Jennifer Dukes Lee Quotes

In a world where you can choose to be anything, choose to be KIND.

Christ continually shouts through the universe, "You have a love that is already yours. You have nothing to prove to anyone. You have nothing to prove to Me. You are significant and preapproved and utterly cherished. Not because you are 'good,' but because you are Mine.

Happiness isn’t a destination. It’s a journey. And sometimes the journey is hard.

Until you are convinced of God's incredible love for you, you will continue looking for replacement love everywhere but in the heart of Christ.

God is with you in the spectacular, and he’s with you in the regular. There is dignity in both places.

The art of happy-making begins when we find our happiness within instead of without.

Sometimes, the only way out of a storm … is to go through it.

Define yourself radically as one beloved by God. This is the true self. Every other identity is illusion. BRENNAN MANNING

Cicero said that gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues, but the parent of all others. If that’s true, then my happiness does not cause me to be grateful for what I have. My gratitude for what I have causes me to be happy. Gratitude births the virtue of happiness.

Before the foundations of the world, He loved you. Before the fall of Eden, He loved you. Before He sent His Son splitting through the cosmos to this world, He loved you. Before He died upon the cross, He loved you. When He rose again, He loved you. And He's coming back again because He loves you. When you took your first breath, He loved you. When you messed up bad, He loved you. When you made good grades, He loved you. When you won and when you lost, He loved you.

Ambition is your own yoke, not His! And the lust of wealth, the desire for power, the craving for human love—all that is a yoke of your own making—and if you will wear it, it will gall you. There is more joy in being unknown than in being known and there is less care in having no wealth than in having much of it. We often go the wrong way to work in seeking true restfulness and happiness.

We slay the Love Idol at the site of the Crucifixion, nailing it to the cross.

In God, happiness and purposeful work are a package deal.

Until you are convinced of God’s incredible love for you, you will continue looking for replacement love everywhere but in the heart of Christ.

Why do we live in this cycle of validation, swept up by the empty promises of the Love Idol, only to sink down when someone rejects us? We make frenetic jumps from island to island between tidal waves of insecurity. Beth Moore says culture has “thrown us under the bus. We have a fissure down the spine of our souls.”[22] We want to keep up appearances. We want to avoid criticism. We treat our lives like a stat sheet, trying to keep score the world’s way.

A scarcity mindset believes there will never be enough. A Growing Slow mindset trusts there will be more.

Some people talk about “finding God,” but that seemed like a severely inaccurate description of what I was experiencing. It felt more like God was finding me. He wasn’t the lost one—I was. I

Our purpose is to please God, not people” (1 Thessalonians 2:4). But

When believers come to know God's love heart-deep, we are compelled to live into that love life-deep. To be preapproved means this: We love from our approval, not for our approval. We love without expecting anything in return.

Down through the centuries, the Savior has repeatedly lifted the fallen from the holes they've dug for themselves one shovel scoop at a time. After His grand rescue, the Redeemer does not always seal that hole shut behind us. He does not force us into relationship or bully us into repentance. Instead, He leaves us with a choice: follow Me or fall again.

People in Haiti eat dirt because it gives their starving bodies a false sense of satisfaction. But mud pies don't fill. They merely mask real hunger. [...] I saw the mud pies as a metaphor for the life of any Christian who has ever looked to something or someone other than God for fulfillment.

My prayer regimen is a small act of surrender, a practical way to deliberately pull my gaze from myself to my Savior—a lesson I learned years earlier on long car rides to news assignments but have now begun to put into daily practice. Eyes cannot look in two different directions. I want mine on Jesus—not on yesterday’s failures or successes, not on today’s agenda, and definitely not on the world’s scorecards.

I have decided. I want to be about the cause of Jesus. I want to follow Christ, not the crowd.

Jesus' fathomless love changes how you and I will live in our moments, how we'll love in our neighborhoods, and what we'll be known for in eternity.

Some time ago, I committed a quote by Amy Carmichael to memory: “If the praise of man elates me and his blame depresses me; if I cannot rest under misunderstanding without defending myself; if I love to be loved more than to love . . . then I know nothing of Calvary love.”1

He isn’t growing us into superstars; he’s growing us into servants. Growing Slow is a school of patience in which we are nurtured into spiritual maturity. Growing Slow is a daily choice to see where God is already working and then the conscious decision to join him there. Sometimes it’s heavy and it’s hard and the rain won’t let up for a second. But instead of running from the rain, you need to step right out in it, letting it wash your eyes so you aren’t blind to the beauty that’s still here. And it is. It’s still here.

I am learning to set aside expectations, but I will not let go of hope.

Scholars seem to agree that Jesus drove a Honda, but he didn’t talk about it publicly. “For I did not speak of my own Accord” (John 12:49, NIV). So there you have it: a Honda. I don’t know exactly who first made this startling discovery, but I learned about it on the Internet, so it must be true.

You may need to let go of that deluded belief that if you worry about something enough, it will resolve itself.