Henri Nouwen Quotes

I found thee not, O Lord, without, because I erred in seeking thee without that wert within.

The Holy Spirit can be with you always and guide you back to Him, but in order to enjoy the benefits of this holy gift, you must truly receive it, and then you must use it in your life. How sad it would be to be given such a precious gift and then set it aside and never use it.

One of the values of centering prayer is that you are not thinking about God during the time of centering prayer so you are giving God a chance to manifest. In centering prayer there are moments of peace that give the psyche a chance to realize that God may not be so bad after all. God has a chance to be himself for a change.

God is acting on your soul all the time, whether you have spiritual sensations or not.

Where can we go to find God if we cannot see Him in our own hearts and in every living being.

For me, God is in my life. I don't hide from that... I think the search has been on since the '60s.

Jesus is a personal symbol of the Holy Spirit. Having been totally healed by the Holy Spirit, Jesus became one with him. Every thought, action, and deed of Jesus was guided by the Holy Spirit instead of ego.

I've come to realize I'm more spiritual than I am religious. What I mean by this: As far as praying to God goes, I'm more about looking inside for inner guidance - tapping into our own abundantly powerful inner resources - which, I suppose, is where some might say God does indeed reside.

When the Spirit of God comes into us, He wants to be Himself in us. He wants His energy to be poured through us. He wants His wisdom to be deposited in our hearts. He wants His instinct and nature to be evident and obvious in you.He wants us to see what He is looking at, to feel what He feels, to know what He knows, to work with His projects, see life the way He sees it, get His ideas and know His opinion about yourself and others.

Christian joy is letting Christ live His life out through you so that what He is, you become.

No one can truly see Christ, and drink in the influence of his character, and not be a Christian at heart.

Meditate on the Word in the Word.

If you know Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, you already have the Holy Spirit living within you.

A deep sense of sin, a humble willingness to be saved in God's way, a teachable readiness to give up our own prejudices when a more excellent way is shown, these are the principal things. These things the two disciples possessed, and therefore our Lord "went with them" and guided them into all truth.

The joy of the presence of Jesus, you must be able to give wherever you go. But you cannot give what you don't have. That's why you need a pure heart, a pure heart that you will receive as a fruit of your prayer, as a fruit of your oneness with Christ.

God does not expect us to imitate Jesus Christ; He expects us to allow the life of Jesus to be manifested in our moral flesh.

The truth is that the Spirit of the living God is guaranteed to ask you to go somewhere or do something you wouldn't normally want or choose to do. The Spirit will lead you into the way of the cross, as He led Jesus to the cross, and that is definitely not a safe or pretty or comfortable place to be. The Holy Spirit of God will mold you into the person you were made to be.

Our moods and insights are transitory. This current is a flow of grace moving us to our right livelihood, companions, destiny.

We think rightly or wrongly about prayer according to the conception we have in our minds of prayer. If we think of prayer as the breath in our lungs and the blood from our hearts, we think rightly. The blood flows ceaselessly, and breathing continues ceaselessly; we are not conscious of it, but it is always going on. We are not always conscious of Jesus keeping us in perfect joint with God, but if we are obeying Him, He always is.

It's true the Holy Spirit alone can reproduce the character of our Lord Jesus, and we must always abide in Christ. But the Bible also makes us active partners in the process, and we must be diligent to do our part. "Be diligent to present yourself approved to God, a worker who does not need to be ashamed".

God inducts us into the eternal kind of life that flows through himself. He does this first by bringing that life to bear upon our needs, and then by diffusing it throughout our deeds - deeds done with expectation that he and his Father will act with and in our actions.

God doesn't do the work for you; he does the work through you. It's not enough to look up; you must also look within.

If you profess to be a child of God, leave it to the Lord Jesus to sanctify you in His own way.

The greatest competitor of devotion to Jesus is service to Him. It is never 'Do, do' with the Lord, but 'Be, be' and He will 'do' through you. The only way to keep true to God is by a steady persistent refusal to be interested in Christian work and to be interested alone in Jesus Christ.