Henri Nouwen Quotes

Henri Nouwen Quotes.

The discipline of gratitude is the explicit effort to a

The discipline of gratitude is the explicit effort to acknowledge that all I am and have is given to me as a gift of love, a gift to be celebrated with joy.
Henri Nouwen
The journey from teaching about love to allowing myself to be loved proved much longer than I realised.
Henri Nouwen
To listen is very hard, because it asks of us so much interior stability that we no longer need to prove ourselves by speeches, arguments, statements or declarations. True listeners no longer have an inner need to make their presence known. They are free to receive, welcome, to accept.
Henri Nouwen
Our first responsibility in the midst of violence is to prevent it from destroying us.
Henri Nouwen
The greatest trap in our life is not success, popularity or power, but self-rejection.
Henri Nouwen
When we have nothing to cling to as our own and cease thinking of ourselves as people who must defend privileges, we can open ourselves freely to others with the faithful expectation that our strength will manifest itself in our shared weakness.
Henri Nouwen
I have an increasing sense that the most important crisis of our time is spiritual and that we need places where people can grow stronger in the spirit and be able to integrate the emotional struggles in their spiritual journeys.
Henri Nouwen
The fruits of your labors may be reaped two generations from now. Trust, even when you don’t see the results.
Henri Nouwen
Fear is the great enemy of intimacy. Fear makes us run away from each other or cling to each other but does not create true intimacy.
Henri Nouwen
What makes us human is not our mind but our heart, not our ability to think but our ability to love.
Henri Nouwen
Perhaps nothing helps us make the movement from our little selves to a larger world than remembering God in gratitude. Such a perspective puts God in view in all of life, not just in the moments we set aside for worship or spiritual disciplines. Not just in the moments when life seems easy.
Henri Nouwen
To give someone a blessing is the most significant affirmation we can offer.
Henri Nouwen
To be a Christian who is willing to travel with Christ on his downward road requires being willing to detach oneself constantly from any need to be relevant, and to trust ever more deeply the Word of God.
Henri Nouwen
‘How much longer will I live?’… Only one thing seems clear to me. Every day should be well-lived. What a simple truth! Still, it is worthy of my attention.
Henri Nouwen
God wants you to live for others and to live that presence well.
Henri Nouwen
People with handicaps teach me that being is more important than doing, the heart is more important than the mind, and caring together is better than caring alone.
Henri Nouwen
The Christian leaders of the future have to be theologians, persons who know the heart of God and are trained – through prayer, study, and careful analysis – to manifest the divine event of God’s saving work in the midst of the many seemingly random events of their time.
Henri Nouwen

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