Quotes from Lysa TerKeurst

The only way our faith will ever strengthen is for us to use it. We need to apply thought and prayer to our decisions and then trust God for the outcome. We need to set our sights on growing in faith, not shrinking back for fear of failure.

But it is a rare and beautiful thing when we choose to offer love in situations when most people would choose to scorn or ignore.

Where there is a lack of rest, there is an abundance of stress.

God doesn't want you or me to suffer. But He will allow it in doses to increase our trust. Our pain and suffering isn't to hurt us. It's to save us. To save us from a life where we are self-reliant, self-satisfied, self -absorbed, and set up for the greatest pain of all . . . separation from God.

Live from the abundant place that you are loved, and you won't find yourself begging others for scraps of love.

Don't get so consumed by and focused on the mess—the feelings of rejection, hurt, and disillusionment—that you miss the miracle.

Feeling the pain is the first step toward healing the pain. The longer we avoid the feeling, the more we delay our healing. We can numb it, ignore it, or pretend it doesn't exist, but all those options lead to an eventual breakdown, not a breakthrough.

Outside our comfort zone, though, is where we experience the true awesomeness of God.

No, it's not wrong to need people. But some of our biggest disappointments in life are the result of expectations we have of others that they can't ever possibly meet. That's when the desire to connect becomes an unrealistic need. Unrealistic neediness is actually greediness in disguise.

If you desire to please God with the decision you make and afterward it proves to be a mistake, it's an error not an end.

When we have the same thought again, the line of the original thought is deepened, causing what's called a memory trace. With each repetition the trace goes deeper and deeper, forming and embedding a pattern of thought. When an emotion is tied to this thought pattern, the memory trace grows exponentially stronger.

Hope is the melody of the future. Faith is dancing to that melody right now.

My heart struggles to make peace between God's ability to change hard things and His apparent decision not to change them for me.

Don't allow the unrealistic demands of others to march freely into your life.

As Ravi Zacharias said, "Sin will take you farther than you want to go, keep you longer than you want to stay, and cost you more than you want to pay.

David started this stunning soul declaration with the assurance that with God there is fullness. There is no lack. Nothing can be added or subtracted with human acceptance or rejection. With the fullness of God, we are free to let humans be humans—fickle and fragile and forgetful.

Brokenness to redemption, where mercy and grace kiss both sides of our face. Brokenness where we are split open. Redemption where God knits us back together. Mercy when we don't get the punishment we do deserve. Grace when we get the lavish love gifts we don't deserve. So here we are.

If they make the choice to walk over me rather than walk with me, I'll have to love them from afar.

Just because something is hard doesn't mean it's impossible.

My imperfections will never override God's promises. God's promises are not dependent on my ability to always choose well, but rather on His ability to use well.

If the enemy can isolate us, he can influence us. And his favorite entry point of all is through our disappointments

Which do I care more about - demanding my rights or displaying right choices?

The decisions you make determine the schedule you keep. The schedule you keep determines the life you live. And how you live your life determines

Staying here, blaming them, and forever defining your life by what they did will only increase the pain. Worse, it will keep projecting out onto others. The more our pain consumes us, the more it will control us. And sadly, it's those who least deserve to be hurt whom our unresolved pain will hurt the most.