Henri Nouwen Quotes

If we empty our hearts of self God will fill them with His love.

The idea of a spiritual heart transplant is a vivid image to me; once you have the heart of somebody else inside you, then that heart is there. Jesus' heart is inside me, and my heart is gone. So if God were to place a stethoscope against my chest, he would hear the heart of Jesus Christ beating.

To know God is to be transformed, and thus to be introduced to a life that could not otherwise be experienced.

When the faith is strong enough, it is sufficient just to be. It's a journey towards simplicity, towards quietness, towards a kind of joy that is not in time. It's a journey that has taken us from primary identification with our body and our psyche, on to an identification with God, and ultimately beyond identification.

The soul... may have many symbols with which it reaches toward God.

He is lost who is possessed by carnal desire.

Man is free whenever he produces or manifests God, and through this he becomes immortal.

The 'kingdom of Heaven' is a condition of the heart - not something that comes 'upon the earth' or 'after death.'

I can say that I never knew what joy was like until I gave up pursuing happiness, or cared to live until I chose to die. For these two discoveries I am beholden to Jesus.

I suddenly saw that all the time it was not I who had been seeking God, but God who had been seeking me. I had made myself the centre of my own existence and had my back turned to God.

Religion is a search for transcendence. But transcendence isn't necessarily sited in an external god, which can be a very unspiritual, unreligious concept.

When my father died, I had a real experience with Christ, a real conversion with Christ and I had it in a Oneness church.

God expects but one thing of you, and that is that you should come out of yourself in so far as you are a created being made and let God be God in you.

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

You will never cease to be the most amazed person on earth at what God has done for you on the inside.

Faith is an act of a finite being who is grasped by, and turned to, the infinite.

Prayer is not so much the means whereby God's will is bent to man's desires, as it is that whereby man's will is bent to God's desires.

The truth is that you can only come to know God when you give up the past and the future in your mind and merge totally into the now, because God is always here now.

I love Sufism as I love beautiful poetry, but it is not the answer. Sufism is like a mirage in the desert. It says to you, come and sit, relax and enjoy yourself for a while.

Jesus represents the possibilities of a new dimension of existence that transcends all the boundaries that restrict us from opening ourselves to God and allowing this source of love to flow through us.

Think of God; attachments will gradually drop away. If you wait till all desires disappear before starting your devotion and prayer, you will have to wait for a very long time indeed.

If only we can open our eyes, we'll see God's love everywhere.

I feel like when I get on stage, I want to really open up a way to God for people as opposed to having them look at me.

There's nothing you can do to increase or decrease the love that God has for you, but there are things you can do that increase or decrease your awareness of that love. That's certainly been my experience.

I believe that, the moment I had a very personal relationship with God and I really knew what his Word said, it was not about religion. It was about knowing that what the Bible tells us is what He has left us. It changed my life. It filled the void in my heart. That is why I am so grateful.