Quotes & Sayings About Stasi

Let God begin to rewrite your story. Invite him to show you your past through his eyes. Ask him to surface good memories you have forgotten. He would love to do it. There is healing to be had there. There is a replacing of regret with mercy. Though our past has shaped us, we are not our past. Though our failures and sin have had an effect on who we are, we are not defined by our failures or our sin. Though thought patterns and addictions have overwhelmed us, we are not overcome by them and we will never be overcome by them. Jesus has won our victory. Jesus is our victory. — Stasi Eldredge

Much of what we call our 'personalities' is actually the mosaic of our choices for self-protection plus our plan to get something out of the love we were created for. — Stasi Eldredge

It is actually helpful to acknowledge the truth that we are just as quirky as everyone else and that God loves quirky! — Stasi Eldredge

A woman in the presence of a good man, a real man, loves being a woman. His strength allows her feminine heart to flourish. His pursuit draws out her beauty. And a man in the presence of a real woman loves being a man. Her beauty arouses him to play the man; it draws out his strength. She inspires him to be a hero. — Stasi Eldredge

There is no shame here. The places where we still fear are simply the places we have yet to fully receive God's love. Only by his grace and in his love can we let our fear go. Let go and receive. Receive his dreams. Receive his love. It is an exchange of fear for desire. It is an exchange of death for life. There is no fear in love. And I can tell you this with certainty: God does not want you to live in fear. And he does want you to live. Don't be afraid. Just believe. — Stasi Eldredge

Technology has enabled government to have investigative and situational awareness on a scale and scope that were science fiction when the Stasi shut its doors. — Yochai Benkler

It's good to dream. We can't out-give God. We can't out-love him, and we can't out-dream him. — Stasi Eldredge

Her soul is Alive. And we are drawn to her. — Stasi Eldredge

The hard, true thing about our deepest fears is that what happens is completely out of our control. Life is primarily out of our control. People are out of our control, and certainly their choices are out of our control. There is only one person we can ultimately choose life over fear for. Ourselves. — Stasi Eldredge

Christianity has done more to elevate the status of women than any other movement in history. — Stasi Eldredge

The heart and life of a woman is much more vast than that. All women are made in the image of God in that we bring forth life. When we offer our tender and strong feminine hearts to the world and to those we love, we cannot help but mother them. — Stasi Eldredge

Shame and discipline won't cut it First, shame is not an agent of change. Like a shot of caffeine in the morning, self-loathing may propel us onto the road of change, but we will find that hatred of self only leads us onto a never-ending roundabout. Like being terrified by a number on the scale in the morning and vowing never to overeat again, a shot of shame may get us through to lunch but never through to our freedom. Self-hatred, shame, and fear - though rampant in so many of our hidden worlds - are simply never going to be capable of creating or sustaining the growth we long for. Yet most women try to use shame as their inner motivator. I know I have. — Stasi Eldredge

Offenses that are held on to lead to death. — Stasi Eldredge

We are loved. Born out of love, into love, to know love, and to be loved. Yes, we were born into a fallen, sorry world, which is at the same time more lovely than any fairy tale. It is both. And in this beautiful, heartbreaking world, God - the eternal, omniscient, amazing One - loves human beings. Including you. Especially you. — Stasi Eldredge

It's a historical fact that the Stasi did horrible things and that they monitored a lot of people in East Germany, but I find it very interesting to think about the importance of the Western secret services back then and still working today. — Christian Schwochow

I would say that not many German people are still alive, who experienced what happened during the third reich. We don't have to go to the Stasi, we can go to the Gestapo, and see what happens, when your human rights, your ability to a freedom of expression and a freedom of thought is infringed upon. This is terribly, terribly dangerous territory. — Ray McGovern

That longing in the heart of a woman to share life together as a great adventure-that comes straight from the heart of God, who also longs for this. He does not want to be an option in our lives. He does not want to be an appendage, a tagalong. Neither does any woman. God is essential. He wants us to need him-desperately. Eve is essential. She has an irreplaceable role to play. And so you'll see that women are endowed with fierce devotion, an ability to suffer great hardships, a vision to make the world a better place — Stasi Eldredge

The vast desire and capacity a woman has for intimate relationships tells us of God's vast desire and capacity for intimate relationships. In fact, this may be The most important thing we ever learn about God
the He yearns for relationship with us. "Now this is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God" (John 17:3). The whole story of the Bible is a love story between God and His people. He yearns for us. He cares. He has a tender heart. — Stasi Eldredge

Christianity is not a promise to enjoy a life without pain nor to be given a shortcut through it. It is a promise that pain, sorrow, sin - ours and others' - will not swallow us, destroy us, define us, or have the final word. Jesus has won the victory. And in him so have we. — Stasi Eldredge

The very fact that we long for the change we do is a sign that we are meant to have it. Our very dissatisfaction with our weaknesses and struggles points to the reality that continuing to live in them is not our destiny. — Stasi Eldredge

Laid out upright and end to end, the files the Stasi kept on their countrymen and women would form a line 180 kilometres long. — Anna Funder

The word may be mightier than the sword, but except for the s they are pretty much the same. Both are used to kill
and to save. — Linda Stasi

Girls' hearts flourish in homes where they are seen and invited to become ever more themselves. Parents who enjoy their daughters are giving them and the world a great gift. Mothers in particular have the opportunity to offer encouragement to their daughters by inviting them into their feminine world and by treasuring their daughters' unique beauty. — Stasi Eldredge

He made you you - on purpose. You are the only you - ever. Becoming ourselves means we are actively cooperating with God's intention for our lives, not fighting him or ourselves. — Stasi Eldredge

Mothering well is a prayerful art. - Lori McConnell, Restoring Hope in a Woman's Heart — Stasi Eldredge

You see, women have been essential to every great move of God. Yes, Moses led the Isaelites out of Egypt, but only after his mother risked her life to save him! Closer to our time, Clara Barton was instrumental in starting the Red Cross. Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin put fire into people's heart to end slavery in the United States. Rosa Parks kicked the Civil Rights movement into gear with her quiet act of courage. Eunice Kennedy Shriver created the Special Olympics. Mother Teresa inspired the world by bringing love to countless thought unlovable. And millions of other women quietly change the world every day by bringing the love of God to those around them. — Stasi Eldredge

Stasi trained "fraternal" intelligence organizations, such as Cuba's DGI. — Anonymous

Women who are stunningly beautiful are women who ... love truly and honestly without demanding that they be loved in return. — Stasi Eldredge

God will actually reframe our history and memories to us as he heals us. — Stasi Eldredge

Being beautiful is a quality of spirit recognized primarily in a woman whose soul is at rest because she believes her God when he calls her lovely. — Stasi Eldredge

Remember, misogyny is hatred. Whether we are aware of it or not, when we hate other girls, we are hating ourselves, cooperating with the Enemy, and perpetuating grave damage. To hate, Jesus said, is to murder. — Stasi Eldredge

The issue is fear. But the deeper issue is trust. Can we trust our lives, our futures, and the lives of those we love to God? Can we trust a God we can't control? Can we trust this God whose take on life and death and suffering and joy is so very different from our own? Yes. Yes, we can. Because we know him. And we know he is good. — Stasi Eldredge

She says that in January 1990 when the Berliners saw the smoke coming out of the chimneys they came here to protest. They brought bricks and rocks and built a symbolic wall around the building, to get the Stasi to stop burning the files. She says it is extraordinary that, with all those stones, not one was thrown and that, conversely, not one shot was fired from this building. — Anna Funder

We want to be women who advance. The kingdom of God is advancing, and the gates of hell will not prevail against it. Don't you want to advance along with it? Don't you want to help it to advance? And don't you want to advance into the deeper realms of the heart of God? Advance into more healing, more deliverance, more intimacy, more life? Fear makes us retreat. Love causes it to advance. — Stasi Eldredge

Jesus weeps for you and with you, longs for you, hopes for you, dreams of you, and rejoices over you with singing. He is the One who has battled all the forces of hell to free you and who battles still. — Stasi Eldredge

In 1989, roughly one in fifty East Germans between the ages of eighteen and eighty worked for the Stasi in some capacity. — Julia Angwin

For anyone to understand a regime like the GDR, the stories of ordinary people must be told. Not just the activists or the famous writers. You have to look at how normal people manage with such things in their pasts. — Anna Funder

A true friend loves you when you are being kind and when you are PMS-ing all over the place. They may not love what you are doing, or the dragon you are manifesting, but they love you. They know who the true you is, and even in the midst of your living as an imposter to your very self, a friend calls you up and out. A friend sees who you are meant to be and beckons you to rise to the higher version of yourself. — Stasi Eldredge

They loved God and their hearts were alive and there is nothing more gorgeous than that. — Stasi Eldredge

As I examine the exhibits of intercepted letters in files that never reached people, I try to decide if it is better or worse, the way Americans are spied on now. I remember the film The Lives of Others, about the Stasi agent who falls in love with the woman he's eavesdropping on, and recast it into the present, inside the American TSA complex. My fictional TSA agent reading his beloved's emails, listening to phone calls. — Anonymous

God not only accepts us, he embraces us. — Stasi Eldredge

A woman is a warrior too. But she is meant to be a warrior in a uniquely feminine way. Sometime before the sorrows of life did their best to kill it in us, most young women wanted to be a part of something grand, something important. — Stasi Eldredge

In Hitler's Third Reich it is estimated that there was one Gestapo agent for every 2000 citizens, and in Stalin's USSR there was one KGB agent for every 5830 people. In the GDR, there was one Stasi officer or informant for every sixty-three people. If part-time informers are included, some estimates have the ratio as high as one informer for every 6.5 citizens. — Anna Funder

And in this beautiful, heartbreaking world, God - the eternal, omniscient, amazing One - loves human beings. Including you. Especially you. You are amazing. — Stasi Eldredge

How do we live in freedom? We live in freedom when we come to believe, know, receive, and embrace the boundless love of God for us - when we are captured by his goodness, his faithfulness, his honor, his sacrifice, his heart that yearns for us. Then we can dance for an audience of One. Because we are so completely loved. We are safe and secure in the love of God. Every moment of our lives. — Stasi Eldredge

We can be satisfied. We are loved, wanted, seen, delighted in, provided for, cherished, chosen, known, and planned on. We are set apart, believed in, invited, valued, of immeasurable worth, and blessed. — Stasi Eldredge

No longer bound by fear, how high can we soar? How deep can we dive? How much delight can we experience? Yes, there will be sorrow too - it's a part of the deal - but life gets the final word. Life. Life always gets the final word. Every single time. Forever. Praise the Lord, O my soul; all my inmost being, praise His holy name! — Stasi Eldredge

Awakening and owning the dreams that God has placed in our hearts isn't about getting stuff or attaining something. It's about embracing who we are and who he has created us to be. In him. He is our dream come true, and the one true love of our life. But we can't love him with our whole hearts when our hearts are asleep. To love Jesus means to risk coming awake, to risk wanting and desiring. — Stasi Eldredge

Often the hardest person to fight for is ... yourself. But you must. Your heart is needed. You must be present and engaged in order to love well and fight on behalf of others. Without you, much will be lost." Chapter 11 "Warrior Princess — Stasi Eldredge

We won't be perfect on this side of heaven. But Jesus is perfect. Always. We are becoming more holy and true. Jesus already is. His name isn't "Becoming." It is "I Am." Perfection isn't the goal. Jesus is. — Stasi Eldredge

Nature is not primarily functional. It is primarily beautiful. Stop for a moment and let that sink in. We're so used to evaluating everything (and everyone) by their usefulness that this thought will take a minute or two to begin to dawn on us. Nature is not primarily functional. It is primarily beautiful. Which is to say, beauty is in and of itself a great and glorious good, something we need in large and daily doses. — Stasi Eldredge

You don't rewrite it, censor it, or edit it, to suit some warped view you have of the past and your own present. — V.T. Davy

When God creates Eve, he calls her an ezer kenegdo. 'It is not good for the man to be alone, I shall make him [an ezer kenegdo]' (Gen. 2:18 Alter). Hebrew scholar Robert Alter, who has spent years translating the book of Genesis, says that this phrase is 'notoriously difficult to translate.' The various attempts we have in English are "helper" or "companion" or the notorious "help meet." Why are these translations so incredibly wimpy, boring, flat ... disappointing? What is a help meet, anyway? What little girl dances through the house singing "One day I shall be a help meet?" Companion? A dog can be a companion. Helper? Sounds like Hamburger Helper. Alter is getting close when he translates it "sustainer beside him"
The word ezer is used only twenty other places in the entire Old Testament. And in every other instance the person being described is God himself, when you need him to come through for you desperately. — Stasi Eldredge

The Stasi had developed a quasi-scientific method, 'smell sampling', as a way to find criminals. The theory was that we all have our own identifying odour, which we leave on everything we touch. These smells can be captured and, with the help of trained sniffer dogs, compared to find a match. The Stasi would take its dogs and jars to a location where they suspected an illegal meeting had occurred, and see if the dogs could pick up the scents of the people whose essences were captured in the jars. — Anna Funder

The voice of Shame says, I basically hate me; I need to get rid of me. The voice of Discipline says, I've got to fix me, because me is not good. God says, I love you; let me restore you. — Stasi Eldredge

Nothing is out of reach for Jesus. — Stasi Eldredge

God does not live in a perpetual state of disappointment over who we are. — Stasi Eldredge

Laying down what we want to protect or are afraid of losing or are terrified we will never have is not the same thing as losing those things. It is surrendering them. It is opening up our clenched hand around them and allowing God access to them and to us. It is actually saying yes to God for them. Yes to his plan. Yes to his way. It is believing that just as his ways are higher than the heavens are above the earth, so his way for the things we fear is higher. This God of ours is a God of life, of goodness. He is the God of the Resurrection. We lay down our fear. We pick up Jesus. He is the only way we can live beyond fear. He is the Way. — Stasi Eldredge

Paul says in Philippians 4:19, 'And my God will meet all your needs according to his glorious riches in Christ Jesus.' Our needs won't be met according to the destitution of the world or to the poverty of our own faith in the moment but according to the riches in Jesus. There's no one richer than him! — Stasi Eldredge

Stasi File Authority - Project Group Reconstruction Time required for the Reconstruction: 1 worker reconstructs on average 10 pages per day 40 workers reconstruct on average 400 pages per day 40 workers reconstruct on average in a year of 250 working days 100,000 pages There are, on average 2,500 pages in one sack 100,000 pages amounts to 40 sacks per year In all, at the Stasi File Authority there are 15,000 sacks This means that to reconstruct everything it would take 40 workers 375 years. — Anna Funder

Religion in this country is worse than communism. Say the wrong thing, think the wrong thing and, look
there's the Stasi knocking at your door. — A. Manette Ansay

A mother's heart is a vast and glorious thing. My mother's heart was expansive, having been enlarged by suffering and years of clinging to Jesus while being misunderstood, dismissed, and judged by those she loved most. Me included. It had cost her to love, had cost her much to mother. It always does. But she would tell you that it's worth it, that there is no other way. — Stasi Eldredge

I think at the end the Stasi had so much information,' the fair man says, 'that they thought everyone was an enemy, because everyone was under observation. I don't think they knew who was for them, or against, or whether everyone was just shutting up.' He is shy and looks at his hands, closed around his coffee mug, when he speaks. 'When I find a file where they've been watching a family in their living room for twenty years I ask myself: what sort of people are they who want all this knowledge for themselves? — Anna Funder

East Germany may have been a giant penitentiary administrated by the Russians, the Stasi may have embodied the worst excesses of German authority and bureaucratic thoroughness, and anyone with brains and spirit may have fled the country before the Wall went up, but the inmates who'd remained behind to expiate the country's collective guilt had paradoxically been liberated from their Germanness (...) Humble, unpunctual, spontaneous, and generous with what little they had. (...) their real loyalties were to one other, not to the state. — Jonathan Franzen

But I am not a failure as a human being or as a woman. In some core place deep within, I know this. I fail, yes. But I am not a failure. I disappoint. But I am not a disappointment. Yet when I find myself again in this place - losing the battle for my beauty, my body, my heart - I can sure feel like a failure in every way. — Stasi Eldredge

There is great evil in the world, my sister, and much of it is directed at women. The source of that evil is not men, or women, but Satan. If you will accept this, you can not only make leaps forward in understanding your life, but you can find your way through the battle to the goodness God has for you and the goodness he wants to bring through you. — Stasi Eldredge

Fear is a wet blanket that smothers the fiery passion God deposited in your heart when he formed you. Fear freezes us into inaction. Frozen ideas, frozen souls, frozen bodies can't move, can't dream, can't risk, can't love, and can't live. Fear chains us. — Stasi Eldredge

What if you have a genuine and captivating beauty that is marred only by your striving? — Stasi Eldredge

You were born into a glorious mess, and we all have become something of a glorious mess ourselves. And in the midst of our mess, God has a thing for us. He does not despise our humanity or despair over our condition as we sometimes do. He does not turn his face away from us in our failings or our self-centeredness, as we would like to. He is not surprised. — Stasi Eldredge

And I think about those Stasi men. They would never in their lives have imagined that they would cease to exist and that their offices would be a museum. A museum! — Anna Funder

We need to increasingly live from the fullness of our whole hearts in order to become who we are meant to be and play the significant role that is ours to play. We want to be awake and alert. We want to be women who live their lives on purpose. — Stasi Eldredge

Fear in its most wicked, powerful form cripples our souls and warps the very fabric of our true hearts. — Stasi Eldredge

Beauty is transcendent. It is our most immediate experience of the eternal. Think of what it's like to behold a gorgeous sunset or the ocean at dawn. Remember the ending of a great story. We yearn to linger, to experience it all our days. Sometimes the beauty is so deep it pierces us with longing. For what? For life as it was meant to be. Beauty reminds us of an Eden we have never known, but somehow our hearts were created for. — Stasi Eldredge

We desire to possess a beauty that is worth pursuing, worth fighting for, a beauty that is core to who we truly are. We want beauty that can be seen; beauty that can be felt; beauty that affects others; a beauty all our own to unveil. — Stasi Eldredge

We have to choose life. Choose risk. Choose love. The only safe place for our hearts is to dive deeply into the magnificent, eternal, ridiculous, overwhelming love that God has for us. — Stasi Eldredge