Upon Waking Quotes

“Prayerlessness is almost always a humility issue—the natural consequence of a heart that tends to believe it is good without God. Yes, you may be busy, but it’s possible that you are also proud. Pride is the true enemy of your prayer life. Pride deludes us into thinking we’re self-sufficient. That our jobs supply our needs. Our relationships provide comfort. Our intellect and ambition make us successful. But in fact, everything you are and everything you have is because God rains on the just and the unjust (Matt. 5:45).”
― Jackie Hill Perry, Upon Waking: 60 Daily Reflections to Discover Ourselves and the God We Were Made For

“If we understand everyone, friend and foe, neighbor and nuisance, as made in the likeness of God, the words we say should be tempered by that truth.”
― Jackie Hill Perry, Upon Waking: 60 Daily Reflections to Discover Ourselves and the God We Were Made For

“Our fear of surrender is really our unbelief that God isn’t better than everything God is asking us to give Him. You will give God anything when you believe He is everything.”
― Jackie Hill Perry, Upon Waking: 60 Daily Reflections to Discover Ourselves and the God We Were Made For

“We need the Bread of heaven because truly no other food will do.”
― Jackie Hill Perry, Upon Waking: 60 Daily Reflections to Discover Ourselves and the God We Were Made For

“in the same way our bodies need a constant diet of food, our souls need God like this always. Upon waking, we are hungry for heaven, and yet we fill it with a scroll or many. As the day moves forward and the belly still empty, we fill it again, when a person gives us a measure of love, a like, a look. Before bed, the soul, if visible, would be skeletal. Barely able to stand on its own or smile with all of its teeth. The body who holds this almost-dead thing feels alive because it depends on every other bread except the One the Father sent.”
― Jackie Hill Perry, Upon Waking: 60 Daily Reflections to Discover Ourselves and the God We Were Made For

“What if some of our fear and our angst and stress is a consequence of us making an idol out of our ability to produce?”
― Jackie Hill Perry, Upon Waking: 60 Daily Reflections to Discover Ourselves and the God We Were Made For

“The point is this: there is nothing in your hands that God won’t replace with more of Himself. So let it go. Let it fly. Let it burn. God is better anyway. It might hurt. It might suck. You might miss it. You might have to sacrifice some things. Confess some stuff. But on the other side of surrender is God.”
― Jackie Hill Perry, Upon Waking: 60 Daily Reflections to Discover Ourselves and the God We Were Made For

“The truth is, the immutable nature of God is an anchor. It means that at no point in history or at no point in the time to come will God not be good. Or not able to move. He has and will always be a faithful and just and gracious and powerful God. Just because we change our minds every other minute doesn’t mean God does. He is the same God today as He was then.”
― Jackie Hill Perry, Upon Waking: 60 Daily Reflections to Discover Ourselves and the God We Were Made For

“David resisted fear by being secure in God’s presence and protection. You don’t have to fear evil when the always good God walks with you. He says for “you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me.” Which brings to mind David, the shepherd boy who killed a giant with the same items he used to protect his sheep. The resources the good God used to protect you are the same resources He will use to fight for you.”
― Jackie Hill Perry, Upon Waking: 60 Daily Reflections to Discover Ourselves and the God We Were Made For

“Unforgiveness is an expression of such a fear. The angst being that if I release them of the offense, the offender will be freed to do evil toward us again. Unforgiveness, vengeance, and being guarded won’t keep you from evil though; it will instead cultivate evil in you.”
― Jackie Hill Perry, Upon Waking: 60 Daily Reflections to Discover Ourselves and the God We Were Made For

“Everybody needs a Nathan. Someone who will love us enough to tell us the truth. Who will see the plank between blinks and do the careful work of helping us remove it.”
― Jackie Hill Perry, Upon Waking: 60 Daily Reflections to Discover Ourselves and the God We Were Made For

“Blindness ages with us unless God sends someone to help us see again.”
― Jackie Hill Perry, Upon Waking: 60 Daily Reflections to Discover Ourselves and the God We Were Made For

“This is to say, blessed is the woman who refuses the voice of friends who love the earth more than the kingdom above it. Those friends who are a choir of darkness. Who steal Satan’s sentences and call it “advice.”
― Jackie Hill Perry, Upon Waking: 60 Daily Reflections to Discover Ourselves and the God We Were Made For

“What if asking God questions is one way to cultivate intimacy with God? What if your questions became a door by which you could be vulnerable with Him? What if your questions opened up your mind to read the Scriptures with Spirit-empowered expectation instead of apathetic drudgery? If, in fact, Jesus is the wisdom of God (1 Cor. 1:24), what if, by asking questions, you discover God; and by finding God, you find your answers?”
― Jackie Hill Perry, Upon Waking: 60 Daily Reflections to Discover Ourselves and the God We Were Made For

“For am I now seeking the approval of man, or of God? Or am I trying to please man? If I were still trying to please man, I would not be a servant of Christ. GALATIANS 1:10”
― Jackie Hill Perry, Upon Waking: 60 Daily Reflections to Discover Ourselves and the God We Were Made For

“Out of the abundance of the heart [the] mouth speaks” (Luke 6:45).”
― Jackie Hill Perry, Upon Waking: 60 Daily Reflections to Discover Ourselves and the God We Were Made For

“To tame the tongue, we have to actually deal with who we are.”
― Jackie Hill Perry, Upon Waking: 60 Daily Reflections to Discover Ourselves and the God We Were Made For

“Every single person we will ever converse with, both sinner and saint, bears the image of God; and for that reason, each person is worthy of honor.”
― Jackie Hill Perry, Upon Waking: 60 Daily Reflections to Discover Ourselves and the God We Were Made For

“The empathy precedes the mercy. The sympathy holds hands with grace.”
― Jackie Hill Perry, Upon Waking: 60 Daily Reflections to Discover Ourselves and the God We Were Made For

“I’m sad to admit that sometimes we are the two. Most times we are the ten. So awestruck by the bigness of whatever is in front of us that our fears become our lord and king.”
― Jackie Hill Perry, Upon Waking: 60 Daily Reflections to Discover Ourselves and the God We Were Made For

“Truth is, Jesus was busy too. The Father had business Jesus came to handle. A woman at a well to give water to. A Lazarus to raise. Streets to straighten. Wine to turn. Bodies to heal. Even at rest, when a few waves prompted the disciples to wake Him, He got to work by speaking peace. And yet, at no point in any Gospel do you see Him neglect prayer.”
― Jackie Hill Perry, Upon Waking: 60 Daily Reflections to Discover Ourselves and the God We Were Made For

“On some level, regaining discipline over your prayer life will happen as you rediscover the beauty of boredom. As long as you need to be doing, writing, reading, laughing at, watching something to have joy, prayer will be of no interest to you.”
― Jackie Hill Perry, Upon Waking: 60 Daily Reflections to Discover Ourselves and the God We Were Made For

“God is with you. And by God I mean the Creator of heaven and earth. The Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. The supreme One. The King of glory. The Judge of all the earth. The immutable and transcendent God. The Lord of hosts. If that God is with us, we should be the most confident people on the planet.”
― Jackie Hill Perry, Upon Waking: 60 Daily Reflections to Discover Ourselves and the God We Were Made For

“When emotions are given underserved supremacy, they can lead us to respond to ourselves, others, and our circumstances in ways that reflect the emotion more than it does their Creator.”
― Jackie Hill Perry, Upon Waking: 60 Daily Reflections to Discover Ourselves and the God We Were Made For

“Use the pain. Pain has value in so far as we recognize its redemptive qualities.”
― Jackie Hill Perry, Upon Waking: 60 Daily Reflections to Discover Ourselves and the God We Were Made For

“Elisha’s prayer must be our own: God, open our eyes. Perhaps then, we will move with immovable faith. Constantly courageous. Overwhelmingly loving and eternally minded. This indeed would bring heaven to earth, or should I say, it’s been here. In part, and one day in full. We just don’t see it.”
― Jackie Hill Perry, Upon Waking: 60 Daily Reflections to Discover Ourselves and the God We Were Made For

“the natural man can’t discern spiritual things unless the invisible God helps him see behind the veil. “O Lord, please open his eyes that he may see” (2 Kings 6:17). Elisha petitions the Lord of heaven’s armies to give the seeing servant sight. God answers, and when He does, the servant looks and sees another army, with horses and chariots, enflamed and surrounding not a city but a person. The invisible reality was made visible. The blinds were opened. The doors flung wide like praise or a hug or a smile.”
― Jackie Hill Perry, Upon Waking: 60 Daily Reflections to Discover Ourselves and the God We Were Made For

“There is a cost for the faithful ones. But do you know what makes one embrace it? Do you know what helped these saints keep going? Every single one of them didn’t allow the cost of their obedience to distract them from the God they were obeying. Noah obeyed because he feared God (Heb. 11:7). And Moses endured by seeing the invisible God (11:27). And in the way of wisdom, we must do the same.”
― Jackie Hill Perry, Upon Waking: 60 Daily Reflections to Discover Ourselves and the God We Were Made For

“Looking to Jesus, the eternal God, wrapped in flesh, crucified for sin, raised to life, and seated at the right hand of God must have our fear and our focus. As long as He does, every cost will be worth it.”
― Jackie Hill Perry, Upon Waking: 60 Daily Reflections to Discover Ourselves and the God We Were Made For

“So a part of embracing the fact that you are needed, in whatever space you have been called, is identifying your own need for compassion. Once you receive it, then you can give it.”
― Jackie Hill Perry, Upon Waking: 60 Daily Reflections to Discover Ourselves and the God We Were Made For