Jen Hatmaker Quotes

#1. Stewardship is like that. I won't answer for the way another Christian mismanaged money. I won't be charged with another person's irresponsible consumption. Nor will I get credit for how another faith community shared or sacrificed luxuries for the marginalized. I'll answer for my choices.

Jen Hatmaker

#2. Jesus, may there be less of me and my junk and more of You and Your kingdom." I will reduce, so He can increase.

Jen Hatmaker

#3. I won't defile my blessings by imagining that I deserve them. Until every human receives the dignity I casually enjoy, I pray my heart aches with tension and my belly rumbles for injustice.

Jen Hatmaker

#4. Once we belong to Him, we know where to look for sweet communion,

Jen Hatmaker

#5. What makes the gospel good news isn't the concept, but the real-life person who has been changed by it.[90]

Jen Hatmaker

#6. Annual U.S. spending on cosmetics: $8 billion Basic education for all global children: $6 billion Annual U.S. and European spending on perfume: $12 billion Clean water for all global citizens $9 billion

Jen Hatmaker

#7. Just drop some onion and garlic in olive oil, and your day improves exponentially.

Jen Hatmaker

#8. It is not your responsibility to explain what God is doing with your life. He has not provided enough information to figure it out. Instead, you are asked to turn loose and let God be God. Therein lies the secret to the "peace that transcends understanding.

Jen Hatmaker

#9. It started as a selfish act and has turned into a way of life. I can't stand to watch someone throw anything away that belongs in my green bin.

Jen Hatmaker

#10. occurs, it means we can see through your pants. It's too

Jen Hatmaker

#11. I have a couple of long, funky necklaces I enjoy, some chunky rings, a few big bracelets to cover my wrist tattoo when I'm speaking at First (fill-in-the-denomination) Church, USA.

Jen Hatmaker

#12. The day I am unaware of my privileges and unmoved by my greed is the day something has to change.

Jen Hatmaker

#13. your brain resembles the bottom of your purse: lost

Jen Hatmaker

#14. Though I believe math is a tool of the Enemy, I learned enough to know that to accurately find the sum, you add up all the parts.

Jen Hatmaker

#15. You are good at something for a reason. God designed you this way, on purpose. It isn't fake or a fluke or small. These are the mind and heart and hands and voice you've been given, so use them.

Jen Hatmaker

#16. mail-outs. As missionaries have always understood, the key is to study the culture you are passionate about reaching and submerge into that space with respect and love.

Jen Hatmaker

#17. Theology very naturally follows belief, but belief very rarely follows judgment.

Jen Hatmaker

#18. Unattended hurt, anger, and bitterness can destroy even the best marriage. Lean honestly into every hard place, each tender spot, because truthfulness hurts for a minute but silence is the kill shot.

Jen Hatmaker

#19. Loved people forgive and encourage, serve and uplift, because they are precious to someone.

Jen Hatmaker

#20. If anyone has made you feel invisible or less-than, write a new narrative on your heart.

Jen Hatmaker

#21. church-planting team is representative of the culture, not a group of paid professionals or full-time ministers.

Jen Hatmaker

#22. ...when the exhaustive exegesis of God's Word doesn't create people transformed into the image of Jesus, we have missed the forest for the trees.

Jen Hatmaker

#23. Many believers get together to discuss a great book and mistakenly call it Bible study. That is, in fact, a book club with a spiritual theme.

Jen Hatmaker

#24. Make a normal chocolate cake from a box. (Amen and hallelujah. Ain't nobody got time for homemade cake.) After it cools completely, slice it into one-by-four-inch strips, around the

Jen Hatmaker

#25. Jesus was tender toward brokenness but impatient toward egotism.

Jen Hatmaker

#26. If Jesus is the heart of the church, people are the lifeblood. There is a reason He created community and told us to practice grace and love and camaraderie and presence. People soften the edges and fill in the gaps. Friends make up some of the best parts of the whole story.

Jen Hatmaker

#27. Media has changed the way we interact with one another and what we spend our time doing. Our social norms have changed.

The dangerous part of our social media and technologically saturated world is not its existence but what it distracts us from.

Jen Hatmaker

#28. Adoption is an answer to a tragedy that has already happened, but may it never be the impetus for one that hasn't.

Jen Hatmaker

#29. I am still stunned by my capacity to spin Scripture, see what I wanted, ignore what I didn't, and use the Word to defend my life rather than define it.

Jen Hatmaker

#30. Condemnation is a trick of the enemy, not the language of the heavens. Shame is not God's tool, so if we are slaves to it, we're way off the beaten path. And

Jen Hatmaker

#31. People will take as much as you will give them, not because they are terrible humans, but because they only want this one slice of you. It doesn't seem like much to them.

Jen Hatmaker

#32. In a culture that elevates beauty and style, the Christian community is at genuine risk fordistraction, even deception. What do we truly admire in our leaders? Are we nodifferent from secular population, drawn tocharisma and style above substance and i tegrity?
I hope not.

Jen Hatmaker

#33. Thank you, Facebook Quizzes, for helping me identify my Disney princess spirit, my old-person name, my mental disorder, and the color of my soul. All in one evening. Best, Ariel Harriet Schizophrenic Mauve.

Jen Hatmaker

#34. Loneliness can be a prison, but we have keys. You needn't wait for someone to open the bars. If you can make a pot of chili and use a cell phone, then you can create community.

Jen Hatmaker

#35. the only thing fear yields is one dormant gift in a shallow grave.

Jen Hatmaker

#36. Why is it so exhausting to uphold someone's heavy, inconvenient burden? Why are we spent from shouldering someone's grief or being an armor bearer? Why is it that lifting someone out of his or her rubble leaves us breathless? Because we are the body of Christ, broken and poured out, just as He was.

Jen Hatmaker

#37. What is good for the Kingdom is good for us all.

Jen Hatmaker

#38. In all our efforts, if we are not about people, our labors aren't really about Jesus but about us.

Jen Hatmaker

#39. Our kids are the first generation in the history of America that has a shorter life span than their parents.

Jen Hatmaker

#40. Honestly, I love Jesus but sometimes His followers give me a migraine.

Jen Hatmaker

#41. All due respect to the Resurrection, but two-becoming-one might be the greatest miracle ever.

Jen Hatmaker

#42. We have this one life to offer; there is no second chance.

Jen Hatmaker

#43. Balance. It's like a unicorn; we've heard about it, everyone talks about it and makes airbrushed T-shirts celebrating it, it seems super rad, but we haven't actually seen one. I'm beginning to think it isn't a thing.

Jen Hatmaker

#44. nothing hurts worse or steals more joy than broken relationships. We can heal and hurt each other, and we do.

Jen Hatmaker

#45. We cannot think our way into a new kind of living. We must live our way into a new kind of thinking.

Jen Hatmaker

#46. Could the highest level of "right theology" involve loving God and people like Jesus suggested?

Jen Hatmaker

#47. In so many ways I am the opposite of Jesus' lifestyle. This keeps me up at night. I can't have authentic communion with Him while mired in the trappings He begged me to avoid.

Jen Hatmaker

#48. A worthy life involves loving as loved folks do, sharing the ridiculous mercy God spoiled us with first. (It really is ridiculous.) It means restoring people, in ordinary conversations and regular encounters. A worthy life means showing up when showing up is the only thing to do.

Jen Hatmaker

#49. We should not cushion every blow. This is life. Learning to deal with struggle and to develop responsibility is crucial. A good parent prepares the child for the path, not the path for the child. We can still demonstrate gentle and attached parenting without raising children who melt on a warm day.

Jen Hatmaker

#50. While the richest people on earth pray to get richer, the rest of the world begs for intervention with their faces pressed to the window, watching us drink our coffee, unruffled by their suffering.

Jen Hatmaker

#51. don't quite know how to explain Jesus' presence - intense and terrifying and gentle at the exact same time.

Jen Hatmaker

#52. Instead of waiting for community, provide it, and you'll end up with it anyway.

Jen Hatmaker

#53. CHAPTER 8 Thank-You Notes (Part 1)

Jen Hatmaker

#54. I seek only friends who bleed and sweat and laugh and cry. Don't fear your humanity; it is your best offering.

Jen Hatmaker

#55. Love God, love people. Act justly, love mercy, walk humbly. Treat people as you want to be treated. If you want to be great, be a servant.

Jen Hatmaker

#56. If the kingdom of God belongs to the poor, the bottom dwellers, then rich American Christians are going to have the hardest time finding it.

Jen Hatmaker

#57. If people around me aren't moved by my Christ or my church, then I must be doing a miserable job of representing them both.

Jen Hatmaker

#58. When God shook Israel awake from her violent slumber, He said, "Now this was the sin of your sister Sodom: She and her daughters were arrogant, overfed and unconcerned; they did not help the poor and needy" (Ezekiel 16:49, emphasis added).

Jen Hatmaker

#59. When Jesus said to "love your neighbor as yourself," I don't think He meant judgmentally; but that is exactly how we treat our own souls, so it bleeds out to others.

Jen Hatmaker

#60. Thank you for inviting me into this good thing of yours. It is as extraordinary as you are. But any new yes I give means a no to my family and sanity. Please accept my sincere regrets and count on my prayers,

Jen Hatmaker

#61. Growing up means curbing appetites, shifting from "me" to "we," understanding private choices have social consequences and public outcomes.

Jen Hatmaker

#62. If it isn't also true for a poor single Christian mom in Haiti, it isn't true.

Jen Hatmaker

#63. Mostly good is enough. Mostly good produces healthy kids who know they are valued and either forget the other parts or turn them into funny stories.

Jen Hatmaker

#64. Jesus operates beyond the tidy boundaries of good behavior. Rather than simply enforce His rules, we should show our kids His kingdom. That's where they'll discover a Savior to fall in love with. Out where life is messy and relationships are complicated. Where

Jen Hatmaker

#65. When we realize we can stop being Jesus defenders, we can start being Jesus representatives .

Jen Hatmaker

#66. I choose you and I would choose you all over again. As Jane Eyre said of her Mr. Rochester, "I know what it is to live entirely for and with what I love best on earth. I hold myself supremely blessed - blessed beyond what language can express; because I am my husband's life as fully as he is mine."1

Jen Hatmaker

#67. There is no time limit, no statute of limitations. Sharing our lives with dear people to win them to Jesus is the substance of Christianity, the delightful work we've been commissioned to.

Jen Hatmaker

#68. A good parent prepares the child for the path, not the path for the child.

Jen Hatmaker

#69. But God will span the universe to meet the believer who is real. He'd take an honest mess over a pretty lie any day.

Jen Hatmaker

#70. Guilt is not Jesus' medium. He is battling for global redemption right now; His objective hardly includes huddling in the corner with us, rehashing our shame again. He finished that discussion on the cross. Plus, there's no time for that.

Jen Hatmaker

#71. When we impose unrealistic expectations on ourselves, it's natural to force them on everyone else.

Jen Hatmaker

#72. We "love" people the way we "love" ourselves, and if we are not good enough, then no one is.

Jen Hatmaker

#73. prestige, and possessions are the three things that prevent us from recognizing and receiving the reign of God. . . .

Jen Hatmaker

#74. Our primary defaults are exhaustion and guilt. Meanwhile, we have beautiful lives begging to be really lived, really enjoyed, really applauded

Jen Hatmaker

#75. I dream of a church that is once again called great, even by our skeptics, because our works of mercy cannot be denied.

Jen Hatmaker

#76. Ignorant intervention is absolutely a contributing factor to cycles of oppression. This

Jen Hatmaker

#77. While my stuff is decreasing, what matters is increasing in equal measure.

Jen Hatmaker

#78. Leaving is hard, even when a great adventure awaits you.

Jen Hatmaker

#79. Ah, marriage. The kind of union we have affects our children infinitely more than the schools we put them in, the activities we sign them up for, or the church we take them to. Our kids are learning relational habits by osmosis, and statistics say they'll likely imitate what they witness at home.

Jen Hatmaker

#80. And as it turns out, as soon as we are willing to be the last, we actually become first. When we admit we are least, we feel like the greatest. And when we lose our lives, we find it all . . . all the love, all the life, all the thrill, all the fulfillment.

Jen Hatmaker

#81. There is a clear correlation between how we treat each other and how a watching world will feel about Jesus. What should our neighbors deduce from our loving-kindness toward one another? One, that we obviously belong to Jesus, because what other explanation exists for such beautiful community?

Jen Hatmaker

#82. We are not promised a pain-free life but are given the tools to survive: God and people. It is enough.

Jen Hatmaker

#83. Ironically, we practically have to be sainted to get through the adoption process, but any fool can spawn and have a baby, tra la la.

Jen Hatmaker

#84. When the jars of clay remember they are jars of clay, the treasure within gets all the glory, which seems somehow more fitting.

Jen Hatmaker

#85. One decent sermon cannot influence a disoriented person in the same way your consistent presence in her life can.

Jen Hatmaker

#86. Do we really need to be fed more of the Word, or are we simply undernourished from an absence of living the Word? Maybe we love God, but are we loving others? If our faith is about us, then we are not just hungry - our spirits are starving.

Jen Hatmaker

#87. Our children are humans and deserve to be treated respectfully. Discipline doesn't include raging, screaming, abusing, neglecting, humiliating, or shaming our kids. God never treats us like that. That sort of discipline never produces a harvest of righteousness and peace.

Jen Hatmaker

#88. Until we are all compelled and contributing, we're settling for an anemic faith and a church that robs Christ followers of their vitality and repels the rest of the world.

Jen Hatmaker

#89. My best advice is just to show up and be truthful. Be the kind of friend you are hoping for.

Jen Hatmaker

#90. Thank you, Department Stores, for the flickering fluorescent lights, dingy yellow wall paint, and adjustable mirrors in the dressing room where I try on bathing suits. You are why I drink.

Jen Hatmaker

#91. Thank you, Coffee. For everything. You make life possible. I don't want to make you feel weird, but you are my soul mate. Well done.

Jen Hatmaker

#92. Something weird happens to your brain. This brain has served you well for so long, but it starts punking you. You can't remember directions, you forget why you walked into a room, and for the life of you, you can't recall your third kid's name (

Jen Hatmaker

#93. I have spent half of my life listening to someone else talk about God. Because of this history, I've developed something of an immunity to sermons.

Jen Hatmaker

#94. You are doing a wonderful job. Parenting is mind-numbingly hard and no one is perfect at it and we'll all jack a thousand parts, yet somehow, against all odds, it will be enough.

Jen Hatmaker

#95. Maybe we don't recognize satisfaction because it is disguised as radical generosity, a strange misnomer in a consumer culture.

Jen Hatmaker

#96. I see a strategy for fracturing humanity well in play: just keep people separated and let them reinforce invented boundaries in their imaginations. Because when people come together and really listen to each other, doing the hard work of human kindness, virtually every barrier is breached.

Jen Hatmaker

#97. For whatever reason I was born into privilege; I've never known hunger, poverty, or despair. I have been blessed, blessed, blessed
relationally, emotionally, spiritually, and physically.

Jen Hatmaker

#98. How can teachers teach when parents demand exceptions and cry foul every time their kid gets crossways? Sometimes we step in and advocate, but sometimes our kids are lame and need to own up. Let them feel the sting of detention, a zero, a lost privilege, a time-out. Let failure instruct them.

Jen Hatmaker

#99. It's about creating a place to belong before people are expected to behave or even believe.

Jen Hatmaker

#100. Obedience isn't a lack of fear. It's just doing it scared.

Jen Hatmaker