Henri Nouwen Quotes

God is in my heart; I see God in my daughter and my mother.

Constantly practice the habit of inwardly gazing upon God. You know that something inside your heart sees God. Even when you are compelled to withdraw your conscious attention in order to engage in earthly affairs, there is within you a secret communion always going on.

Seeing a cat loving her kittens stand and pray. God has become manifest there; literally believe this. Repeat "I am Thine, I am Thine", for we can see God everywhere. Do not seek for Him, just see Him.

Faith opens our hearts for the entrance of the holy. It is almost as though God were thinking for us.

The heart that knows God can find God anywhere.

I find that when I get casual in my relationships with divinity and when it seems that no divine ear is listening and no divine voice is speaking, that I am far, far away. If I immerse myself in the scriptures the distance narrows and the spirituality returns. I find myself loving more intensely those whom I must love with all my heart and mind and strength, and loving them more, I find it easier to abide their counsel.

My heart sings of your longing for me, and my thoughts climb down to marvel at your mercy. I do not fear as you gather up my days. Your name is the sweetness of time, and you carry me close into the night, speaking consolations, drawing down lights from the sky, saying, See how the night has no terrors for one who remembers the name.

Last night as I was sleeping, I dreamt - marvellous error! - That it was God I had here inside my heart.

Gratitude opens your heart, and opening your heart is a wonderful and easy way for God to slip in.

There is only one immediate question: Where is God? The immediate answer is: God is where My heart's love-breath is.

Deep in our Hearts, the Light of Heaven is shining.

I believe the only way we can reach the Kingdom of Heaven is to have the Kingdom of Heaven in our hearts.

When you love you should not say, “God is in my heart,” but rather, “I am in the heart of God.

To find God, you must look with all your heart. To remain present to God, you must remain present to your heart. To hear his voice, you must listen with all your heart. To love him, you must love with all your heart. You cannot be the person God meant you to be, and you cannot live the life he meant you to live, unless you live from the heart.

Deep, solemn optimism, it seems to me, should spring from this firm belief in the presence of God in the individual; not a remote, unapproachable governor of the universe, but a God who is very near every one of us, who is present not only in earth, sea and sky, but also in every pure and noble impulse of our hearts.

Every human being is loved by God the Father. No one need feel forgotten, for every name is written in the Lord's loving heart.

Give me faith, Lord, to know Your Presence as surely as I know the beating of my own heart. I've felt so far from You.

What good is all our busy religion if God isn't in it? What good is it if we've lost majesty, reverence, worship-an awareness of the divine? What good is it if we've lost a sense of the Presence and the ability to retreat within our own hearts and meet God in the garden?

I will not leave you, I cannot leave you, for you are My creation and My product, My daughter and My son, My purpose and My... Self. Call on Me, therefore, wherever and whenever you are separate from the peace that I am. I will be there. With Truth. And Light. And Love.

I do not think I have ever seen anything more beautiful than the bluebell I have been looking at. I know the beauty of our Lord by it.

Always follow your heart and have faith in yourself and believe in the Lord and He will believe in you.

There are times when I draw near enough to touch Him, then I know that He has been there all the time

Communing with God is communing with our own hearts, our own best selves, not with something foreign and accidental. Saints and devotees have gone into the wilderness to find God; of course they took God with them, and the silence and detachment enabled them to hear the still, small voice of their own souls, as one hears the ticking of his own watch in the stillness of the night.

Spirit seeker is someone who remembers there is a power greater than themselves and who is willing to reconnect with it.

God's presence is all that matters.