17 Quotes by Alicia Britt Chole

In seasons of hiddenness our sense of value is disrupted, stripped of what "others" affirmed us to be. In this season God intends to give us an unshakable identity in Him, that no amount of adoration nor rejection can alter.

Jesus lived a truly uncluttered life and died a focused, eternally fruitful death. How I long to follow His example.

But in anonymous seasons we must hold tightly to the truth that no doubt strengthened Jesus throughout his hidden years: Father God is neither care-less nor cause-less with how he spends our lives. When he calls a soul simultaneously to greatness and obscurity, the fruit – if we wait for it – can change the world.

Christian spirituality, the contemplative life, is not about us. It is about God. The great weakness of American spirituality is that it is all about us: fulfilling our potential, getting the blessings of God, expanding our influence, finding our gifts, getting a handle on principles by which we can get an edge over the competition. The more there is of us, the less there is of God. – EUGENE PETERSON.

Deserts unclutter the soul. The hot desert sun vaporizes all manner of luxuries. Then the cold, shelterless nights expose the essential guts of life. I needed to eat, to sleep, to be protected, and to not be alone. Lent had come half a year early. God asked me to fast mental and physical strength. He invited me into holy weakness. I found Jesus there.

From John’s perspective, the true value of people seeing him was that people would then be positioned to see through him and gaze at Jesus. By.

In these early anonymous seasons, God graciously grants us the opportunity to wrestle with our appetites before other lives are at stake, to struggle with our passions privately before moral collapse affects the innocent publicly.

Holy gets angry. So does this mean we need to buy ropes and start making whips? No. But perhaps we need to stop hiding safely behind hashtag campaigns and instead show up and speak out.

Though in our day we are more than a little obsessed with exact times and sequences, ancient writers were often less linear in worldview and, consequently, actual events were sometimes listed in an order consistent with a theme as opposed to chronologically. Such is the case in the Gospels when Matthew and Mark placed this emotionally charged exchange before Jesus’ flogging and John positioned this exchange after the flogging.5.