Ann Voskamp Quotes

Sometimes God answers our questions with questions.

Eucharisteo is giving thanks for grace. But in the breaking and giving of bread, in the washing of feet, Jesus makes it clear that eucharisteo is, yes, more: it is giving grace away.

If God didn't withhold from us His very own Son, will God withhold anything we need?

Isn't joy worth the effort of trust?

When the laundry is for the dozen arms of children or the dozen legs, it's true, I think I'm due some appreciation. So comes a storm of trouble and lightning strikes joy. But when Christ is at the center, when dishes, laundry, work, is my song of thanks to Him, joy rains. Passionately serving Christ alone makes us the loving servant to all.

Blessed - lucky - are those who cry. Blessed are those who are sad, who mourn, who feel the loss of what they love - because they will be held by the One who loves them. There is a strange and aching happiness only the hurting know - for they shall be held.

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

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

I can see it in the looking back, how this daily practice of the discipline of gratitude is the way to daily practice the delight of God ...

And it's the 'Word of God' that turns the rocks in the mouth to loaves on the tongue. That fills our emptiness with the true and real good, 'that makes the eyes see', the body full of light.

Thankfully, God never gives us what is deserved ...

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.

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.

Be brave and do not pray for the hard thing to go away, but pray for a bravery that's bigger than the hard thing.

The cure against the bite of thanklessness. The remedy is in the retina. How we behold determines if we hold joy. Behold glory and be held by God.

To get where you want to go, the first question you always have to answer is Where am I? ... We only find out where we are when we find out where He is. We only find ourselves ... when we find Him.

Why have we swallowed the lie that we can only help if we're perfect? The cosmic truth sealed in the wounds of the broken God is that the greatest brokers of abundance know an unspoken broken. Wrapping

Generosity does give birth to intimacy - but there's a far deeper intimacy when we're generous in sharing our brokenness.

He is perfect love and His perfect love kicks fear to the curb.

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

Counting one thousand gifts means counting the hard things - otherwise I've miscounted.

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

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.

If the heights of our joy are measured by the depths of our gratitude, and gratitude is but a way of seeing, a spiritual perspective of smallness might offer a vital way of seeing especially conducive to gratitude

War destroys more than cities - it destroys generations of dreams and hopes and education and possibility.

World has already begun. That suffering nourishes grace, and pain and joy are arteries of the same heart - and mourning and dancing are but movements in His unfinished symphony of beauty. Can I believe the gospel, that God is patiently transfiguring all the notes of my life into the song of His Son? What in the world, in all this world, is grace? I can say it certain now: All is grace. I see through the woods of the world: God is always good and I am always loved. God is

While I may not always feel joy, God asks me to give thanks in all things because He knows that the feeling of joy begins in the action of thanksgiving.

Maybe it's okay to not feel strong, to carry an unspoken broken. And . . . to speak it?

Simplicity is ultimately a matter of focus.

God is good and I am always loved.

How long does it take for your soul to recognize that your life is full? The slower the living, the greater the sense of fullness and satisfaction. The body and soul can synchronize. page 76

In this day, this season, miracles will grow within, unfurl, bear fruit. And the heart that makes time and space for Him to come will be a glorious place. A place of sheer, radiant defiance in the face of a world careening mad and stressed. Because each day of Advent, we will actively wait. We will wait knowing that the remaking of everything has already begun.

Sometimes you don't know when you're taking the first step through a door until you're already inside.

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.

All those years thinking I was saved and had said my yes to God, but was really living the no.

I came into this world the way every person on the planet does - with clenched fists.

More important than a clean house is a close family.

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

I'm Peter on the mountaintop, stirring to see The Glory in all its God-radiance, stammering out that it's good to be here; let's build shelters and never depart. But there's always the descent from the mount. The meeting of the crowd, the complaining, the cursing. Page 124

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

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.

Pantheism, seeing the natural world as divine, is a very different thing than seeing divine God present in all things

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

Trauma's storm can mask the Christ and feelings can lie. I draw all the hurting voices close and I tough their scars with a whisper: sometimes we don't fully see that in Christ, because of Christ, through Christ, He does give us all things good - until we have the perspective of years.
In time, years, dust settles.
In memory, ages, God emerges.

How can it be? When we're naked and ashamed and alone in our brokenness, Christ envelops us with His intimate grace. When we're rejected and abandoned and feel beyond wanting, Jesus cups our face: "Come close, my Beloved." When we're dirty and tear-stained and despairing, Jesus Christ is attracted to us and proposes undying love: "All that you're carrying I take... and all that I am is yours." How do you ever get over that?

Relationships only get to exist as long as they keep breathing in the air of mutual forgiveness, and he and I have found an uncommon grace. Grace can strike when you are in great pain and light you with the greatest hope. I

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

Could a name be any shorter? Three letters without even the flourish of an e. Ann, a trio of curves and lines.
It means "full of grace".

We 'have' all received on grace after another, but we only recognize the glory of God in this moment 'when we wake to the one grace after another'.

The busyness of your life leaves little room for the source of your life.

Is that why joy hurts
God stretching us open to receive more of Himself?

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.

Every religion, every program, every self-help book is about steps you have to take. Jesus is the only One who becomes the step - to take you.

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

Why do I lunge for control instead of joy? ... do I thin Jesus grace too impotent to give me the full life ... Whenever I am blind to joys well, isn't it because I don't believe in Gods care? P 130

Christ at the end of a cross can upend whole worlds and everything lands aright.

When the church isn't for the suffering and broken, then the church isn't for Christ. Because Jesus, with His pierced side, is always on the side of the broken.

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

Lord God, I claim Christ as my bridge back to You and I trust the Bridge Builder to hold all the moments of my life - and me. Remind me today, Lord, to give thanks to You for always holding. I am relieved of the burdens when I've believed in the Bridge Builder.

When your ethnicity is heaven, then all adversity offers the gift of intimacy, driving you into the home of His heart.

Eucharisteo means 'to give thanks,' and give is a verb, something that we do. God calls me to do thanks. to give the thanks away. That thanks-giving might literally become thanks-living. That our lives become the very blessings we have received. I am blessed. I can bless. Imagine! I could let Him make me the gift! I could be the joy!

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

Satan's sin becomes the first sin of all humanity: the sin of ingratitude.

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

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

He must increase and I must decrease
not because that is burden but do that my joy might increase with more of Him!

I'll take it. I'll take his words like a daring covenant, not knowing yet what's to come: there is no growth without change, no change without surrender, no surrender without wound - no abundance without breaking. Wounds are what break open the soul to plant the seeds of a deeper growth.

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.

Simplicity is not a matter of circumstance; it is a matter of focus.

Where ever you are be all there

In a storm of struggles, I have tried to control the elements, clasp the fist tight so as to protect self and happiness. But stress can be an addiction, and worry can be our lunge for control, and we forget the answer to this moment is always yes because of Christ.

Life change comes when we receive life with thanks and ask for nothing to change.

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

Trust is the bridge from yesterday to tomorrow, built with planks of thanks.

All these years, these angers, these hardenings, this desire to control, I had thought I had to snap the hand closed to shield joy's fragile flame from the blasts. In a storm of struggles, I had tried to control the elements, clasp the fist tight so as to protect self and happiness. But palms curled into protective fists fill with darkness. I feel that sharply, even in this ... and this realization in all its full emptiness: My own wild desire to protect my joy at all costs is the exact force that kills my joy.

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

Long, I am woman who speaks but one language, the language of the fall
discontentment and self-condemnation, the critical eye and the never satisfied.

This pen: this is nothing less than the driving of nails. Nails driving out my habits of discontent and driving in my habit of eucharisteo. I'm hammering in nails to pound out nails, ugly nails that Satan has pierced through the world, my heart. It starts to unfold, light in the dark, a door opening up, how all these years it's been utterly pointless to try to wrench out the spikes of discontent. Because that habit of discontentment can only be driven out by hammering in one iron sharper. The sleek pin of gratitude. I

While other creeds endeavor to get us out of the world and into heaven, in Christianity, heaven comes down and Christ comes into this world to get us. To suffer with us. We find favor - only because Christ feels pain.

This. I live in this place, make porridge, scrub toilets, do laundry, and for days, weeks, I am brave and I do get out of bed and I think on this. I study this, the full life, the being fully ready for the end. I start to think that maybe there is a way out of nightmares to dreams? Maybe?

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.

To lack faith perhaps isn't as much an intellectual disbelief in the existence of God as fear and distrust that there is a good God.

And I see what I am. I'm amputated. I have hacked my life up into grace moments and curse moments. The chopping that has cut myself off from the embracing love of a God who "does not enjoy hurting people or causing them sorrow" (Lamentations 3:33), but labors to birth grief into greater grace. Isn't this the crux of the gospel? The good news that all those living in the land of shadow of death have been birthed into new life, that the transfiguration of a suffering

When I fully enter time's swift current, enter into the current moment with the weight of all my attention, I slow the torrent with the weight of me all here.

The frame of a soul was never made for fame. The frame of a soul was made to serve.

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

As G. K. Chesterton wrote, "How much larger your life would be if your self could become smaller in it."22

Life is so urgent and necessitates living slow. It's only the amateurs-and that I've been, and it's been ugly-who thinks slow and urgent are contradictory.

Romance isn't measured by how viral your proposal goes. The Internet age may try to sell you something different, but don't ever forget that viral is closely associated with sickness - so don't ever make being viral your goal.

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

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?

Forget the face of God, and forget your own name is Beloved.

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.

Are stress and worry evidences of a soul too lazy, too undisciplined, to keep gaze fixed on God? To stay in love? I don't like to ask these questions, sweep out these corners where eyes glare from shadows. Stress brings no joy. Isn't joy worth the effort of trust? This is the work (service) that God asks of you: that you believe in the One Whom He has sent [that you cleave to, trust, rely on, and have faith in His Messenger].

Living radical isn't about where you live - it's about how you love.

God gives us time. And who has time for God?

Humbly let go. Let go of trying to do, let go of trying to control, let go of my own way, let go of my own fears. Let God blow His wind, His trials, oxygen for joy's fire. Leave the hand open and be. Be at peace. Bend the knee and be small and let God give what God chooses to give because He only gives love and whisper a surprised thanks. This is the fuel for joy's flame. Fullness of joy is discovered only in the emptying of will. And I can empty. I can empty because counting His graces has awakened me to how He cherishes me, holds me, passionately values me. I can empty because I am full of His love. I can trust.

The joy of small that makes life large. Hadn't I personally experienced it before too, that vantage point that gave a sense of smallness before grandeur? At the tip of the Grand Canyon, peering into the carved earth, the vastness of the hewn and many-hued chasm. A late June night peering into the expanse of heavens nailed up with the named and known stars. A moon field. I hardly dare brush the limitlessness with my vaporous humanity. But the irony: Don't I often desperately want to wriggle free of the confines of a small life? Yet when I stand before immensity that heightens my smallness - I have never felt sadness. Only burgeoning wonder.

Daily discipline is the door to full freedom, and the discipline to count to one thousand gave way to the freedom of wonder and I can't imagine not staying awake to God in the moment, the joy in the now.

The art of deep seeing makes gratitude possible.