Ann Voskamp Christmas Quotes

Worry is belief gone wrong. Because you don't believe that God will get it right.

The answer to deep anxiety is the deep adoration of God.

God doesn't want to number your failures or count your accomplishments as much as He wants you to have an encounter with Him.

Worry is belief gone wrong. Because you don’t believe that God will get it right. Peace is belief that exhales. Because you believe that God’s provision is everywhere —like air.

You only begin to change your life when you begin to change the way you see.

Joy is a function of gratitude, and gratitude is a function of perspective. You only begin to change your life when you begin to change the way you see.

You will b experienced as a blessing--to the extent you have fist experienced yourself as blessed. You must feel the fullness of your own pitcher before you trust the pouring out of yourself.

God gives God. That is the gift God always ultimately gives. Because nothing is greater and we have no greater need, God gives God. God gives God, and we only need to slow long enough to unwrap the greatest Gift with our time: time in His Word, time in His presence, time at His feet.

To get where you want to go, the first question you always have to answer is Where am I? ... We only find out where we are when we find out where He is. We only find ourselves... when we find Him.

So God throws open the door of this world—and enters as a baby. As the most vulnerable imaginable. Because He wants unimaginable intimacy with you. What religion ever had a god that wanted such intimacy with us that He came with such vulnerability to us? What God ever came so tender we could touch Him? So fragile that we could break Him? So vulnerable that His bare, beating heart could be hurt? Only the One who loves you to death.

But in all His relationships, God reaches for man. Reaches for you who have fallen and scraped your heart raw, for you who feel the shame of words that have snaked off your tongue and poisoned corners of your life, for you who keep trying to cover up pain with perfectionism.

Three persons of the Trinity – Father God, Jesus Christ, and Holy Spirit – gathered close together to imagine you. And God in three persons, uncontainable affection, knelt down and kissed warm life into you with the breath of his love. You are made of dust of this earth and you are made of the happiness of heaven, and you are flesh and you are spirit, and you are of two worlds longing for the home of forever and him. No matter your story before, this is your beginning now: you were formed by Love…for love.

I am more sinful and flawed than I ever dared believe, more loved and welcomed than I ever dared hope. ELYSE M. FITZPATRICK

Every religion, every program, every self-help book is about steps you have to take. Jesus is the only One who becomes the step—to take you.

It is no use for you to attempt to sow out of an empty basket, for that would be sowing nothing but wind,” wrote Spurgeon.

He who carved the edges of the cosmos curved Himself into a fetal ball in the dark, tethered Himself to the uterine wall of a virgin, and lets His cells divide, light splitting all white. He gave up the heavens that were not even large enough to contain Him and lets Himself be held in a hand. The mystery so large becomes the Baby so small, and infinite God becomes infant.

The family tree of Christ startlingly notes not one woman but four. Four broken women —women who felt like outsiders, like has-beens, like never-beens. Women who were weary of being taken advantage of, of being unnoticed and uncherished and unappreciated; women who didn’t fit in, who didn’t know how to keep going, what to believe, where to go —women who had thought about giving up. And Jesus claims exactly these who are wandering and wondering and wounded and worn out as His. He grafts you into His line and His story and His heart, and He gives you His name, His lineage, His righteousness. He graces you with plain grace. Is there a greater Gift you could want or need or have? Christ comes right to your Christmas tree and looks at your family tree and says, “I am your God, and I am one of you, and I’ll be the Gift, and I’ll take you. Take Me?

While other creeds endeavor to get us out of the world and into heaven, in Christianity, heaven comes down and Christ comes into this world to get us. To suffer with us. We find favor —only because Christ feels pain.

Great faith is the greatest equalizer, the greatest eraser, and the greatest definer.

the work of the very heart of Christmas: simply rest. Here is holy. The wonder of all this—God looks at you at your lowest and loves you all the way up to the sky.

He did not abandon you in the ultimate storm of your soul. He will not abandon you in the immediate storm of your now.

The greatest gift we can give our great God is to let His love make us glad.

Wise men are only wise because they make their priority the seeking of Christ.

But the Lord draws near to Samuel: “The LORD doesn’t see things the way you see them. People judge by outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart.

Christ comes right to your Christmas tree and looks at your family tree and says, “I am your God, and I am one of you, and I’ll be the Gift, and I’ll take you. Take Me?

So now we pause. Still. Ponder. Hush. Wait. Each day of Advent, He gives you the gift of time, so you have time to be still and wait. Wait for the coming of the God in the manger who makes Himself bread for us near starved. For the Savior in swaddlings who makes Himself the robe of righteousness for us worn out. For Jesus, who makes precisely what none of us can but all of us want: Christmas.

So slow down to feel the wind. Listen to the carols just a little bit longer. Linger in the quiet and taste the grace of now, and know that He is good and He is God. Name them in this moment—gift upon gift upon gift—and listen for the echo in everything: I will bless you.

Christmas can only be found. Christmas cannot be bought. Christmas cannot be created. Christmas cannot be made by hand, lit up, set out, dreamed up. Christmas can only be found. In the crèche. In the cradling trough. In the mire and in the stench and in the unexpected —and only in the dawning of Christ.

The family tree of Christ startlingly notes not one woman but four. Four broken women—women who felt like outsiders, like has-beens, like never-beens. Women who were weary of being taken advantage of, of being unnoticed and uncherished and unappreciated; women who didn’t fit in, who didn’t know how to keep going, what to believe, where to go—women who had thought

I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. “You shall have no other gods before me. “You shall not make for yourself an image in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. . . . “You shall not misuse the name of the LORD your God. . . . “Observe the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. . . . “Honor your father and your mother. . . . “You shall not murder. “You shall not commit adultery. “You shall not steal. “You shall not give false testimony against your neighbor. “You shall not covet. . . .” These are the commandments the LORD proclaimed in a loud voice to your whole assembly there on the mountain from out of the fire, the cloud and the deep darkness; and he added nothing more. Then he wrote them on two stone tablets and gave them to me. . . . [The Lord said,] “Oh, that their hearts would be inclined to fear me and keep all my commands always, so that it might go well with them and their children forever!” DEUTERONOMY 5:1, 5-22, 29 (NIV) Love comes

In this day, this season, miracles will grow within, unfurl, bear fruit. And the heart that makes time and space for Him to come will be a glorious place. A place of sheer, radiant defiance in the face of a world careening mad and stressed. Because each day of Advent, we will actively wait. We will wait knowing that the remaking of everything has already begun.

You are made of the dust of this earth, and you are made of the happiness of heaven, and you are flesh and you are spirit, and you are of two worlds longing for the home of forever and Him.

You know it with startling clarity in that moment—how there’s only a singular cord in this knotted mess of a world worth reaching for. It’s dangling right there from our impossible tangle, and it’s the one hope you need to reach for this Advent. That scarlet lifeline of Christ.

A prison cell, in which one waits, hopes . . . and is completely dependent on the fact that the door of freedom has to be opened from the outside, is not a bad picture of Advent. DIETRICH BONHOEFFER

When the King rules your world, you cease to rule or worry. All worry dethrones God. All worrying makes you King and God incompetent. There is a King born in Bethlehem and on the throne. You can breathe.

Escape can seem alluring.

You can have this as the best Christmas ever as much as you gaze into your Father’s face and receive His gift.

He withholds no good thing from you. And the good things in life are not so much health, but holiness; not so much riches in this world, but relationship with God; not so much our plans, but His presence—and He withholds no good thing from us because the greatest things aren’t ever things.

[Advent] is a time of quiet anticipation. If Christ is going to come again into our hearts, there must be repentance. Without repentance, our hearts will be so full of worldly things that there will be “no room in the inn” for Christ to be born again. . . . We have the joy not of celebration, which is the joy of Christmas, but the joy of anticipation. JOHN R. BROKHOFF

Christmas is about God's doing whatever it takes to be with us-and our doing whatever it takes to be with Him. He climbed down from the throne in heaven to get to you. Climb over the throes of Christmas to get to Him.

The authority of God made all of creation. But it was the affection of God that made all His children.

What was intended to tear you apart, God intends it to set you apart.

When the King rules your world, you cease to rule or worry. All worry dethrones God. All worrying makes you King and God incompetent.

The only way to overcome idols in your life,” beckons Tim Keller, “is to see that Jesus gives you freely what every other god says that you can only get through your performance. Jesus gives you through His blood what every other god demands through yours.”[