Quotes from Lysa TerKeurst

What we need is boundaries, not barriers.

This is what it looks like to rise above the circumstances and determine to hold on to the greater good in the grand scheme of things: honoring God.

If I'm trusting God, I will stare at all the possible ways He'll use this whether I fail or succeed.

Finally, I went to my husband. "Honey," I said, feeling the entanglements of expectations loosening their grip on me, "I can't do everything good wives seem to do. But I can do three things. So, tell me your top three things, and I will do those well." After all, I could spend a whole marriage doing a hundred things halfway with a bitter attitude and an overwhelmed spirit. Or, I could do three things wholeheartedly with a smile on my face and love in my heart.

Giving with strings of secret expectations attached is the greatest invitation to heartbreak. That's not love. That's manipulation.

Lord, have mercy on all that jiggles on me. And my soul. And my obviously whacked-out brain.

You are my fortress. A fortress is a strong, high place. It's the place You lift me so fear can no longer have access to me. Fear can't catch what it can no longer reach. What a comfort this is. You lift me high like this when I lift my soul in worship of Your holy name.

Satan knows what consumes us controls us. Therefore the more consumed we are with rejection, the more he can control our emotions, our thinking, and our actions.

After all, how a woman thinks is often how she lives.

But if you harbor bitter envy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not boast about it or deny the truth. Such "wisdom" does not come down from heaven but is earthly, unspiritual, demonic. For where you have envy and selfish ambition, there you find disorder and every evil practice. (James 3:14 – 16)

We must feel the pain to heal the pain. If we never allow ourselves to feel it, we won't acknowledge it's there.

Numbing the pain never goes to the source of the real issue to make us healthier. It only silences our screaming need for help.

Life doesn't add up. People don't add up. And in the rawest moments of honest hurting, God doesn't add up. All of which makes us hold our trust ever so close to our chests until it becomes more tied to our fears than to our faith.

Since Satan's goal is to separate us from the Lord, this is exactly where he wants us to stay. But the minute we turn to His Word is the minute the gap between us and God is closed. He is always near. His Word is full and fully able to reach those deep places inside us desperate for truth.

Do not let the heartbreak you have experienced be wasted. God is still with you. His promises still stand. Soak in His truths and let them seep into the deepest places of your heart rubbed raw with uncertainty.

God's eyes are on me. His face is not against me. And even if others appear to be against me, I must make sure in my reaction to them that I extend grace and honor God.

The emotions that feel so intense today will ease up over time as long as we let them. We just have to watch how we think and talk about this rejection. If we give it the power to define us, it will haunt us long-term. But if we only allow it enough power to refine us, the hurt will give way to healing.

Walk confidently in the fact that our all-sufficient God did not make you insufficient or broken.

when you are chosen for suffering, you are chosen for the blessing of displaying the works of God

Healthy relationships don't feel threatening. Loving relationships don't feel cruel. Secure relationships don't feel as if everything could implode if you dared to draw a boundary.

To deny my feelings any voice is to rob me of being human. But to let my feelings be the only voice will rob my soul of healing perspectives with which God wants to comfort me and carry me forward.

Old patterns of thought must be torn out, and a new way of looking at the core of who I am using God's truth has to be put into place. My identity must be anchored to the truth of who God is and who He is to me. Only then can I find a stability beyond what my feelings will ever allow. The closer I align my truth with His truth, the more closely I identify with God—and the more my identity really is in Him.

With the full assurance God is okay with me even when I'm not okay with me. And I realize, I can't hold on to the desire to run and at the same time go where God wants to lead me.

His goodness has been apparent since creation. When He formed and shaped and painted and sculpted this world and its creatures into being, His goodness seeped in with every thought and touch. "God saw all that he had made, and it was very good. And there was evening, and there was morning—the sixth day" (Genesis 1:31).