt, pain, self-centeredness, and power and believing you are on your own and insignificant. All of these thoughts contain powerful lies. You see pain and death as ultimate evils and God as the ultimate betrayer, or perhaps, at best, as fundamentally untrustworthy. You dictate the terms and judge my actions and find me guilty."
"The real underlying flaw in your life is that you don't think I am good. If you knew I was good and that everything- the means, the ends, and all the processes of individual lives- is covered by my goodness, then while you might not always understand what I am doing, you would trust me. But you don't." -God
"Trust is the fruit of a relationship in which you know you are loved."
"You humans, so little in your own eyes. You are truely blind to your own place in the creation. Having chosen the ravaged path of independence, you don't even comprehend that you are dragging the entire creation along with you."
"The choice to hide so many wonders from you is an act of love that is a gift inside the process of life."
"Humans have a great capacity for declaring something good or evil, without truly knowing."
"If there is no reality of good that is absolute, then you have lost any basis for judging. It is language, and one might as well exchange the word
good for the word
evil."
"It [the knowledged of good and evil] allows you to play God in your independence. That's why a part of you prefers not to see me. And you don't need me at all to create your list of good and evil. But you do need me if you have any desire to stop such an insane lust for independence."
"You must give up your right to decide what is good and evil on your own terms. That is a hard pill to swallow- chooseing to live only in me. To do that, you must know me enough to trust me and learn to rest in my inherent goodness."
Evil is a word we use to descibe the absence of good, just as we use the word
darkness to descibe the absence of light or
death to describe the absence of life. Both evil and darkness can be understood only in relation to light and good; they do not have any actual existence. I am light and I am good. I am love and there is no darkness in me. Light and Good actually exist. So, removing yourself from me will plunge you into darkness. Declaring independenc will result in evil because apart from me, you can draw only upon yourself. This is death because you have separated yourself from me: Life."
"Rights are where survivors go, so that they don't have to work out relationships."
"Jesus didn't hold on to any rights. He willingly became a servant and lives out of his relationship to Papa. He gave up everything, so that by his dependent life he opened a door that would allow you to live free enough to give up your rights."
"...it really is beautiful, and full of you, Sarayu. Even though it seem like lots of work still needs to be done, i feel strangely at home and comfortable here. ...this garden is your soul. This mess is
you! Together, you and I, we have been working with a purpose in your heart. And it is wild and beautiful and perfectly in process. To you is seems like a mess, but I see a perfect pattern emerging and growing and alive- a living fractal."
"Without wisdom, imagination is a cruel taskmaster."
"When I dwell in you, I do so in the present- I live in the present. Not the past, although much can be remembered and learned by looking back, but only for a visit, not an extended stay. and for sure, i do not dwell in the future you visualize or imagine. Do you realize that your imagination of the future, which is almost always dictacted by fear of some kind, rarely, if ever, pictures me there with you?"
Mack: "so why do i have so much fear in my life?"
God: "Because you don't believe. You don't know that we love you. The person who lives by his fears will not find freedom in my love. I am not talking about rational fears regarding legitimate dangers, but but imagined fears, and especially the projection of those into the future. To the degree that those fears have a place in your life, you neither believe I am good nor know deep in your heart that I love you. You sing about it, you talk about it, but you don't know it."
"Our earth is like a child who has grown up without parents, having no one to guide and direct her. Some have attempted to help her, but most have simply tried to use her. Humans, who have been given the task to lovingly steer the world, instead plunder her, with no consideration other than thier immediate needs. And they give little thought to their own children, who will inherit their lack of love. So they use her and abuse her and will little consideration, and then when she shudders or blows her breath, they are offended and raise their fists at God."
"Have you noticed that even though you call me 'Lord' and 'King', I have never really acted in that capacity with you? I've never taken control of your choices or forced you to do anything, even when what you were about to do was destructive or hurtful to yourself and others."
"To force my will on you is exactly what love does not do. Genuine relationships are marked by submission even when your choices are not helpful or healthy. That's the beauty you see in my relationship with Abba and Sarayu. We are indeed submitted to one another and have always been so and always will be. Papa is as much submitted to me and I to him, or Sarayu to me, or Papa to her. Submission is not about authority and it is not obedience; it is all about relationships of love and respect. In fact, we are submitted to you in the same way." -Jesus
"When I am your life, submission is the most natural expression of my charater and nature, and it will be the most natural expression of your new nature within relationships."
"By choosing to declare what's good and evil, you seek to determine your own destiny."
"Women in general will find it difficult to turn from a man and stop demanding that he meed their needs, provide security, and protect their identity, and return to me. Men in general find it very hard to turn from the works of their hands, their own quests for power and security and significance, and return to me."
"Power in the hands of independent humans, be they men or women, does corrupt. We want male and female to be counterparts, face-to-face equals, each unique and different, distinctive in gender but complementary, and each empowered uniquely by Sarayu [the Holy Spirit], from whom all true and authority originate. Remember, I am not about performance and fitting into man-made structures; I am about being. As you grow in relationship with me, what you do will simply reflect who you really are."
"Our desire was to create a being that had a fully equal and powerful counterpart, the male and the female. But your independence with its quest for power and fulfillment actually destroys the relationship your heart longs for."
"Just like love, submission is not something that you can do, especially not on your own. Apart from my life inside you, you can't submit to anyone in your life, including Papa."
"Being my follower is not trying to 'be like Jesus', it means your independence is killed. I came to give you life, real life, my life. We will come and live our life inside you, so that you begin to see with our eyes, and hear with our ears, and touch with our hands, and think like we do. But we will never force that union on you. If you want to do your thing, have at it. Time is on our side."
"So many believe that it is love that grows, but it is
knowing that grows and love simply expands to contain it. Love is just the skin of knowing."
"Judging requires that you think yourself superior over the one you judge."
"...you have judged them worthy of love, even if it costs you everything. That is how Jesus loves."
"She [Papa] doesn't stop a lot of things that cause her pain. Your world is severely broken. You demanded your independence, and now you are angry with the one who loved you enough to give it to you. Nothing is as it should be, as Papa desires it to be, and as it will be one day. Right now your world is lost in darkness and chaos, and horrible things happen to those she is especially fond of."
"Papa has never needed evil to accomplish her good purposes. It is you humans who have embraced evil, and Papa has responded with goodness. ...and no one in your world is immune for it [evil]."
"This life is only the anteroom of a greater reality to come. No one reaches their potential in your world. It's only preparation for what Papa had in mind all along."
"Judgment is not about destruction, but about setting things right."
"The darkness hides the true size of fears and lies and regrets. The truth is they are more shadow than reality, so they seem bigger in the dark. When the light shines into the places where they live inside you, you start to see them for what they are."
"We collect things we value, you know?"
"...learning to lived loved. It's not an easy concept for humans. You have a hard time sharing anything. What we desire is for you to 're-turn' to us, and then we come and make our home inside you, and then we share. The friendship is real, not merely imagined. We're meant to experience this life, your life, together, in a dialogue, sharing the journey. You get to share in our wisdom and learn to love with our love, and we get...to hear you grumble and gripe and complain, and..." (;
"Have you noticed that in your pain you assume the worst of me? I've been talking to you for a long time, but today was the first time you could hear it, and all those other times weren't a waste either. Like little cracks in the wall, one at a time but woven together, they prepared you for today. You have to take the time to prepare the soil if you want it to embrace the seed."
"...out if what seems to be a huge mess, Papa weaves a magnificent tapestry. Only Papa can work all this out, and she does it with grace."
"Our final destiny is not the picture of heaven that you have stuck in your head- you know, the image of pearly gates and streets of gold. Instead, it's a new cleansing of this universe, so it will indeed look a lot like here."
"Pearls [are] the only precious stone made by pain, suffering and -finally- death."
"It's all about relationships and simply sharing life. What we are doing right now- just doing this- and being open and available to others around us. My church is all about people, and life is all about relationships.
You can't build it. It's my job, and I'm actually pretty good at it."
"Marrage is not an institution. It's a relationship."
"I don't create institutions; that's an occupation for those who want to play God. So no, I'm not too big on religion, and not very fond of politics or economics either. And why should I be? They are the man-created trinity of terrors that ravages the earth and deceives those I care about. What mental turmoil and anxiety does any human face that is not related to one of those three?" -Jesus
"Systems cannot provide you security, only I can."
"I don't have an agenda here. Just the opposite. I came to give you life to the fullest. My life. The simplicity and purity of enjoying a growing friendship."
"All I want from you is to trust me with what little you can, and grow in loving people around you with the same love I share with you. It's not your job to change them, or to convince them. You are free to love without an agenda."
"The world system is what it is. Institutions, systems, ideologies, and all the vain futile efforts of humanity that go with them are everywhere, and interaction with all of it is unavoidable. But I can give you freedom to overcome any system of power in which you find yourself, be it religious, economic, social, or political. You will grow in freedom to be inside or outside all kinds a systems and move freely between and among them. Together, you and I can be in it and not of it."
"The people who know me are the ones who are free to live and love without any agenda."
"I will travel any road to find you." -Jesus
"Just because I work incredable good out of unspeakable tragedies doesn't mean I orchestrate the tragedies. Don't ever assume that my using something means I caused it or that I needed it to accomplish my purposes. That will only lead you to false notions about me. Grace doesn't depend on suffering to exist, but where there is suffering you will find grace in many facets and colors."
"I don't wonder what you will do or what choices you will make. I already know. Let's say, for example, i am trying to teach you how not to hide inside lies. And let's say that I know it will take you forty-seven situations and events before you will actually hear me- that is, before you will hear clearly enough to agree with me and change. So when you don't hear me the first time, I'm not frustrated or dissappointed, I'm thrilled. Only forty-six more times to go! And that first time will be a building block to construct a bridge of healing that one day...you will walk across"
"It's not about feeling guilty. Guilt'll never help you find freedom in me. The best it can do is make you try harder to conform to some ethic on the outside. I'm about the inside."
"Lies are like a fortress; inside them you can feel safe and powerful. Through you little fortress of lies you try to run your life and manipulate others. But the fortress needs walls, so you build some. These are the justifications for your lies. You know, like you are doing this to protect someone you love, to keep them from feeling pain. Whatever works, just so you feel okay about the lies."
"When you mess up again, ask for forgiveness again. It's a process, and life is real enough without having to be obsured by lies. And remember, I am bigger than your lies. I can work beyond them. But that doesn't make them right or stop the damage they do or the hurt they cause others."
"Faith does not grow in the house of certainty."
"My life inside you will appropriate risk and uncertainly to transform you by your choices into a truth teller, and that will be a miracle greater than raising the dead."
"People are tenacious when it comes to the treasure of their imaginary independence. They hoard and hold their sickness with a firm grip. They find their identity and worth in their brokenness and guard it with every ounce of strength they have. No wonder grace has such little attraction. In that sense you have tried to lock the door of your heart from the inside."
"True love never forces"
"All evil flows from independence, and independence is your choice. If I were to simply revoke all the choices of independence, the world as you know it would cease to exist and love would have no meaning. This world is not a playground where I keep all my children free from evil. Evil is the chaos of this age that you brought me, but it will not have the final say. Now it touches everyone I love, those who follow me and those who don't. If i take away the consequences of people's choices, I destroy the posibility of love. Love that is forced is no love at all."
"You and this creation are incredible, whether you understand that or not. You are wonderful beyond imagination. Just because you make horrendous and destructive choices does not mean you deserve less respect for what you inherently are- the pinnacle of my creation and the center of my affection."
"Don't forget that in the midst of all your pain and heartache, you are surrounded by beauty, the wonder of creation, art, your music and culture, the sounds of laughter and love, of whispered hopes and celebrations, of new life and transformation, of reconciliation and forgiveness. These also are the results of your choices, and every choice matters, even the hidden ones."
"My purposes are not for my comfort, or yours. My purposes are always and only an expression of love. I purpose to work life out of death, to bring freedom out of brokenness and turn darkness into light. What you see as chaos, I see as a fractal. All things much unfold, even though it puts all those I love in the midst of a world of horrible tagedies- even the one closest to me." -
God
"Creation and history are all about Jesus. He is the very center of our purpose, and in him we are now fully human, so our purpose and your destiny are forever linked. You might say that we have all our eggs in the one human basket. There is no plan B.
"Emotions are the colors of the soul- they are spectacular and increedable. When you don't feel, the world becomes dull and colorless."
"Most emotions are responses to perception- waht you think is true about a given situation. If you perception is false, then your emotional response to it will be false too. So check your perceptions, and beyond that check the truthfulness of your paradigms- what you believe. Just because you believe something firmly doesn't make it true. Be willing to reexamine what you believe. The more you live in the truth the more your emotions will help you see clearly. But even then, you don't want to trust them more than me."
"The Bible doesn't teach you to follow rules. It is a picture of Jesus. While words may tell you what God is like and even what he may want from you, you cannot do any of it on your own. Life and living are
in him and in no other."
"It is true that relationships are a whole lot messier than rules, but rules will never give you answers to the deep questions of the heart, and they will never love you."
Mack: So, will I see you again?
Jesus: Of course. you might see me in a piece of art, or music, or silence, or through people, or in creation, or in your joy and sorrow. my ability to communicate is limitless, living and transforming, and it will always be tuned to Papa's goodness and love. and you will hear and see me in the Bible in fresh ways. just don't look for rules and principles; look for relationship- a way of coming to be with us.
"There is no mercy or grace in rules, not even for one mistake. That's why Jesus fulfilled all of it for you- so that is no longer has jurisdiction over you. And the Law that once contained impossible demans- 'Thou shall not...'- actually becomes a promise we fulfilled in you. But keep in mind that if you live your life alone and independently, the promise is empty. Jesus laid the demand of the Law to rest; it no longer has any power to accuse or command. Jesus is both the promise nad its fulfillment."
"Those who are afraid of freedom are those who cannot trust us to live in them. Trying to keep the Law is actually a declaration of independence, a way of keeping control."
"It [the Law] grants you the power to judge others and feel superior to them. You believe you are living to a higher standard than those you judge. Enforcing rules, especially in more subtle expressions life responsiblity and expectation, is a vain attempt to create certainty out of uncertainty. And contrary to waht you might think, I have a great fondness for uncertainty. Rules cannot bring freedom; they have only the power to accuse."
"I am a verb. I am that I am. I will be who I will be. I am a verb! I am alive, dynamic, ever active, and moving. I am a being verb. And as my very essence is a verb, I am more attuned to verbs than nouns. Verbs such as
confessing, repenting, living, loving, responding, growing, reaping, changing, sowing, running, dancing, singing, and on and on. Humans, on the other hand, have a knack for taking a verb that is alive and full of grace and turning in into a dead noun and principle that reeks of rules- then something growing and alive dies. Nouns exist because there is only a mass of nouns, it is dead. Unless 'I am', there are no verbs, and verbs are what makes the universe alive."
"For something to move from death to life, you must introduce something living and moving into the mix. To move from something that is only a noun to something dynamic and unpredictable, to something living and present tense, is to move from Law to grace."
"Before your words became nouns, they were first my words, nouns with movement and experience buried inside them: the ability to respond and expect. My words are alive and dynamic- full of life and possibility; yous are dead, full of law and fear and judgement. That is why you won't find the word
responsiblity in the Scriptures."
"Religion must use law to empower itself and control the people needed in order to survive. I give you an ability to respond and your response is to be free to love and serve in every situation, and therefore each moment is different and unique and wonderful. Because I am your ability to respond, I have to be present in you. If I simply gave you a
responsibility, I would not have to be will you at all. It would now be a task to perform, an obligation to be met, something to fail."
"If you and I are friends, there is an expectancy that exists within our relationship. When we see each other or are apart, there is an expectancy of being together, of laughing and talking. That expectancy has no concrete definition; it is alive and dynamic and everything that emerges from our being together is a unique gift shared by no one else. But what happens if I change that expectancy to an
expectation- spoken or unspoken? Suddenly, law has entered into our relationship. You are now expected to perform in a way that meets my expectations. Our living friendship rapidly deteriorates into a dead thing with rules and requirements. It is no longer about you and me, but about what friends are supposed to do, or the responsibilities of a good friend."
"I've never placed an expection on you or anyone else. The idea behind expectations requires that someone does not know the future or outcome and is trying to control behavior to get the desired result. Humans try to control behavior largely through expectations. I know you and everything about you. Why would I have an expectation other than what I already know? That would be foolish. And beyong that, because I have no expectations, you never disappoint me."
"What I do have is a constant and living expectancy in our relationship, and I give you an ability to respond to any situation and circumstance in which you find yourself. To the degree that you resort to expectations and responsibilities, to that degree you neither know me nor trust me."
"I don't want a piece of you and a piece of your life. Even if you were able, which you are not, to give me the biggest piece, that is not what I want. I want all of you and all of every part of you and your day. I don't want to be the first among a list of values; I want to be at the center of everything. When I live in you, then together we can live through everything that happens to you. Rather than the top of a pyramid, I want to be the center of a mobile, where everything in you life- your friends, family, occupation, thoughts, activities- is connected to me but moves with the wind, in and out and back and forth, in an incredable dance of being. And I, am the wind."
D.O.N.A.L.D...M.I.L.L.E.R [Blue like Jazz]
Sometimes you have to watch somebody love something before you can love it yourself. It is as if they are showing you the way.
In America, the first generation out of slavery invented jazz music. It is a free-form expression. It comes from the soul, and it is true.
I believe that the greatest trick of the devil is not to get us into some sort of evil but rather have us wasting time. This is why the devil tries so hard to get Christians to be religious. If he can sink a man's mind into habit, he will prevent his heart from engaging God.
If you don't love somebody, it gets annoying when they well you what to do or what to feel. When you love them you get pleasure from their pleasure, and it makes it easy to serve.
If was as if we were broken, I thought, as if we were never supposed to feel these sticky emotions. It was as if we were cracked, couldn't love right, couldn't feel good things for very long without screwing it all up. We were like gasoline engines running on diesel.
I think every conscious person, every person who is awake to the functioning principles within his reality, has a moment where he stops blaming the problems in the world on group think, on humanity and authority, and starts to face himself. The problem is not out there; the problem is the needy beast of a thing that lives in my chest. ...true change, true life-giving, God-honoring change would have to start with the individual.
I liked the idea of Jesus becoming man, so that we would be able to trust Him, and I like that He healed people and loved them cared deeply about how people were feeling.
I'm talking about self-absorption. If you think about it, the human race is pretty self-absorded. Racism might be the symptom of a greater disease. What I mean is, as a human, I am flawed in that it is difficult for me to consider others before myself. If feels like I have to fight against this force, this current within me that, more often than not, wants to avoid serious tissues and please myself, buy things for myself, feed myself, entertain myself, and all of that. All i'm sayign is that if we...could fix our self-absorption, we could end a lot of pain in the world.
"She would talk about God as if she knew Him, as if she had talked to Him on the phone that day. She was never ashamed, which is the thing with some Christians I had encountered. They felt like they had to sell God, as if He were soap or a vacuum cleaner, and it's like they really weren't listening to me; they didn't care, they just wanted me to buy their product." -Penny
The entire world is falling apart because nobody will admit they are wrong. But by asking God to forgive you, you are willing to own your own crap.
My belief in Jesus did not seem rational or scientific, and yet there was nothing I could do to separate myself from this belief.
Penguins have this radar inside them that told them when and where to go and none of it made any sense, but they show up on the very day their babies are being born, and the radar always turns out to be right. I have a radar inside me that says to believe in Jesus. Somehow, penguin radar leads them perfectly will. Maybe it isn't so foolish that I follow the radar that is inside of me.
I dont think you can explain how Christian faith works either. It is a mystery. And I love this about Christian spirituality. It cannot be explained, and yet it is beautiful and true. It is something you feel, and it comes from the soul.
The truths of the Bible were magic, like messages from heaven, like codes, enchanting codes that offered power over life, a sort of power that turned sorrow to joy, hardship to challenge, and trial to opportunity.
Ultimately, we do what we love to do. I like to think that I do things for the right reasons, but I don't, I do things because I do or don't love doing them. Because of sin, I am self-addicted, living in the wreckage of the fall, my body, my heart, and my affections are prone to love things taht kill me. ...when people who follow Jesus love the right things, they help create God's kingdom on earth, and that is something beautiful.
"your life is not your own, but you have been bought with a price."
If I cannot accept God's love, I cannot love Him in return, and I cannot obey Him. Self-discipline will never make us feel righteous or clean; accepting God's love will. The ability to accept God's unconditional grace and ferocious love is all the fuel we need to obey Him in return. Accepting God's kindness and free love is something the devil does not want us to do. If we hear, in our inner ear, a voice saying we are failures, we are losers, we will never amound to anything, this is the voice of Satan trying to convince the bride that the groom does not love her. This is not the voice of God. God woos us with kindness, He changes our character with the passion of His love.
finding God in the green lumpy places...
But as I lay there, talking to God, being real with Him, I began to feel a bit of serenity. It felt like I was apologizing to an old friend, someone with whom there had been a sort of bitterness, and the friend was saying it was okay, that he didn't think anything of it. It felt like I was starting over, or just getting started.
There is something beautiful about a billion stars hold steady by a God who knows what He is doing. They hang there, the stars, like notes on a page of music, free-form verse, silent mysteries swirling on the blue like jazz.
I imagined Him looking down on this earth, half angry because His beloved mankind had cheated on Him, had committed adultery, and yet hopelessly in love with her, drunk with love for her.
I know a little of why there is blood in my body, pumping life into my limbs amd thought into my brain. I am wanted by God. He is wanting to preserve me, to guide me through the darkness of the shadow of death, up into the highlands of His presence and afterlife. I understand that I am temporary, in this shell of a thing on this dirt of an earth. I am being tempted by Satan, we are all being tempted by Satan, but I am preserved to tell those who do not know about our Savior and our Redeemer.
I am a human because God made me. I experience suffering and temptation because mankind chose to follow Satan. God is reaching out to me to rescue me. I am learning to trust Him, learning to live by His precepts that I might be preserved.
"it is no more possible to wake up and want out of the marriage than it is to wake up and stop believing in God. what
is, is what is."
Love is both something that happens to you
and something you decide upon.
If you believe something , passionately, peopel will follow you...because they think you know something they don't, some clue to the meaning of the universe. Passion os tricky, though, because it can point to nothing as easily as it points to something.
...what I believe isn't what I say I believe; what I believe is what I do. we should not live like politicians, but like Christians.
I used tp say that I believed it was important to tell people about Jesus, but I never did. ...if I do not introduce people to Jesus, then I don't believe Jesus is an important person. It doesn't matter what I say.
"Dying for something is easy because it is associated with glory. Living for something is the hard thing. Living for something extends beyond fashion, glory, and recognition. We live for what we believe."
I am learning to believe that other people exist, that fashion is not truth; rather, Jesus is the most important figure in history, and the gospel is the most powerful force in the universe. I am learning not to be passionare about empty things, but to cultivate passion for justice, grace, truth, and communicate the idea that Jesus likes people and even loves them.
"The Message is that man sinned against God and God gave the world over to man, and that if somebody wanted to be rescued out of that, if somebody for instance finds it all very empty, that Christ will rescue them if they want; that if they ask forgiveness for being a part of that rebellion than God will forgive them."
I felt very strongly that Jesus was relevant in this place. I felt very strongly that if He was not relevant here then He was not relevant anywhere.
Jesus taught that we are all bad and He is good, and He wants to rescue us because there is a war going on and we are hostages in the war. The truth is we are suppose to love the hippies, and the liberals, and even the Democrats, and that God wants us to think of them as more important than ourselves.
how to go to church without getting agery"
-pray taht God will show you a church filled with people
-go the church God shows you
-don't hold grudges against any other churches. God loves those churches almost as much as He loves you.
"...marriage is worth the trade. You lose all your freedom, but you get this friend. This incredable friend. And the scary thing about relationships, intimate relationships, is that if somebody gets to know us, the us that we usually hide, they might not love us; they might reject us.
It's like we are separate people and there is not getting inside each other to read each other's thoughts, each other's beings. Marriage is amazing because it is the closest two people can get, but they can't get all the way to that place of absolute knowing. Marriage is the most beautiful thing i have ever dreamed of, but it isn't everything. There are places in our lives that only God can go."
...to be in a relationship with God is to be loved purely and furiously. And a person who thinks himself unloveable cannot be in a relationship with God because he can't accept who God is; a Being that is love. We learn that we are loveable or unloveable from other people. That is why God tells us so many times to love each other.
Alone, lonely, loneliness...are words about the soul. They are three of the most powerful words in the English language. They say that we are human.
If loving other people is a bit of heaven then certainly isolation is a bit of hell, and to that degree, here in earht, we decide in which state we would like to live.
"If we are not willing to wake up in the morning and die to ourselves, perhaps we should ask our-selves whether or not we are really following Jesus."
"When we do what God wants us to do, we are blessed, we are spiritually healthy. God wants us to give a portion of our money to His work on earth. By setting aside money from every check, you are trusting God to provide. He wants you to get over that fear- that fear of trusting Him. It is a scary place, but that is where you have to go as a follower of Christ."
When we worship God we worship a Being our life experience does not give us the tools with which to understand. If we could, God would not inspire us.
You cannot be a Christian without being a mystic.
All the wonder of God happens right above our arithmetic and formula. The more i climb outside my pat answers, the more invigorating the view, the more my heart enters into worship.
Too much of our time is spent trying to chart God on a grid, and too little spent allowing our hearts to feel awe. By reducing Christian spirituality to formula, we deprive our hearts of wonder.
The problem with Christian culture is we think of love as a commodity. We use it like money.
"We are going to confess to them. We are going to confesss that as followers of Jesus, we have not been very loving; we have been bitter, and for that we are sorry. We will apologize for the crusades, we will apologize for televangelists, we will apologize for neglecting the poor and the lonely. We will ask them to forgive us, and we will tell them that in our selfishness, we have misrepresented Jesus on this campus. We will tell people...that Jesus loves them."
"So I have come to understand that strength, inner strength, comes from receiving love as much as it comes from giving it."
M.O.V.I.E.S"The only currency you have in this bankrupt world is what you share with someone when your uncool" [Almost Famous]
Isolde: "Know that I love you Tristan. Wherever you go, whatever you
see. I will always be with you."
Tristan: [his last lines] "You were right. I dont know if life is greater than death.
But love was more than either."
[Tristan+Isolde]
Tristan: "Come with me. Come with me!"
Isolde: "I cant!"
Tristan: "Why not? Please!"
Isolde: "Tristan, we both know this cant be, we've known it from the
start. That doesn't mean it isn't true, it is, it just cannot be. I
want to know that you're alive somewhere thinking of me from time
to time. I want to know that there's more to this life and I cant
know that if they kill you. Please! Go."
[Tristan+Isolde]
"Every happening great or small is a parable by which God speaks to us, and the art of life is to get the message" [The Ultimate Gift]
"Our lives should be lived not avoiding problems but welcoming them as challenges that will strengthen us so that we will be victorious in the future." [The Ultimate Gift]
"Any process worth going through will get tougher before it gets easier. That's what makes learning a gift, even if pain is your teacher." [The Ultimate Gift]
"My dream was a perfect day, and I'm just finishing it. My dream is to be with people I love, that love each other, that love me. " [The Ultimate Gift]
Westley: "Here this now: I will always come for you."
Buttercup: "How can you be sure?"
Westley: "This is true love - you think this happens everyday?"
[Princess Bride]
"That day, she was amazed to discover that when he was saying "As you wish", what he met was "I love you". And even more amazing was the day she realized she truly love him back." [Princess Bride]
"You said you couldn't be with someone who didn't believe in you. Well I believed in you. I just didn't believe in myself. I love you. Always." [Pretty in Pink]
“Love can free us from all excess. From our deepest debts. Cause when our hearts are full we need much less.” [You, Me And The Bourgeoise - The Submarines]
“In some ways you’re pretty lucky. You opened your heart, you put yourself out there; you were ready to make that leap. I’m envious; I wish I knew what that felt like - to find someone who makes you wanna swim across the east river in January.” [Ugly Betty]
“He doesn’t need to be reminded that you’re great.” [He’s just not that into you]
"I love us" & "color my life with the chaos of trouble" [500 days of Summer]
"You cannot hold onto anything that wants to go. Do you understand what I’m sayin’? You just got to love it while you got it, and that’s that." [Because of Winn Dixie]
“In seven days, God created the world. And in seven seconds, I shattered mine.” [Seven Pounds]
"the great thing about her is...when you look in her eyes and she's looking back in yours... everything... feels... not quite normal. Because you feel stronger and weaker at the same time. You feel excited and at the same time, terrified. The truth is... you don't know what you feel except you know what kind of man you want to be. It's as if you've reached the unreachable and you weren't ready for it." [Spider Man]
"Soul mate: two little words, one big concept. a belief that someone, somewhere, is holding the key to your heart." [Sex and the City]
"He didn't teach you how to win, he taught you have not to lose. That's nothing to be proud of...You've got to risk loseing. You've go to rish everything. You've got to go the edge of defeat. That's where you want to be." [Searching for Bobby Fischer]
"There's a difference between knowing the path and walking the path." [The Matrix]
