Messy Beautiful Friendship Quotes

“When we hold an ideal of friendship in our minds, believing it’s attainable, we hold a standard above the heads of real women God has placed in our lives, and then we wonder why we’re constantly disappointed by the realities, complexities, and difficulties in our relationships. That”
― Christine Hoover, Messy Beautiful Friendship: Finding and Nurturing Deep and Lasting Relationships

“Godly friendship doesn’t usually develop through convenience; it develops through devotion.”
― Christine Hoover, Messy Beautiful Friendship: Finding and Nurturing Deep and Lasting Relationships

“Our destination or goal is not to arrive at a static, linear version of friendship where we get all of our relationships lined up just so and keep them that way for a lifetime. No, the goal of friendship is to secure ourselves to the sure, steadfast anchor of Christ and, while holding to that anchor, give and receive the gift of friendship as we have opportunity. The goal is to enjoy God together with others and, as we move through life, to sharpen and allow ourselves to be sharpened by friends. We imitate Jesus with one another, willing to face the stark realities and consequences of sin, all the while persevering in our efforts to offer love, grace, forgiveness, reconciliation, comfort, and care to one another. In doing so, we display to one another and the world how God loves and, through this, bring him glory. This is our destination, the point on the map we move toward: bringing God glory.”
― Christine Hoover, Messy Beautiful Friendship: Finding and Nurturing Deep and Lasting Relationships

“Friendship is formed between imperfect people among the concrete and messy realities of life. Biblical friendship is distinct in that it brings the grace, forgiveness, and truth of Jesus into those messy realities, but it is messy nevertheless. Just as marital love is forged in the daily acts of care and selflessness and mundane responsibilities, friendship is formed in real life—sin, suffering, conflict, and all.”
― Christine Hoover, Messy Beautiful Friendship: Finding and Nurturing Deep and Lasting Relationships

“Vulnerability feels risky because it involves embracing weakness and imperfection. Image-keeping feels far less risky because we believe it protects our sensitive areas from the judgment of others. For some reason, we believe impressing other women will lead to connection and community, so we expend effort on building an image rather than revealing ourselves. But until we lay down our defenses, until we stop trying to shield our insecurities and shame from the eyes of others, we will not experience the friendship that goes beyond the surface level, the kind we so long for.”
― Christine Hoover, Messy Beautiful Friendship: Finding and Nurturing Deep and Lasting Relationships

“It’s worth it to leave your wounded isolation and try again. It’s worth it to forgive a sister. It’s worth it to give your time and energy to your friendships. It’s worth it to push through the awkward. It’s worth it to love and serve and seek to understand.”
― Christine Hoover, Messy Beautiful Friendship: Finding and Nurturing Deep and Lasting Relationships

“We do not complain of what God does not give us; we rather thank God for what He does give us daily.”
― Christine Hoover, Messy Beautiful Friendship: Finding and Nurturing Deep and Lasting Relationships

“OK, who’s next? or What’s missing? or What have I not received yet from my friendships that I want? But what if I’m missing what’s next? What if the “next” is already in my life? What if I’m complaining about the work of the unwrapping process—all the work that goes into developing and maintaining friendships—and it’s keeping me from the joy of this exact slice of life that God himself has given me?”
― Christine Hoover, Messy Beautiful Friendship: Finding and Nurturing Deep and Lasting Relationships

“Oswald Chambers expresses our goal and hope in pursuing friendships with nonbelievers: “You can never give another person that which you have found, but you can make him homesick for what you have.”
― Christine Hoover, Messy Beautiful Friendship: Finding and Nurturing Deep and Lasting Relationships

“Proverbs 14:10 says, “The heart knows its own bitterness, and a stranger does not share its joy.” In other words, no one can fully know our joy or our grief. We can spend fifty years enjoying an intimate group of besties and they will never know us anywhere close to how God knows us already at this very moment.”
― Christine Hoover, Messy Beautiful Friendship: Finding and Nurturing Deep and Lasting Relationships

“Sometimes a friend is who we seek them to be, and a sense of satisfaction settles in for a time. We think we’ve found the elusive elixir we’ve sought,”
― Christine Hoover, Messy Beautiful Friendship: Finding and Nurturing Deep and Lasting Relationships

“But the problem is that this is the very sin for which God is calling me into account. He’s showing me how much I look to others for approval, admiration, and validation instead of coming to him.”
― Christine Hoover, Messy Beautiful Friendship: Finding and Nurturing Deep and Lasting Relationships

“So when it comes to being a friend to others, I have to resist the belief that I am sovereign enough to change their circumstances, rescue them from all pain, and say or do just the right thing that will help them at the heart level. Only God can do that.”
― Christine Hoover, Messy Beautiful Friendship: Finding and Nurturing Deep and Lasting Relationships

“In other words, these are not sugary words. These are substantive, hearty words that provide sustenance for the soul and delight it at the same time.”
― Christine Hoover, Messy Beautiful Friendship: Finding and Nurturing Deep and Lasting Relationships

“We must first be committed to consistently seeking and savoring the Scriptures. The Holy Spirit will implant the words we read into our souls and onto our tongues.”
― Christine Hoover, Messy Beautiful Friendship: Finding and Nurturing Deep and Lasting Relationships

“They are compelled by the abundant generosity of God to take what’s in that storehouse and pass it out freely.”
― Christine Hoover, Messy Beautiful Friendship: Finding and Nurturing Deep and Lasting Relationships

“The bullhorn is often quite effective, especially if we’re isolated from community or if we’ve chosen friends who speak carelessly or foolishly. It’s eye-opening, however, to recognize that our friends are desperately trying to silence the bullhorn just as we ourselves are.”
― Christine Hoover, Messy Beautiful Friendship: Finding and Nurturing Deep and Lasting Relationships

“We are wise, then, to consider how to be a friend who dishes out honey-words and who uses everyday conversation to bless, encourage, counsel, and dispense truth. We want to be intentional with our words in our friendships, because a person who doesn’t consider these things is a person who will struggle in friendship, and we don’t want to struggle unnecessarily because we’re flippant with our words.”
― Christine Hoover, Messy Beautiful Friendship: Finding and Nurturing Deep and Lasting Relationships

“Our opinions and perspectives may be poked at or altered in some way, as mine were with Ishan. We don’t always need to find a story from our own experience to attempt to relate, because sometimes we actually can’t relate.”
― Christine Hoover, Messy Beautiful Friendship: Finding and Nurturing Deep and Lasting Relationships

“Within the church, good questions and good listening kill the assumptions we make about others that often exacerbate divisions and gaps between us. How can we love and bear with one another if we don’t know and listen to one another?”
― Christine Hoover, Messy Beautiful Friendship: Finding and Nurturing Deep and Lasting Relationships

“The commonality, I often discover, is that so many of us know what we want—deep friendships in which we are known—but we do not think about how often our attention is on ourselves and how little we turn our attention onto others.”
― Christine Hoover, Messy Beautiful Friendship: Finding and Nurturing Deep and Lasting Relationships

“Scripture nudges me from passively waiting to actively doing—loving, serving, blessing, and encouraging.”
― Christine Hoover, Messy Beautiful Friendship: Finding and Nurturing Deep and Lasting Relationships

“Whether from self-consciousness or laziness, we simply don’t want to have to take the initiative with other women—but we also have no qualms about grumbling when we lack a fire to warm us in the night.”
― Christine Hoover, Messy Beautiful Friendship: Finding and Nurturing Deep and Lasting Relationships

“When we think about the uniqueness of a friend’s calling, it can lead us to worship God. The spiritual gift of a friend that we don’t ourselves possess can be a blessing to us when we’re in need of that specific ministry. If we will let each individual stand alone as a beautiful new creation of Christ and not lump them together according to secondary identities, we will have an opportunity to worship God instead of comparing and envying other women. It’s only in taking this biblical perspective that we can have the true unity and deeper community we hope for. Only then can we be a godly friend to others.”
― Christine Hoover, Messy Beautiful Friendship: Finding and Nurturing Deep and Lasting Relationships

“We receive the majority of the church’s ministry to us through a handful of people—our friends.”
― Christine Hoover, Messy Beautiful Friendship: Finding and Nurturing Deep and Lasting Relationships

“Comparison breeds fearful isolation or eager validation-seeking, neither of which are ingredients for flourishing friendships.”
― Christine Hoover, Messy Beautiful Friendship: Finding and Nurturing Deep and Lasting Relationships

“We allow broken friendships to drift us apart rather than doing the work of restorative sanctification. Thoughts are allowed to run wild rather than taken captive. Differences are seen as insurmountable obstacles. Wounds are nursed rather than forgiven. And in all of it, we don’t want to acknowledge how we’re playing a part in hurting or hindering our friendships.”
― Christine Hoover, Messy Beautiful Friendship: Finding and Nurturing Deep and Lasting Relationships

“I felt guilty about these things that weren’t even true and weren’t even said, and I felt I had to prove myself to her somehow—prove that I was working hard, that my husband was working hard, that our life wasn’t all roses.”
― Christine Hoover, Messy Beautiful Friendship: Finding and Nurturing Deep and Lasting Relationships

“In our childishness, we’ve been inconsiderate in thinking that friendship is for us and about us and should be what we want.”
― Christine Hoover, Messy Beautiful Friendship: Finding and Nurturing Deep and Lasting Relationships

“Did you have expectations of them that were too weighty? Are you holding on to bitterness even though Scripture tells us to root it out? Are you hurt because you’ve been keeping score and you feel you’re not getting what you deserve? Have you been keeping a record of wrongs? And if you’ve been legitimately sinned against, are you allowing God to escort you through the process of forgiveness? Are you fearful of being hurt again and therefore unwilling to trust God with your heart?”
― Christine Hoover, Messy Beautiful Friendship: Finding and Nurturing Deep and Lasting Relationships