God's Joyful Surprise Quotes

“A spiritual pilgrim needs to discern when his or her life is stunted in an old field and find the courage and determination to go to a "new land" that the Lord will show. (Abraham-Journey) ...so that you can find the wholeness you seek.”
― Sue Monk Kidd, God's Joyful Surprise: Finding Yourself Loved

“How do we accomplish this matter of gathering life together in God? We must begin primarily by refocusing our attention keeping our minds and hearts directed toward God. The essence of the centered life is attention to God in all we think, say and do. It is the growing realization of His presence in our most down-to-earth living.”
― Sue Monk Kidd, God's Joyful Surprise: Finding Yourself Loved

“Journal became a sanctuary where I could pour out in honesty my pain and joy. It recorded my footsteps and helped me understand where I was standing, where I had been, and even where God pointed.”
― Sue Monk Kidd, God's Joyful Surprise: Finding Yourself Loved

“we need not avoid our active lives, but simply bring to them a new vision and shift of gravity. for in the center we are rooted in god's love. in such a place there is no need for striving and impatience and dashing about seeking approval.”
― Sue Monk Kidd, God's Joyful Surprise: Finding Yourself Loved

“We are surrounded on all sides by God but often we are no more conscious of him than we are of air pressing against us. We don't turn our attention to Him. (Evelyn Underhill)”
― Sue Monk Kidd, God's Joyful Surprise: Finding Yourself Loved

“Pure in heart means to be sing-hearted... to will one thing- God. All (Jesus)'s moments flowed from His single-heartedness, from His intimacy with God. That was His core. Christianity is full of paradoxes and this is one of the strangest. When we are centered in God alone, we are able to relate to more of life and the world, and find more meaning in them. In some way a centered life becomes wider and fuller. To form one's life around this single perspective enables us to deal with more problems, not fewer, embrace more of life, not less of it. One reason is that we're not so divided, overwhelmed or bogged down by trivia and confusion.”
― Sue Monk Kidd, God's Joyful Surprise: Finding Yourself Loved

“A moment of grace. There rose up within me a profound sense of being loved. I felt "gathered together" and encircled by a Presence completely loving, as if I were enveloped by the music of a love song created just for me. It was not overwhelming or even emotional. Just a warm knowing that I was in God's loving embrace...centered and unified there.

[Love]encounters cannot be analyzed, only shared. If you take a butterfly, Robert Frost said, and pin it down into a box, you no longer have a butterfly.”
― Sue Monk Kidd, God's Joyful Surprise: Finding Yourself Loved

“The awakening passed from simple recognition of my need for God at the center of my life, to a depth where the will is stirred And that is a deeper place by far. That is the place of response, of unifying one's heart, mind, soul and feet around a decision.”
― Sue Monk Kidd, God's Joyful Surprise: Finding Yourself Loved

“God is he whose center is everywhere and circumference is nowhere.”
― Sue Monk Kidd, God's Joyful Surprise: Finding Yourself Loved

“Solitude is a time for "God and God alone." Who knows what can happpen when we focus only on God. In solitude, we sense our deep oneness with God and keep company with Him. Solitude is breaking through my isolation into sharing and being in touch with my Creator. In fact, we can begin to heal our loneliness by transforming it into solitude.”
― Sue Monk Kidd, God's Joyful Surprise: Finding Yourself Loved

“Anyone can retire into a quiet place, wrote Evelyn Underhill, but it's the shutting of the door that makes the difference. Solitude is a time for stripping away everything in order to focus on God. (Matt 6:6)”
― Sue Monk Kidd, God's Joyful Surprise: Finding Yourself Loved

“The road of 'God alone' struck me with unsettling fear. So I lingered in a kind of limbo. Unable to go back, unable to go on. Uncertain. Tentative. How strange that we tend to stand ankle-deep in the spiritual life even though the grounding depth of intimacy with God is the most nourishing experience of our lives and affirms our very being!”
― Sue Monk Kidd, God's Joyful Surprise: Finding Yourself Loved

“God is he whose center is everywhere and circumference is nowhere. (Nicolas of Cusa)”
― Sue Monk Kidd, God's Joyful Surprise: Finding Yourself Loved

“The basic dynamics of conversion are summed up for me in the words LEAVE-ARRIVE, END-BEGIN, SHED-EMERGE. These are the tensions of conversion and spiritual awakening.”
― Sue Monk Kidd, God's Joyful Surprise: Finding Yourself Loved

“Self-questioning is a far more essential ingredient in life than I ever supposed. It’s the water that keeps the modeling clay of our life from hardening into something forever rigid and unchanging.”
― Sue Monk Kidd, God's Joyful Surprise: Finding Yourself Loved

“the stethoscope in little David’s ears. “Can you hear that?” I asked. “What do you suppose that is?” He frowned for a moment as if he were lost in the wonder of the strange tapping in his chest. Then he broke out in a grin and startled me by saying, “Is that Jesus knocking?”
― Sue Monk Kidd, God's Joyful Surprise: Finding Yourself Loved

“Our true identity flows from our “center.” Therefore we are living the fullness of who we truly are when we are living out of our center.”
― Sue Monk Kidd, God's Joyful Surprise: Finding Yourself Loved