The Emotionally Healthy Church Quotes

“Rabbi Zusya, when he was an old man, said, “In the coming world, they will not ask me: ‘Why were you not Moses?’ They will ask me, ‘Why were you not Zusya?’ “4 The true vocation for every human being is, as Kierkegaard said, “the will to be oneself.”
― Peter Scazzero, The Emotionally Healthy Church, Updated and Expanded Edition: A Strategy for Discipleship That Actually Changes Lives

“In neglecting our intense emotions, we are false to ourselves and lose a wonderful opportunity to know God. We forget that change comes through brutal honesty and vulnerability before God.”
― Peter Scazzero, The Emotionally Healthy Church, Updated and Expanded Edition: A Strategy for Discipleship That Actually Changes Lives

“Ignoring our emotions is turning our back on reality; listening to our emotions ushers us into reality. And reality is where we meet God … Emotions are the language of the soul. They are the cry that gives the heart a voice … However, we often turn a deaf ear — through emotional denial, distortion, or disengagement. We strain out anything disturbing in order to gain tenuous control of our inner world. We are frightened and ashamed of what leaks into our consciousness.”
― Peter Scazzero, The Emotionally Healthy Church, Updated and Expanded Edition: A Strategy for Discipleship That Actually Changes Lives

“Maturity in life is when someone is living joyfully within their God-given limits.”
― Peter Scazzero, The Emotionally Healthy Church, Updated and Expanded Edition: A Strategy for Discipleship That Actually Changes Lives

“The true vocation for every human being is, as Kierkegaard said, “the will to be oneself.”5”
― Peter Scazzero, The Emotionally Healthy Church, Updated and Expanded Edition: A Strategy for Discipleship That Actually Changes Lives

“But an authentic relationship with Christ also takes us into the depths — the shadows, the strongholds and the darkness deep within our own souls that must be purged. Surrendering to this inward and downward journey is difficult and painful.”
― Peter Scazzero, The Emotionally Healthy Church, Updated and Expanded Edition: A Strategy for Discipleship That Actually Changes Lives

“Most leaders shipwreck or live inconsistent lives because of forces and motivations beneath the surface of their lives, which they have never even considered.”
― Peter Scazzero, The Emotionally Healthy Church, Updated and Expanded Edition: A Strategy for Discipleship That Actually Changes Lives

“Lewis Smedes sums up the dangers of superficial forgiveness: “We will not take healing action against unfair pain until we own the pain we want to heal. It is not enough to feel pain. We need to appropriate the pain we feel: Be conscious of it, take it on, and take it as our own … I worry about fast forgivers. They tend to forgive quickly in order to avoid their pain.”
― Peter Scazzero, The Emotionally Healthy Church, Updated and Expanded Edition: A Strategy for Discipleship That Actually Changes Lives

“the worst events of human history that we cannot understand, even hell itself, are only compost in God’s wonderful eternal plan. Out of the greatest evil, the death of Jesus, came the greatest good.”
― Peter Scazzero, The Emotionally Healthy Church, Updated and Expanded Edition: A Strategy for Discipleship That Actually Changes Lives

“The gospel says you are more sinful and flawed than you ever dared believe, yet you are more accepted and loved than you ever dared hope because Jesus lived and died in your place.”
― Peter Scazzero, The Emotionally Healthy Church, Updated and Expanded Edition: A Strategy for Discipleship That Actually Changes Lives

“the overall health of any church or ministry depends primarily on the emotional and spiritual health of its leadership.”
― Peter Scazzero, The Emotionally Healthy Church, Updated and Expanded Edition: A Strategy for Discipleship That Actually Changes Lives

“We change our behavior when the pain of staying the same becomes greater than the pain of changing.”
― Peter Scazzero, The Emotionally Healthy Church, Updated and Expanded Edition: A Strategy for Discipleship That Actually Changes Lives

“I can be vulnerable and be myself even if others don’t accept me. I can even take risks and fail. Why? Because God sees the 90 percent of the iceberg hidden below the surface, and he utterly, totally loves me in Christ.”
― Peter Scazzero, The Emotionally Healthy Church, Updated and Expanded Edition: A Strategy for Discipleship That Actually Changes Lives

“To become a Christian and to be adopted into God’s family with the new name of “Christian” does not erase the past. God does not give us amnesia or do emergency emotional/spiritual reconstructive surgery. God does forgive the past, but he does not erase it. We are given a new start, but we still come in as babies drinking milk and are expected to die daily to the parts of our lives that do not honor God and follow Jesus.”
― Peter Scazzero, The Emotionally Healthy Church, Updated and Expanded Edition: A Strategy for Discipleship That Actually Changes Lives

“Gregory of Nazianus taught around AD 370: “The responsibility of pastoral office is great indeed, and no one ought to enter who has not deeply examined motive and ability, who has not struggled against call in the face of godly demands of office and the frailty of mere humanity.”
― Peter Scazzero, The Emotionally Healthy Church, Updated and Expanded Edition: A Strategy for Discipleship That Actually Changes Lives

“The late Dag Hammarskjöld, once the secretary general of the United Nations, suggested that we have become adept at exploring outer space, but we have not developed similar skills in exploring our own personal inner spaces. He wrote, “The longest journey of any person is the journey inward.”4 Most of us feel much more equipped to manipulate objects, control situations, and “do” things than to take that very long journey inward. Painful Honesty”
― Peter Scazzero, The Emotionally Healthy Church, Updated and Expanded Edition: A Strategy for Discipleship That Actually Changes Lives

“Jesus had a full sense of what he was about. On the evening before his arrest, he took the role of a slave and began washing the twelve disciples’ feet, even Judas”
― Peter Scazzero, The Emotionally Healthy Church, Updated and Expanded Edition: A Strategy for Discipleship That Actually Changes Lives

“This voice told him the goal of ministry was to recognize the Lord’s voice, his face, and his touch in every person he met.”
― Peter Scazzero, The Emotionally Healthy Church, Updated and Expanded Edition: A Strategy for Discipleship That Actually Changes Lives

“He releases the curse in order to drive us to our knees and to seek him, to recognize our need for a Savior (Gal. 3:21–25). The problem is instead of being broken by the thorns and thistles of life and thus coming to Christ, we either flee, fight, or hide.”
― Peter Scazzero, The Emotionally Healthy Church, Updated and Expanded Edition: A Strategy for Discipleship That Actually Changes Lives

“We change our behavior when the pain of staying the same becomes greater than the pain of changing.”6”
― Peter Scazzero, The Emotionally Healthy Church, Updated and Expanded Edition: A Strategy for Discipleship That Actually Changes Lives

“parece que hace falta una crisis de extremo quebranto para hacer que cambien otros de nosotros que hemos estado en la iglesia durante mucho tiempo.”
― Peter Scazzero, Una iglesia emocionalmente sana: Una estrategia para el discipulado que de veras cambia vidas (Emotionally Healthy Spirituality)

“Lewis, describe lo que se siente al seguir a Dios cuando se mira severa y profundamente hacia adentro. Eustaquio, un muchacho, se convierte en un enorme y horrible dragón como consecuencia de ser egoísta, testarudo e incrédulo. Quiere cambiar y volver a ser un muchacho, pero no puede hacerlo por sí mismo. Llegado el momento, el gran león Aslan (que representa a Jesús) se le aparece y lo conduce a un maravilloso manantial para que se bañe. Pero como es un dragón, no puede entrar al manantial. Aslan le dice que se desvista. Eustaquio recuerda que se puede despojar de la piel como una serpiente. Se quita una capa, la deja caer al suelo y se siente mejor. Entonces, mientras se mueve hacia el estanque, se da cuenta que todavía tiene otra capa dura, áspera y escamosa encima. Frustrado, adolorido y ansioso de llegar a ese bello baño, se pregunta a sí mismo: «¿De cuánta piel debo despojarme?» Después de tres capas, se rinde, dándose cuenta que no puede hacerlo. Aslan dice entonces: «Tendrás que dejar que te desnude». A lo que Eustaquio replica: Tenía miedo de sus garras, te puedo decir, pero ya estaba poco menos que desesperado. De manera que me dejé caer de espalda y dejé que él lo hiciera. La primera desgarradura que hizo fue tan profunda que pensé me había llegado directamente al corazón. Y cuando comenzó a tirar de la piel, dolió más que cualquier cosa que antes hubiera sentido … Despellejó las cosas bestiales —tal como pensé que lo había hecho yo mismo las otras tres veces; únicamente que no habían dolido— y ahí yacían sobre la yerba; solo que eran mucho más gruesas y oscuras, y de aspecto más espinoso de lo que habían sido las otras. Y allí estaba yo tan terso y suave … Entonces él me sujetó … y me tiró al agua. Esto provocó un escozor sin igual pero solo por un momento. Después de eso se hizo perfectamente deliciosa y tan pronto comencé a nadar y chapotear descubrí que todo el dolor de mi brazo había desaparecido. Me convertí en un muchacho de nuevo … Al ratito el león me sacó y me vistió … con sus garras … en estas ropas nuevas que llevo puestas. [énfasis añadido]4 C. S. Lewis lo describe bien: Cuando se va en esta dirección radicalmente nueva se siente como si las garras de Dios fueran tan dentro de nosotros que nos cercenan el corazón.”
― Peter Scazzero, Una iglesia emocionalmente sana: Una estrategia para el discipulado que de veras cambia vidas (Emotionally Healthy Spirituality)