When the heart and mind focus on things unseen - that's when there's a visible change in us.
Ann VoskampWhat was intended to harm, God intended it all for good. And no matter what intends to harm you, God's arms have you. You can never be undone.
Ann VoskampJust that maybe … maybe you don’t want to change the story, because you don’t know what a different ending holds.
Ann VoskampBut wells don't come without first begging to see the wells; wells don't come without first splitting open hard earth, cracking back the lids. There's no seeing God face-to-face without first the ripping.
Ann VoskampThe moment when you are most repelled by a child's behavior, that is your warning light to draw the very closest to that child.
Ann VoskampLament is a cry of belief in a good God, a God who has His ear to our hearts, a God who transfigures the ugly into beauty. Complaint is the bitter howl of unbelief in any benevolent God in this moment, a distrust in the love-beat of the Father's heart.
Ann VoskampJoy is the realest reality, the fullest life, and joy is always given, never grasped. God gives gifts and I give thanks and I unwrap the gift given: joy.
Ann VoskampPractice is the hardest part of learning, and training is the essence of transformation.
Ann VoskampI know there is poor and hideous suffering, and I've seen the hungry and the guns that go to war. I have lived pain, and my life can tell: I only deepen the wound of the world when I neglect to give thanks for early light dappled through leaves and the heavy perfume of wild roses in early July and the song of crickets on humid nights and the rivers that run and the stars that rise and the rain that falls and all the good things that a good God gives.
Ann VoskampI don't want a Christmas you can buy. I don't want a Christmas you can make. What I want is a Christmas you can hold. A Christmas that holds me, remakes me, revives me. I want a Christmas that whispers, Jesus.
Ann VoskampGod lays down all of His fullness into all the emptiness. I am in Him. He is in me. I embrace God in the moment. I give Him thanks and I bless God and we meet and couldn't I make love to God, making every moment love for Him? "To know Him the way Adam knew Eve. Spirit skin to spirit skin.
Ann VoskampAre stress and worry evidence of a soul too lazy, too undisciplined, to keep gaze fixed on God?
Ann VoskampWhen your ethnicity is heaven, then all adversity offers the gift of intimacy, driving you into the home of His heart.
Ann VoskampBut, someone, please give me—who is born again but still so much in need of being born anew—give me the details of how to live in the waiting cocoon before the forever begins?
Ann VoskampSo my blog wasn't about "platform" but really, it was everything you are not "supposed" to do in blogging.
Ann VoskampThe greatest compliment of the book [One Thousand Gifts]? Maybe the Muslim man in Iraq who was given the book and came to a saving knowledge of Jesus, wanted to live his life in thanks to God?
Ann VoskampLove doesn't necessarily mean bless or agree with, it means sacrifice for and suffer with.
Ann VoskampThe brave who focus on all things good and all things beautiful and all things true, even in the small, who give thanks for it and discover joy even in the here and now, they are the change agents who bring fullest light to all the world.
Ann VoskampReal joy is not found in having the best of everything but in trusting that God is making the best of everything.
Ann VoskampGod doesn't want your leftovers. God wants your love overtures, your first-overs, because He is your first love.
Ann VoskampSometimes you don’t know when you’re taking the first step through a door until you’re already inside.
Ann VoskampIt's habits that can imprison you and it's habits that can free you. But when thanks to God becomes a habit - so joy in God becomes your life.
Ann VoskampI am a hunter of beauty and I move slow and I keep the eyes wide, every fiber of every muscle sensing all wonder and this is the thrill of the hunt and I could be an expert on the life full, the beauty meat that lurks in every moment. I hunger to taste life. God.
Ann VoskampThe book [ One Thousand Gifts] took just over a year to write, on the fringe hours, early and late, around home educating 6 kids and farming and blogging. And I wonder if the greatest challenges was to keep pressing into it when I had never been here before. I felt like Abraham - being called to something that he didn't know how to get to.
Ann VoskampWe were made to live in a posture of grateful worship, and when we live in praise we live our purpose, and all the pieces fall in place, us all falling down in thanks.
Ann VoskampIn counting gifts, to one thousand, more, I discover that slapping a sloppy brush of thanksgiving over everything in my life leaves me deeply thankful for very few things in my life.
Ann VoskampI think it was simply word of mouth that made it a New York Times bestseller for more than 60 weeks, over a year. People being moved and changed and transformed by the book [ One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are] and wanting to share that with hurting people all around them.
Ann VoskampLife is so urgent and necessitates living slow. It's only the amateurs-and that I've been, and it's been ugly-who thinks slow and urgent are contradictory.
Ann VoskampAnd when I give thanks for the seemingly microscopic, I make a place for God to grow within me.
Ann VoskampExpose your life to real need. Visit a developing a country. Take a short term mission trip. Write an inmate, send a letter to a sponsored child, serve in the inner city, at a food bank, with a crisis pregnancy center. Make time for shut-ins, the elderly, the sick, the single-parents, the new believers. Just find one way you can make your awareness of your gift-graced life intersect with a real place of need - and Christ in us will do the rest.
Ann VoskampYou can give up the need to compete in the world- when you accept being complete in Christ.
Ann VoskampA year after One Thousand Gifts had released, Kathie Lee Gifford of the Today Show, named it one of her favorite things - the gift that will radically change your life. She shared the title with PEOPLE magazine as one of favorite books - quite astonishing for an evangelical Christian book.
Ann VoskampThe book [ One Thousand Gifts] took just over a year to write, on the fringe hours, early and late, around home educating 6 kids and farming and blogging.
Ann VoskampThe joy of the Lord is your strength and the person of Christ is your unassailable joy - and the battle for joy is nothing less than fighting the good fight of faith.
Ann Voskamp