Quotes from Mary E. DeMuth

We grow when the walls press in. We grow when life steals our control. We grow in the darkness.

We cannot let the haters of this world define us. Or frighten us into no longer being ourselves.

A broken person understands she needs rescue, and she depends on God to resurrect and deliver. And she also understands that even if God chooses not to deliver, His ways are higher and more amazing then what we can fathom.

We grow when the walls press in. We grow when life steals our control. We grow in darkness.

The Gospel isn't a life management program. It shouldn't merely be the crutch we fall on when life gets ugly. It should be the legs we walk on, the air we breathe.

The more we love, the more it hurts, and the more we have to let go.

We may not understand the pathways God lays out before us. We may not even like walking the journey. But even in failure, we can trust that He'll do more than we expect.

It's an act of our will to choose to see people simply as wildly loved by God, to assume their beauty before guessing their depravity.

My stubborn, self-savvy heart will not reach for the sky if my earth becomes everything I need. If people fill me up then where is my need for the transcendent? If everything is glory and beauty and sweetness and light, will I be the type of soul that reaches to Jesus?

God's heart…is not that we escape our lot, but that we learn to thrive in the midst of it.

Control is the inner disease of those who need stability and order to function.

It's never easy letting go. But if we don't learn the art of relinquishment, we'll never move forward to embrace the new relationships God has for us.

We cannot love our enemies until we see those twin truths: God loves me. God loves them.

Growth comes from God, to those with surrendered, yielded hearts.

We enslave in the manner we talk to ourselves. But the truth is, God already set us free. He secured our release. To constantly hurt ourselves, resting in our inadequacy, is to call Him a LIAR.

To abandon all is to take our hearts, place them before the One who created them, and dare to believe He can live life powerfully through our surrendered lives.

Because the culture we breathe and work in rushes against rest. It equates our worth with production and wealth and fame. The more we work toward those goals, the more society assigns us worth.

We'd avoid a lot of insecurity, if we fully, wholly believed in God's wild affection for us.

When we have difficult relationships, God often uses them as gifts in our lives—to shape us, conform us to His Son, and make us gutsier and stronger.

With an all-or-nothing mind-set, you tend to judge yourself relentlessly…Eeyore becomes your best friend.

We don't like death. We'd rather produce seeds another way. But death to ourselves, our agendas, our expectations, our hopes is necessary to find deep joy that comes when we fully relinquish ourselves to the gospel.

Jesus often calls us to risk. He asks us to be vulnerable, to be authentic, so others can see Him in and through us.

I understand true life doesn't happen when I constantly gaze backwards, mulling over all the injustices others have done or I have done to others.

Sometimes dramatic people try to draw you into someone else's drama, and that never ends well. Interfering is like pulling on a dangerous dog's ears. Do it at your own peril.