Jen Pollock Michel

We prefer the not wanting and not having to the losing.

Sometimes God seems to be killing us when He is actually saving us.

The phrases of the Lord's Prayer, "are words we pray, not always because we believe them, but because we WANT to believe them.

Desire, if it is to be trusted, is to be inspired by a holy vocabulary.

New freedoms surface old habits. I haven't left sin behind, only discovered a new medium for my treachery. My real trouble as a writer isn't trying to mean the words that I write. It's living into the words that I mean. Nonfiction writing can feel like the high art of hypocrisy.

Dinner is a cacophonous exercise of holy sanctification.

We all have a tendency to use prayer to dictate to God.

Believing in the sovereignty of God injects courage in the act of desire.

His childhood passed in quiet anxiety.

Sticks and stones may break your bones, and words _ can cut your insides.

Blessing and obedience do comfortably and mysteriously coexist.

Kingdom is a signpost to the holy.

Holy desire can be learned. All prayer is part work and part rest.

Struggle is a prerequisite to surrender.

Our small group is committed to getting the biblical text under our skin.

After her initial conversion as a teenager, the author writes, "I was sent back into a world that no longer looked familiar to me. I had to relearn how to do everything.

I didn't know how faith felt when it grew incrementally.

According to Aquinas, effort may not be the best measure of our virtue.