Ann Voskamp Quotes - Page 2

Start with a simple request, making it the refrain of your day: 'God, open the eyes of my heart.' This journey must be Spirit-led, every day.

He means to rename us-to return us to our true names, our truest selves. He means to heal our soul holes. From the very beginning, that Eden beginning, that has always been and always is, to this day, His secret purpose-our return to 'our full glory'.

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

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.

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.

Fullness of joy is discovered only in the emptying of will.

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

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.

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.

Could it be - no one receives the peace of God without giving thanks to God? Is thankfulness really but the deep, contented breath of peacefulness? Is this why God asks us to give thanks even when things look a failure? When there doesn’t seem much to give thanks for?

Practice is the hardest part of learning, and training is the essence of transformation.

Just that maybe … maybe you don’t want to change the story, because you don’t know what a different ending holds.

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

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?

Stress isn't only a joy stealer. The way we respond to it can be sin.

Is the height of my chara joy dependent on the depths of my eucharisteo thanks?

The joy of small that makes life large.

True saints know that the place where all the joy comes from is far deeper than that of feelings; joy comes from the place of the very presence of God. Joy is God and God is joy and joy doesn't negate all other emotions - joy transcends all other emotions.

How does it save the world to reject unabashed joy when it is joy that saves us? Rejecting joy to stand in solidarity with the suffering doesn't rescue the suffering. The converse does. (Page 58)

Time, what God first deemed holy above all else (Genesis 2:3). Thank God for the time, and very God enters that time, presence hallowing it.... I awake to I AM here. When I'm present, I meet I AM, the very presence of a present God. (page 70)