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 secret to joy is to keep seeking God where we doubt He is.
Busy is a choice. Stress is a choice. Joy is a choice. Choose well.
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.
Real joy is not found in having the best of everything but in trusting that God is making the best of everything.
The brave who focus on all things good and all things beautiful and all things true, even in the small, who give thanks for it and discover joy even in the here and now, they are the change agents who bring fullest light to all the world.
As long as thanks is possible, then joy is always possible.
When we lay the soil of our hard lives open to the rain of grace and let joy penetrate our cracked and dry places, let joy soak into our broken skin and deep crevices, life grows. How can this not be the best thing for the world? For us?
Joy and pain, they are but two arteries of the one heart that pumps through all those who don't numb themselves to really living.
Joy is always a function of gratitude - and gratitude is always a function of perspective.
Joy is the realest reality, the fullest life, and joy is always given, never grasped. God gives gifts and I give thanks and I unwrap the gift given: joy.
Stress isn't only a joy stealer. The way we respond to it can be sin.
Do I really smother my own joy because I believe that anger achieves more than love? That Satan's way is more powerful, more practical, more fulfilling in my daily life than Jesus' way? WHy else get angry? Isn't it because I think complaining, exasperation, resentment will pound me up into the full life I really want? When I choose-and it is a choice-to crush joy with bitterness, am I not purposefully choosing to take the way of the Prince of Darkness? Choosing the angry way of Lucifer because I think it is more effective-more expedient-than giving thanks?
I receive grace. And through me, grace could flow on. Like a cycle of water in continuous movement, grace is meant to fall, a rain...again, again, again. I could share the grace, multiply the joy, extend the table of the feast, enlarge the paradise of His presence. I am blessed. I can bless.
I make soup and I back bread and I know my supreme need is joy in God and I know I can't experience deep joy in God until I deep trust in God. I shine sinks and polish through to the realization that trusting God is my most urgent need. If I deep trusted God in all the facets of my life, wouldn't that deep heal my anxiety, my self-condemnation, my soul holes? The fear is suffocating, terrorizing, and I want the remedy, and it is trust. Trust is everything. If fear keeps our lives small, does a life that receives all of God in this moment grow large too?
How my eyes see, perspective, is my key to enter into His gates. I can only do so with thanksgiving. If my inner eye has God seeping up through all things, then can't I give thanks for anything? And if I can give thanks for the good things, the hard things, the absolute everything, I can enter the gates to glory. Living in His presence is fullness of joy- and seeing shows the way in.
Is the height of my chara joy dependent on the depths of my eucharisteo thanks?
Fullness of joy is discovered only in the emptying of will.
Grace is alive, living waters. If I dam up the grace, hold the blessings tight, joy within dies... waters that have no life.
God gives gifts and I give thanks and I unwrap the gift given: joy.
Comparison is a thug that robs your joy. But its even more than that - Comparison makes you a thug who beats down somebody - or your soul.
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.
Kathie Lee [Gifford] invited me to come to New York for lunch with her - and surprised with an unexpected shout out again for One Thousand Gifts on the show and graciously asked a few questions on camera. Indebted to her and the people who read and looked for Jesus in the pages and shared the hope and joy of Him - right where they are.
Maybe the man who said that his doctor had pulled him off Prozac because One Thousand Gifts and taking the dare to write 1,000 gifts was healing deep places in him and leading him to *experience* joy.
You will be most remembered-by what brought you most joy.
Follow AzQuotes on Facebook, Twitter and Google+. Every day we present the best quotes! Improve yourself, find your inspiration, share with friends
or simply: