Ann voskamp quotes

I fly to Paris and discover how to make love to God.

Only speak words that make souls stronger.

Because One died for me that I might breathe this breath...It's all a gift.

At the last, this is what will determine a fulfilling, meaningful life, a life that, behind all the facades, every one of us longs to live: gratitude for the blessings that expresses itself by becoming the blessing.

When we know Christ, we always know how things are going to go...always for our good and always for His glory.

There is unwavering peace today when an uncertain tomorrow is trusted to an unchanging God.

Thanksgiving creates abundance; and the miracle of multiplying happens when I give thanks-take the just one loaf, say it is enough, and give thanks-and He miraculously makes it more than enough.

God’s not out to get you - He’s out to give to you.

We want clarity -- and God gives a call. We want a road map --- and God gives a relationship. We want answers -- and God gives His hand.

We all get to choose where we set up the stage of our lives - before the Crowds, the Court, the Congregation, the Critics (inner or otherwise)-- or the Cross of Christ. All except One will assess your performance. Only One will accept you before your performance ... Only in Jesus is there 100% acceptance before even 1% performance.

Being in a hurry. Getting to the next thing without fully entering the thing in front of me. I cannot think of a single advantage I've ever gained from being in a hurry. But a thousand broken and missed things, tens of thousands, lie in the wake of all the rushing.... Through all that haste I thought I was making up time. It turns out I was throwing it away.

When you're most wounded by words run to the only Word that always brings healing.

I don't really want more time; I just want enough time. Time to breathe deep and time to see real and time to laugh long, time to give You glory and rest deep and sing joy and just enough time in a day not to feel hounded, pressed, driven, or wild to get it all done-yesterday.

Our fall is always first a failure to give thanks.

The true Love Dare. To move into His presence and listen to His love unending and know the grace uncontainable. This is the vault of the miracles. The only thing that can change us, the world, is this- all His love.

Where ever you are be all there

What was intended to harm, God intended it all for good. And no matter what intends to harm you, God's arms have you. You can never be undone.

Life-changing gratitude does not fasten to a life unless nailed through with one very specific nail at a time.

Real Love truthfully sees the flaws - and still really loves fully.

Joy and pain, they are but two arteries of the one heart that pumps through all those who don't numb themselves to really living.

All fear is but the notion that God's love ends.

Lament is a cry of belief in a good God, a God who has His ear to our hearts, a God who transfigures the ugly into beauty. Complaint is the bitter howl of unbelief in any benevolent God in this moment, a distrust in the love-beat of the Father's heart.

We live in a broken world - and for the life of me I can't get it all right. But Jesus takes all our broken messes and He makes them, by His grace, into a mosaic of grace.

Simplicity is ultimately a matter of focus.

The prayers we weave into the matching of socks, the stirring of oatmeal, the reading of stories, they survive fire.

Research actually indicates that if you write down what you're grateful for, it increases your happiness by 25 percent. And who doesn't want that? And God's word says (1 Thessalonians 5), "Give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus." Who doesn't want to know exactly what God's will is for them?

Thanksgiving creates abundance.

Be radical about grace and relentless about truth and resolute about holiness.

I think God calls us to small things, to faithfulness right where we are, to just do the next thing.

I began [blogging] because I have this handicap - I can't figure out my life or see God clearly unless I untangle my life again with words.

Who would ever know the greater graces of comfort and perserverance, mercy and forgiveness, patience and courage, if no shadows fell over a life?

Gratitude is at the center of a life of faith. It sounds to simple to be true, but isn't that the sign of all deep truth: so simple we're tempted to dismiss it, and so hard, it is exactly what God uses to change our hard lives.

I have to seek God beauty. Because isn't my internal circuitry wired to seek out something worthy of worship? . True Beauty worship, worship of Creator Beauty Himself. God is present in all moments, but I do not deify the wind in the pines, the snow falling on the hemlocks, the moon over harvested wheat. Pantheism, seeing the natural world as divine, is a very different thing than seeing divine God present in all things . Nature is not God but God revealing the weight of Himself, all His glory, through the looking glass of nature.

Pick up a yardstick to measure your life against anyone else's, and you've just picked up a stick and beaten up your own soul.

Satan’s sin becomes the first sin of all humanity: the sin of ingratitude. Adam and Eve are, simply, painfully, ungrateful for what God gave. Isn’t that the catalyst of all my sins? Our fall was, has always been, and always will be, that we aren’t satisfied in God and what He gives. We hunger for something more, something other.

Real joy is not found in having the best of everything but in trusting that God is making the best of everything.

We're called to do more than believe in God, we're called to live in God.

What if I gave thanks in the trouble, for the trouble, because the trouble is a gift that causes me to turn? What if I loved God not for His goods but for His love itself that is goodness enough?

The cynics, they can only speak of the dark, of the obvious, and this is not hard. For all it’s supposed sophistication, it’s cynicism that’s simplistic. In a fallen world, how profound is to see the cracks? The sages and prophets, the disciples and revolutionaries, they are the ones up on the ramparts, up on the wall pointing to the dawn of the new Kingdom coming, pointing to the light that breaks through all things broken, pointing to redemption always rising and to the Blazing God who never sleeps.

Giving thanks is that: making the canyon of pain into a megaphone to proclaim the ultimate goodness of God when Satan and all the world would sneer at us to recant.

Faith thanks God in the middle of the story.

We only enter into the full life if our faith gives thanks. Because how else do we accept His free gift of salvation if not with thanksgiving? Thanksgiving is the evidence of our acceptance of whatever He gives. Thanksgiving is the manifestation of our Yes! to His grace.

You will be most remembered-by what brought you most joy.

Every moment I live, I live bowed to something. And if I don't see God, I'll bow down before something else.

We were made to live in a posture of grateful worship, and when we live in praise we live our purpose, and all the pieces fall in place, us all falling down in thanks.

Gratitude is not only a response to God in good times - it's ultimately the very will of God in hard times. Gratitude isn't only a celebration when good things happen. It's a declaration that God is good no matter what happens.

Joy is always a function of gratitude - and gratitude is always a function of perspective.

When the heart and mind focus on things unseen - that's when there's a visible change in us.

The moment when you are most repelled by a child's behavior, that is your warning light to draw the very closest to that child.

You were made for the place where your real #‎ passion meets #‎ compassion because there lies your real purpose.

Like the wind, Grace finds us wherever we are and won't leave us however we were found.

Motherhood is a hallowed place because children aren’t commonplace. Co-laboring over the sculpting of souls is a sacred vocation, a humbling privilege. Never forget.

In our rushing, bulls in china shops, we break our own lives.

Can God be counted on? Count blessings and find out how many of His bridges have already held.

Worry is the facade of taking action when prayer really is.

I want a life that makes music - not just practices the piano.

Gratitude is the most fruitful way of deepening your consciousness that you are a divine choice.

...the secret to joy is to keep seeking God where we doubt He is.

The joy of the Lord is your strength and the person of Christ is your unassailable joy - and the battle for joy is nothing less than fighting the good fight of faith.

And the earth under your feet, the rain over your face upturned, the stars spinning all around you in the brazen glory: this is for you, you, you. These are for you-gifts-these are for you-grace-these are for you-God, so count the ways He loves, a thousand, more, never stop, that when you wake in the morning you can't help turn humbly to the east, unfold your hand to the heavens, and though you tremble and though you wonder, though the world is ugly, it is beautiful, and you can slow and you can trust and you can receive each moment as grace.

On the night He was betrayed Jesus broke bread and lifted it up and gave THANKS. If Jesus can give thanks in that, can we not give thanks in all?

The only way to care for the disadvantaged - is to disadvantage yourself -which is guaranteed to turn out for your advantage.

Eucharisteo—thanksgiving—always precedes the miracle.

Thanksgiving-giving thanks in everything-prepares the way that God might show us His fullest salvation in Christ.

I know there is poor and hideous suffering, and I've seen the hungry and the guns that go to war. I have lived pain, and my life can tell: I only deepen the wound of the world when I neglect to give thanks for early light dappled through leaves and the heavy perfume of wild roses in early July and the song of crickets on humid nights and the rivers that run and the stars that rise and the rain that falls and all the good things that a good God gives.

Being joyful isn't what makes you grateful. Being grateful is what makes you joyful.

Gratitude for the seemingly insignificant—a seed—this plants the giant miracle.

Real Womanhood isn’t a function of becoming a great mother, but of being loved by your Great Father.

The whole of the life -- even the hard -- is made up of the minute parts, and if I miss the infinitesimals, I miss the whole. These are new language lessons, and I live them out. There is a way to live the big of giving thanks in all things. It is this: to give thanks in this one small thing. The moments will add up.

Do I really smother my own joy because I believe that anger achieves more than love? That Satan's way is more powerful, more practical, more fulfilling in my daily life than Jesus' way? WHy else get angry? Isn't it because I think complaining, exasperation, resentment will pound me up into the full life I really want? When I choose-and it is a choice-to crush joy with bitterness, am I not purposefully choosing to take the way of the Prince of Darkness? Choosing the angry way of Lucifer because I think it is more effective-more expedient-than giving thanks?

Learning slowly to not be so reactionary while inserting verbal gratitude into stressful situations is almost like being healed of mental blindness.

Homemaking is about making a home, not about making perfection.

How long does it take your soul to realize that your life is full? The slower the living, the greater the sense of fullness and satisfaction.

And when I give thanks for the seemingly microscopic, I make a place for God to grow within me.

As long as thanks is possible, then joy is always possible.

I don't want a Christmas you can buy. I don't want a Christmas you can make. What I want is a Christmas you can hold. A Christmas that holds me, remakes me, revives me. I want a Christmas that whispers, Jesus.

Losses do that. One life-loss can infect the whole of a life. Like a rash that wears through our days, our sight becomes peppered with black voids. Now everywhere we look, we only see all that isn’t: holes, lack, deficiency.

There is a way to live the big of giving thanks in all things. It is this: to give thanks in this one small thing. The moments will add up.

You've got to use the life you've been given to give others life

Girls rival each other. Women revive each other. Girls empale each other. Women empower each other. Girls compare each other. Women champion each other.

Grace is the only thing that is ever enough.

The life that counts blessings discovers its yielding more than it seems.

Our fall was, has always been, and always will be, that we aren’t satisfied in God and what He gives. We hunger for something more, something other.

The answer to deep anxiety is the deep adoration of God.

We're not giving what we're called to give, unless that giving affects how we live - affects what we put on our plate and where we make our home and hang our hat and what kind of threads we've got to have on our back. Surplus Giving is the leftover you can afford to give; Sacrificial Giving is the love gift that changes how you live - because the love of Christ has changed you. God doesn't want your leftovers. God wants your love overtures, your first-overs, because He is your first love.

God reveals Himself in rearview mirrors.

God’s purposes are not for me to understand His plans: His plan is for me to understand Who He is.

Your naked body deserves the honor of being shared only with someone who is covenanted to never stop loving your naked soul.

We give thanks to God not because of how we feel, but because of Who He is.

God is patiently transfiguring all the notes of my life into the song of His Son.

God is always good and we are always loved... even when what He gives may appear ugly.

The only way to fight a feeling is with a feeling.

Every time I surrender to stress, aren’t I advertising the unreliability of God?

Worry is belief gone wrong. Because you don't believe that God will get it right. But peace - peace is belief that exhales. Because you believe that God's provision is everywhere - like air.

God reveals Himself in rearview mirrors. And I've an inkling that there are times when we need to drive a long, long distance, before we can look back and see God's back in the rearview mirror. Maybe sometimes about as far as heaven -- that kind of distance.

Instead of giving someone a piece of your mind, it turns out far better if you give them a piece of your heart.

If I had the perspective of the whole, perhaps I'd see it? That which seems evil, is it a cloud to bring rain, to bring a greater good to the whole of the world? Who would ever know the greater graces of comfort and perseverance, mercy and forgiveness, patience and courage, if no shadows fell over a life?

God is good and I am always loved.

Expose your life to real need. Visit a developing a country. Take a short term mission trip. Write an inmate, send a letter to a sponsored child, serve in the inner city, at a food bank, with a crisis pregnancy center. Make time for shut-ins, the elderly, the sick, the single-parents, the new believers. Just find one way you can make your awareness of your gift-graced life intersect with a real place of need - and Christ in us will do the rest.

I only live the full life when I live fully in the moment.

I receive grace. And through me, grace could flow on. Like a cycle of water in continuous movement, grace is meant to fall, a rain...again, again, again. I could share the grace, multiply the joy, extend the table of the feast, enlarge the paradise of His presence. I am blessed. I can bless.

Busy is a choice. Stress is a choice. Joy is a choice. Choose well.

You, who were made by Love, made for love-- be still and know and watch love come down.

The brave who focus on all things good and all things beautiful and all things true, even in the small, who give thanks for it and discover joy even in the here and now, they are the change agents who bring fullest light to all the world.

A life contemplating the blessings of Christ becomes a life acting the love of Christ.

No one told me that it would all happen at the same hallowed time: Mothering is at once the hardest and the holiest and the happiest.

We can worship Christ in our sanctuaries and we can pray to God on our knees, but how we treat - or neglect - the person next door, the poor, every human being, this is how we truly speak to Christ and this is how we really treat Jesus.

Joy is the realest reality, the fullest life, and joy is always given, never grasped. God gives gifts and I give thanks and I unwrap the gift given: joy.

Holy joy lies in the habit of murmuring thanks to God for the smallest of graces.

It's habits that can imprison you and it's habits that can free you. But when thanks to God becomes a habit - so joy in God becomes your life.

Life isn't an emergency. Christ is in charge of every moment of the day; nothing catches Him off guard.

In a world addicted to speed, I blur the moments into one unholy smear.

God only allows pain if He’s allowing something new to be born.

When we fixate on the worst in something, we render ourselves incapable of fixing anything... But attend to the good in something - and we act towards the best in everything.

God gives the world enough of what it needs. All He asks is that we distribute what He gives.

The wrinkled man in the wheelchair with the legs wrapped, the girl with her face punctured deep with the teeth marks of a dog, the mess of the world, and I see - this, all this, is what the French call d'un beau affreux, what the Germans call hubsch-hasslich - the ugly-beautiful. That which is perceived as ugly transfigures into beautiful. What the postimpressionist painter Paul Gauguin expressed as 'Le laid peut etre beau' - The ugly can be beautiful. The dark can give birth to life; suffering can deliver grace.

The practice of giving thanks...eucharisteo...this is the way we practice the presence of God, stay present to His presence, and it is always a practice of the eyes. We don't have to change what we see. Only the way we see.

It is in the dark that God is passing by. The bridge and our lives shake not because God has abandoned, but the exact opposite: God is passing by. God is in the tremors. Dark is the holiest ground, the glory passing by. In the blackest, God is closest, at work, forging His perfect and right will. Though it is black and we can't see and our world seems to be free-falling and we feel utterly alone, Christ is most present to us.

Darkness transfigures into light, bad transfigures into good, grief transfigures into grace, empty transfigures into full. God wastes nothing – ‘makes everything work out according to his plan.’ (Ephesians 1:11).

Every mountain that every Christian ever faces, the Lord levels with sufficient grace.

You love as well as you are willing to be inconvenienced.

Every day, with every word, we get to decide: Do we mar the world, or mark the world?

In counting gifts, to one thousand, more, I discover that slapping a sloppy brush of thanksgiving over everything in my life leaves me deeply thankful for very few things in my life.

When we lay the soil of our hard lives open to the rain of grace and let joy penetrate our cracked and dry places, let joy soak into our broken skin and deep crevices, life grows. How can this not be the best thing for the world? For us?

You can give up the need to compete in the world- when you accept being complete in Christ.