Peter Scazzero > Quotes

“Ignoring our emotions is turning our back on reality. Listening to our emotions ushers us into reality. And reality is where we meet God. . . . Emotions are the language of the soul. They are the cry that gives the heart a voice. . .”
― Peter Scazzero, Emotionally Healthy Spirituality: Unleash a Revolution in Your Life In Christ

“When we deny our pain, losses, and feelings year after year, we become less and less human. We transform slowly into empty shells with smiley faces painted on them. Sad to say, that is the fruit of much of our discipleship in our churches. But when I began to allow myself to feel a wider range of emotions, including sadness, depression, fear, and anger, a revolution in my spirituality was unleashed. I soon realized that a failure to appreciate the biblical place of feelings within our larger Christian lives has done extensive damage, keeping free people in Christ in slavery.”
― Peter Scazzero, Emotionally Healthy Spirituality: Unleash a Revolution in Your Life In Christ

“As Parker Palmer said, “Self-care is never a selfish act—it is simply good stewardship of the only gift I have, the gift I was put on earth to offer others. Anytime we can listen to true self and give it the care it requires, we do it not only for ourselves, but for the many others whose lives we touch.”
― Peter Scazzero, Emotionally Healthy Spirituality: Unleash a Revolution in Your Life In Christ

“emotional health and spiritual maturity are inseparable. It is not possible to be spiritually mature while remaining emotionally immature.”
― Peter Scazzero, Emotionally Healthy Spirituality: Unleash a Revolution in Your Life In Christ

“Jesus was not SELFLESS. He did not live as if ONLY other people counted. He knew his value and worth. He had friends. He asked people to help him. At the same time Jesus was not SELFISH. He did not live as if nobody counted. He gave his life out of love for others. From a place of loving union with his Father, Jesus had a mature, healthy 'true self.”
― Peter Scazzero, Emotionally Healthy Spirituality: Unleash A Revolution In Your Life in Christ

“When genuine love is released in a relationship, God’s presence is manifest.”
― Peter Scazzero, Emotionally Healthy Spirituality: It's Impossible to Be Spiritually Mature, While Remaining Emotionally Immature

“Every time I make an assumption about someone who has hurt or disappointed me without confirming it, I believe a lie about this person in my head. This assumption is a misrepresentation of reality. Because I have not checked it out with the other person, it is very possible I am believing something untrue. It is also likely I will pass that false assumption around to others.”
― Peter Scazzero, Emotionally Healthy Spirituality: Unleash a Revolution in Your Life In Christ

“Life can be difficult, so have fun whenever you can to the glory of God.”
― Peter Scazzero, Emotionally Healthy Spirituality: It's Impossible to Be Spiritually Mature, While Remaining Emotionally Immature

“True spirituality frees us to live joyfully in the present.”
― Peter Scazzero, Emotionally Healthy Spirituality: It's Impossible to Be Spiritually Mature, While Remaining Emotionally Immature

“Loving well is the goal of the Christian life.”
― Peter Scazzero, Emotionally Healthy Spirituality: It's Impossible to Be Spiritually Mature, While Remaining Emotionally Immature

“By failing to let others be themselves before God and move at their own pace, we inevitably project onto them our own discomfort with their choice to live life differently than we do.”
― Peter Scazzero, Emotionally Healthy Spirituality: Unleash a Revolution in Your Life In Christ

“Our relationship with God and relationship with others are two sides of the same coin.”
― Peter Scazzero, Emotionally Healthy Spirituality: Unleash a Revolution in Your Life In Christ

“You can’t have the true peace of Christ’s kingdom with lies and pretense.”
― Peter Scazzero, Emotionally Healthy Spirituality: It's Impossible to Be Spiritually Mature, While Remaining Emotionally Immature

“who you are is more important than what you do. Why? Because the love of Jesus in you is the greatest gift you have to give to others. Who you are as a person — and specifically how well you love — will always have a larger and longer impact on those around you than what you do. Your”
― Peter Scazzero, The Emotionally Healthy Leader: How Transforming Your Inner Life Will Deeply Transform Your Church, Team, and the World

“Respect is not a feeling. It is how we treat another person.”
― Peter Scazzero, Emotionally Healthy Spirituality: Unleash a Revolution in Your Life In Christ

“The vast majority of us go to our graves without knowing who we are.”
― Peter Scazzero, Emotionally Healthy Spirituality: It's Impossible to Be Spiritually Mature, While Remaining Emotionally Immature

“Solitude is the practice of being absent from people and things to attend to God.”
― Peter Scazzero, Emotionally Healthy Spirituality: It's Impossible to Be Spiritually Mature, While Remaining Emotionally Immature

“Fire What makes a fire burn is space between the logs, a breathing space. Too much of a good thing, too many logs packed in too tight can douse the flames almost as surely as a pail of water would. So building fires requires attention to the spaces in between, as much as the wood. When we are able to build open spaces in the same way we have learned to pile on the logs, then we can come to see how it is fuel, and absence of the fuel together, that make fire possible. We only need lay a log lightly from time to time. A fire grows simply because the space is there, with openings in which the flame that knows just how it wants to burn can find its way. 12 Judy Brown”
― Peter Scazzero, The Emotionally Healthy Leader: How Transforming Your Inner Life Will Deeply Transform Your Church, Team, and the World

“Christian spirituality, without an integration of emotional health, can be deadly—to yourself, your relationship with God, and the people around you.”
― Peter Scazzero, Emotionally Healthy Spirituality: Unleash a Revolution in Your Life In Christ

“Rabbi Zusya, when he was an old man, said, “In the coming world, they will not ask me: ‘Why were you not Moses?’ They will ask me, ‘Why were you not Zusya?’ “4 The true vocation for every human being is, as Kierkegaard said, “the will to be oneself.”
― Peter Scazzero, The Emotionally Healthy Church, Updated and Expanded Edition: A Strategy for Discipleship That Actually Changes Lives

“For example, Jesus’ stunning success in teaching and feeding the 5,000 at the beginning of John 6 is followed just a few paragraphs later by a corresponding numerical failure: “At this point many of his disciples turned away and deserted him” (John 6:66 NLT). Jesus didn’t wring his hands and question his preaching strategy; he remained content, knowing he was in the Father’s will. He had a larger perspective on what God was doing. Success isn’t always bigger and better. The”
― Peter Scazzero, The Emotionally Healthy Leader: How Transforming Your Inner Life Will Deeply Transform Your Church, Team, and the World

“The Bible does not spin the flaws and weaknesses of its heroes. Moses was a murderer. Hosea’s wife was a prostitute. Peter rebuked God! Noah got drunk. Jonah was a racist. Jacob was a liar. John Mark deserted Paul. Elijah burned out. Jeremiah was depressed and suicidal. Thomas doubted. Moses had a temper. Timothy had ulcers. And all these people send the same message: that every human being on earth, regardless of their gifts and strengths, is weak, vulnerable, and dependent on God and others.”
― Peter Scazzero, Emotionally Healthy Spirituality: Unleash a Revolution in Your Life In Christ

“Each of us needs an opportunity to be alone and silent, or even, indeed, to find space in the day or in the week, just to reflect and to listen to the voice of God that speaks deep within us. . . . In fact, our search for God is only our response to his search for us. He knocks at our door, but for many people, their lives are too preoccupied for them to be able to hear. — Cardinal Basil Hume”
― Peter Scazzero, Emotionally Healthy Spirituality Day by Day: A 40-Day Journey with the Daily Office

“Be willing to tolerate the discomfort necessary for growth.”
― Peter Scazzero, Emotionally Healthy Spirituality: It's Impossible to Be Spiritually Mature, While Remaining Emotionally Immature

“God never loses any part of our past for his future when we surrender ourselves to him. Every mistake, sin, and detour we take in the journey of life is taken by God and becomes his gift for a future of blessing.”
― Peter Scazzero, Emotionally Healthy Spirituality: Unleash A Revolution In Your Life in Christ

“Can we really love our neighbors well without loving ourselves?”
― Peter Scazzero, Emotionally Healthy Spirituality: It's Impossible to Be Spiritually Mature, While Remaining Emotionally Immature

“Scripture Reading: Psalm 62:5–8 (NIV1984) Find rest, O my soul, in God alone; my hope comes from him. He alone is my rock and my salvation; he is my fortress, I will not be shaken. My salvation and my honor depend on God; he is my mighty rock, my refuge. Trust in him at all times, O people; pour out your hearts to him, for God is our refuge.”
― Peter Scazzero, Daily Office

“Changing the way we have lived for twenty or forty or sixty years is nothing short of a revolution. 4.”
― Peter Scazzero, Emotionally Healthy Spirituality: It's Impossible to Be Spiritually Mature, While Remaining Emotionally Immature

“In neglecting our intense emotions, we are false to ourselves and lose a wonderful opportunity to know God. We forget that change comes through brutal honesty and vulnerability before God.”
― Peter Scazzero, The Emotionally Healthy Church, Updated and Expanded Edition: A Strategy for Discipleship That Actually Changes Lives

“The critical issue on the journey with God is not “Am I happy?” but “Am I free?”
― Peter Scazzero, Emotionally Healthy Spirituality: It's Impossible to Be Spiritually Mature, While Remaining Emotionally Immature