Tessa Afshar > Quotes

“We long for things that harm us and run from the things that grow and heal us. We think good is bad and bad is good.”
― Tessa Afshar, Pearl in the Sand

“I mean that the reason God seems to act in ways that make no sense to us is that our perceptions are wrong. Our expectations are subtly twisted. We long for things that harm us and run from the things that grow and heal us. We think good is bad and bad is good. God acts rightly, but to us, it seems confusing. Or sometimes plain wrong.”
― Tessa Afshar, Pearl in the Sand

“A woman needs to feel safe in love. She needs to know her husband accepts everything about her and still loves her. To be known through and through, including the failures of her past, the shortcomings of her character, and still be loved, that's the Promised Land of a woman's heart! That's where she finds rest.”
― Tessa Afshar, Pearl in the Sand

“There is only one measure of true success, child. How close you remain by His side. Does the dust of His feet get on your cloak because you follow so close? Does the sound of His whisper reverberate in your ear because you have drawn so near? Are you obedient to that voice, day after day, hour after hour? That’s how I measure success. Do you understand?”
― Tessa Afshar, In the Field of Grace

“But the choices that lead us into broken paths often have their beginnings in more convoluted places.”
― Tessa Afshar, Thief of Corinth

“Some of these walls had been of my own making; my rebellion, my resistance; my arrogance, my need for control. Some had been built around me by the misfortunes of life; my loneliness; my orphaned heart; my fear of rejection. I had kept God at bay, and cheated myself of the warmth of His mercy.”
― Tessa Afshar, Harvest of Rubies

“It's time to leave fear behind or you'll be robbed of your destiny. You don't need confidence in yourselves or in your own power. Be strong in the Lord. When disaster seems close, don't be discouraged. God will never leave you.”
― Tessa Afshar, Pearl in the Sand

“I was like a child bitten by a viper. All I could think of was finding a way to remove the fangs sunken into my skin. I had no notion that I still had to contend with the venom pumping through my veins.”
― Tessa Afshar, Thief of Corinth

“This is a door that the Lord holds open for you. Walk through it. He who has called shall also equip. Everything you lack shall be provided.”
― Tessa Afshar, Harvest of Rubies

“Sin is like that. Whether you know what you're doing or not, there is damage. There are consequences. The holiness of the Lord requires justice for these consequences. It demands a covering for them. At the same time. He is merciful with our mistakes. So he Himself gives us that covering by providing us with the sacrifice.”
― Tessa Afshar, Pearl in the Sand

“What do you think destiny is? A smooth path that never jostles you? No. When you walk in your destiny, you will crash and fall more times than you can count. But the secret is to hold on to God’s vision for your life — and for the lives of those He puts under your charge. No matter how many times you fall, crash, and fail, you get up. You get up and face your obstacles.”
― Tessa Afshar, Harvest of Gold

“Sometimes tears are a gift. They are the words our tongues cannot speak, the gall our bodies cannot expel.”
― Tessa Afshar, Thief of Corinth

“Faith is not won by arguments. Faith is won by an experience of love.”
― Tessa Afshars

“Then it dawned on Joshua that God was not on Israel's side. He beckoned Israel to be on His side. Joshua couldn't claim God for himself or for his own interests the way the people around them used their idols. Rather the Lord claimed Joshua and His chosen people for Himself.”
― Tessa Afshar, Pearl in the Sand

“How can you be so accepting? How is it that you are not screaming with frustration?"
"I've been spending more time in prayer. I am learning that obedience to God means that you do not put your eyes on your longings, but instead, you simply place one foot ahead of the other into the space that the Lord opens. Tired, wounded, overwhelmed. It does not matter. You merely keep moving where God directs and stop focusing on what you wish you had. It's teaching me patience.”
― Tessa Afshar, Land of Silence

“Naomi enfolded Ruth in a warm embrace, before drawing back and patting her cheek. “If God spared us from the piercing shaft of every sorrow,” she said, “we could never fulfill His best plans for our lives. Sometimes the sweetest things in life rise up out of the worst things in life.”
― Tessa Afshar, In the Field of Grace

“The vine needs to suffer. Going down into this earth-fighting to survive among the stones, among the lime rock-this is what gives it its aroma. Its taste. Its unique character. These grapes will create a wine few other vineyards can compare with not because their life was easy, but because they had to struggle to survive.”
― Tessa Afshar

“You must learn to trust him when there is no earthly evidence why you should.”
― Tessa Afshar, Land of Silence

“How great an anguish is hope! For when it disappoints, it ruptures old wounds and gouges out new ones, so that you are left worse off than when you began.”
― Tessa Afshar, Land of Silence

“If you go through life making every decision based on what is
safest, you will look back one day and discover that you have missed out on the best. Allowing fear to run your life will only rob you of your future.”
― Tessa Afshar, Harvest of Rubies

“I would rather obey the Lord without understanding than follow my own limited knowledge. “Perhaps”
― Tessa Afshar, Pearl In The Sand

“I want to grow old with you. I want your face to be the first thing I see in the morning and the last thing I see at night. I want to feel my children growing inside you. Sarah, my love. I want to worship the Lord with you, and hear your laughter until the day I die.”
― Tessa Afshar, Harvest of Gold

“Victory was not so much in being perfect toward each other. Rather, victory would flow out of how they dealt with their failures.”
― Tessa Afshar

“Human wisdom won’t win us these battles. It will be God alone,”
― Tessa Afshar, Pearl In The Sand

“That was the day Rehab promised herself she would never bow her head to such gods. She hated them. For all their glittering attraction, she had seen them for what they were. They were consumers of humanity.”
― Tessa Afshar, Pearl in the Sand

“He does not always keep us from danger, but he preserves us in danger. I have known hardship, but my heart has felt secure in his steadfast love.”
― Tessa Afshar, Bread of Angels

“This is a life of right order, Sarah. "The heart that knows the Lord as the source of its beauty and value knows freedom. You have lost yourself in the gifts God gave you. Those blessings have become your master.”
― Tessa Afshar

“Rahab, don't you know that when God requires the blood of sacrifices to cover the uncleanness and rebellion of the people of Israel, He is thinking of me as much as of you? God's standards measure my heart, not any illusion of righteousness I might contrive to achieve with my actions. And before those standards I fail every day.... I compare myself to the holy standard God sets for us. Your problem is that you compare yourself to me, and conclude yourself a great failure. But your standards are skewed. In a way, each of us is a ruin before God. The wonder is the lengths He goes to in order to save us both from our ruination.”
― Tessa Afshar, Pearl in the Sand

“Consider my lady, I’m the gardener and I know what the vine needs in order to thrive. You only see the stripping, but I cut the vine in order to restore it. I take away from it to enrich it.”
― Tessa Afshar, Harvest Of Rubies

“He wiped out Jericho, and He saved a harlot. What kind of God was this? He seemed at once impossibly holy and ridiculously merciful. How could you tie those two incongruities together? Rahab”
― Tessa Afshar, Pearl In The Sand