Quotes from Jen Hatmaker

Condemnation is a trick of the enemy, not the language of the heavens. Shame is not God's tool, so if we are slaves to it, we're way off the beaten path. And

Folks who thrive in God's grace give grace easily, but the self-critical person becomes others-critical.

The wilderness is where all the creatives and prophets and system-buckers and risk-takers have always lived, and it is stunningly vibrant. The walk out there is hard, but the authenticity out there is life.

We can't deliver folks from their pits, but we can sure get in there with them until God does.

We need not fear that He will say, "You loved too greatly, too liberally, too generously, too shockingly.

The middle place still has a lot of life left, so we'll store up these years like a treasure, remembering them one day just as fondly as the first phase of our family when we were dirty kids drinking water out of the backyard hose.

Atlanta, Georgia—a city where little girls in $50 smocked dresses romp around on filthy playgrounds. Where every freshly birthed Southern baby gets two names and women wear pastel pantsuits to lunch. These ladies instinctively understand closed-toed shoes and slips and no-white-after-Labor-Day-unless-it-is-winter-white.

The best people I know are constantly learning, putting themselves humbly under the leadership of others who've gone before them. This is no indicator of weakness but rather healthy ambition. That woman is unafraid of a challenge and cares enough about her own development to ask for help and secure the outcome she wants. Learners become our most effective leaders.

Annual U.S. spending on cosmetics: $8 billion Basic education for all global children: $6 billion Annual U.S. and European spending on perfume: $12 billion Clean water for all global citizens $9 billion

There is a clear correlation between how we treat each other and how a watching world will feel about Jesus. What should our neighbors deduce from our loving-kindness toward one another? One, that we obviously belong to Jesus, because what other explanation exists for such beautiful community?

If people around me aren't moved by my Christ or my church, then I must be doing a miserable job of representing them

If Jesus is the heart of the church, people are the lifeblood. There is a reason He created community and told us to practice grace and love and camaraderie and presence. People soften the edges and fill in the gaps. Friends make up some of the best parts of the whole story.

don't quite know how to explain Jesus' presence—intense and terrifying and gentle at the exact same time.

A shared table is the supreme expression of hospitality in every culture on earth. When your worn-out kitchen table hosts good people and good conversation, when it provides a safe place to break bread and share wine, your house becomes a sanctuary, holy as a cathedral. I've left a friend's table as sanctified and renewed as any church service. If you have a porch, then you have an altar to gather around.

If God is really at the center of things and God's good future is the most certain reality, then the truly realistic course of action is to buck the dominant consequentialist ethic of our age - which says that we should act only if our action will most likely bring about good consequences - and simply, because we are people who embody the virtue of hope, do the right thing.

Motherhood often feels like a game of guilt management; sometimes the guilt is overwhelming and debilitating, sometimes just a low simmer, but it always feels right there. There is never any shortage of fuel to feed the beast, so the whole mechanism is constantly nourished to administer shame and a general feeling of incompetency.

Thank you, Spanx. Because of you, my postbaby body can mold like Jell-O into a svelte, sexy little shape . . . for a few hours anyway. Your ability to lift and tuck simply takes my breath away, literally! May you continue to do God's work and be the progenitor of the muffin top. THANK YOU, SARA BLAKELY!! Sincerely, All Women.

It was hard to make room for my friends. But I did it.

Jesus is the best marker that exists, so let's raise Him high.

I don't quite know how to explain Jesus' presence—intense and terrifying and gentle at the exact same time.

Why is it so exhausting to uphold someone's heavy, inconvenient burden? Why are we spent from shouldering someone's grief or being an armor bearer? Why is it that lifting someone out of his or her rubble leaves us breathless? Because we are the body of Christ, broken and poured out, just as He was.

My best advice is just to show up and be truthful. Be the kind of friend you are hoping for.

It's not how good we are that counts, but how truthful we are about how good we're not.

Thank you, Daylight and Rearview Mirror, for bringing to light the long, wiry chin hairs I missed during my morning tweeze session. You also exposed my eyebrows as an absolute tragedy. I have enough undetected facial hair to qualify me as a Sasquatch,