Jen Pollock Michel Quotes & Sayings

To confess isn't to tell God anything he doesn't know. It's simply to agree with God on our wrong-doing and wrong-being: that we sin because we are sinners. — Jen Pollock Michel

A solitary Christian who thinks he can live independently of the church functions about as well as a thumb severed from its hand. — Jen Pollock Michel

According to Aquinas, effort may not be the best measure of our virtue. — Jen Pollock Michel

We all have a tendency to use prayer to dictate to God. — Jen Pollock Michel

Blessing and obedience do comfortably and mysteriously coexist. — Jen Pollock Michel

His childhood passed in quiet anxiety. — Jen Pollock Michel

Believing in the sovereignty of God injects courage in the act of desire. — Jen Pollock Michel

How do you fill the space between, "God says it," and, "I believe it,"? — Jen Pollock Michel

Desire, if it is to be trusted, is to be inspired by a holy vocabulary. — Jen Pollock Michel

Sometimes God seems to be killing us when He is actually saving us. — Jen Pollock Michel

We prefer the not wanting and not having to the losing. — Jen Pollock Michel

The Bible provocatively evokes desire. — Jen Pollock Michel

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. — Jen Pollock Michel

God is the I AM that I AM not the I AM that we wish. — Jen Pollock Michel

We want. Life leaks. Desires are disappointed. And God, our Father, remains eternally good. — Jen Pollock Michel

The Christian story, centered as it is on the death and Resurrection of Jesus Christ, is the only story for making sense of desire and loss. — Jen Pollock Michel

Holy desire can be learned. All prayer is part work and part rest. — Jen Pollock Michel

Do we want a master, or shall we have a genie whose command is our wish? This is the tension of desire - and the test of revelation. — Jen Pollock Michel

Our moral frailty is a strange consolation. — Jen Pollock Michel

In asking for God's provision, we're admitting our inability to self-sustain. — Jen Pollock Michel

Grace has as much to say about endings as it does about beginnings. — Jen Pollock Michel

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

All prayers that beseech the mercy of God are finally and fully answered in that suffering Servant Whom God sent, Jesus Christ. We, even our desires, are saved because HE was bruised. — Jen Pollock Michel

The author says our prayers are misdirected when we ask God that He help us to love Him more. If we pray to him more, we will love Him more. — Jen Pollock Michel

Our small group is committed to getting the biblical text under our skin. — Jen Pollock Michel

Without grace, there is fear. And where there is fear, confession will be muted. Confession will always be unwelcome in places where authenticity engenders judgment and where we are pressured to conform and perform. Until we're allowed to be the mess we are, we will continue the hiding, the lying, and the pretending. — Jen Pollock Michel

Struggle is a prerequisite to surrender. — Jen Pollock Michel

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. — Jen Pollock Michel

we're using our freedoms to break the bonds of community, which have long held us together. — Jen Pollock Michel

I didn't know how faith felt when it grew incrementally. — Jen Pollock Michel

Every act of seizure is an act of grace. — Jen Pollock Michel

Dinner is a cacophonous exercise of holy sanctification. — Jen Pollock Michel

God, by his own efforts and unflagging energy, recalibrates our heart's desire for his kingdom. — Jen Pollock Michel

Kingdom is a signpost to the holy. — Jen Pollock Michel