Christine Hoover > Quotes

“what encourages me when I’m faced with the call of the cross in a newly exposed area of my life is when I look around at the beloved people in my church and see that the cross is just as relentless in their lives. They are living, breathing movie trailers displaying the future redemption story. My single friends who want to be married could be traipsing around the city dating and sleeping with anyone and everyone. They could be taking their future into their own hands rather than waiting on the Lord and entrusting themselves to him. My married friends who have experienced difficulties in their marriages could be taking their spouses to divorce court. My same-sex attracted friends could be succumbing to their desires. All these hold steady in truth and grace for the sake of the gospel, and their stories not only compel me to do the same but also solidify our bonds of unity and friendship and show me anew the surpassing worth of the gospel.”
― Christine Hoover, Searching for Spring: How God Makes All Things Beautiful in Time

“When we hold an ideal of friendship in our minds, believing it’s attainable, we hold a standard above the heads of real women God has placed in our lives, and then we wonder why we’re constantly disappointed by the realities, complexities, and difficulties in our relationships. That”
― Christine Hoover, Messy Beautiful Friendship: Finding and Nurturing Deep and Lasting Relationships

“Godly friendship doesn’t usually develop through convenience; it develops through devotion.”
― Christine Hoover, Messy Beautiful Friendship: Finding and Nurturing Deep and Lasting Relationships

“God allowed the difficulty of church planting to sift me, to bring the issues of my heart to the surface. I realized that if I didn’t address these things, my marriage, my family, and my own heart were in danger. God was refining me, cleaning me out, and teaching me dependence rather than self-reliance. I could continue my attempts at controlling and relying on myself, or I could submit myself in dependence on Him.”
― Christine Hoover, The Church Planting Wife: Help and Hope for Her Heart

“Our destination or goal is not to arrive at a static, linear version of friendship where we get all of our relationships lined up just so and keep them that way for a lifetime. No, the goal of friendship is to secure ourselves to the sure, steadfast anchor of Christ and, while holding to that anchor, give and receive the gift of friendship as we have opportunity. The goal is to enjoy God together with others and, as we move through life, to sharpen and allow ourselves to be sharpened by friends. We imitate Jesus with one another, willing to face the stark realities and consequences of sin, all the while persevering in our efforts to offer love, grace, forgiveness, reconciliation, comfort, and care to one another. In doing so, we display to one another and the world how God loves and, through this, bring him glory. This is our destination, the point on the map we move toward: bringing God glory.”
― Christine Hoover, Messy Beautiful Friendship: Finding and Nurturing Deep and Lasting Relationships

“Friendship is formed between imperfect people among the concrete and messy realities of life. Biblical friendship is distinct in that it brings the grace, forgiveness, and truth of Jesus into those messy realities, but it is messy nevertheless. Just as marital love is forged in the daily acts of care and selflessness and mundane responsibilities, friendship is formed in real life—sin, suffering, conflict, and all.”
― Christine Hoover, Messy Beautiful Friendship: Finding and Nurturing Deep and Lasting Relationships

“Vulnerability feels risky because it involves embracing weakness and imperfection. Image-keeping feels far less risky because we believe it protects our sensitive areas from the judgment of others. For some reason, we believe impressing other women will lead to connection and community, so we expend effort on building an image rather than revealing ourselves. But until we lay down our defenses, until we stop trying to shield our insecurities and shame from the eyes of others, we will not experience the friendship that goes beyond the surface level, the kind we so long for.”
― Christine Hoover, Messy Beautiful Friendship: Finding and Nurturing Deep and Lasting Relationships

“When others seek our counsel, we can focus on external rules or we can focus on the heart. When we offer them words of wisdom, we can give them advice and a checklist or we can exhort them to seek out the Lord's direction and obey His voice. When we have opportunity to minister in Christ's name, we can put our confidence for ministry in ourselves or we can put our confidence in the power of the Holy Spirit and the power of the Gospel.”
― Christine Hoover, From Good to Grace: Letting Go of the Goodness Gospel

“God gives us relationships that are enjoyable and a blessing but also sanctify and challenge us out of our selfishness, because he intends to get the glory from our friendships. Our wish-dreams encourage us to seek our own glory and satisfaction in friendships that are safe, easy, comfortable, and self-serving.”
― Christine Hoover, Messy Beautiful Friendship: Finding and Nurturing Deep and Lasting Relationships

“as much as we are called into fellowship with others, we must never move our gaze of hope and longing away from fellowship with God. He is guaranteed—a sure and steady anchor for our souls—and he is the perfect Friend.”
― Christine Hoover, Messy Beautiful Friendship: Finding and Nurturing Deep and Lasting Relationships

“think we sometimes still think like children: it should be easy, it should be one person, and this person is going to be everything to me. And it hasn’t turned out to be that way.”
― Christine Hoover, Messy Beautiful Friendship: Finding and Nurturing Deep and Lasting Relationships

“Proverbs 14:10 says, “The heart knows its own bitterness, and a stranger does not share its joy.” In other words, no one can fully know our joy or our grief. We can spend fifty years enjoying an intimate group of besties and they will never know us anywhere close to how God knows us already at this very moment.”
― Christine Hoover, Messy Beautiful Friendship: Finding and Nurturing Deep and Lasting Relationships

“Sometimes a friend is who we seek them to be, and a sense of satisfaction settles in for a time. We think we’ve found the elusive elixir we’ve sought,”
― Christine Hoover, Messy Beautiful Friendship: Finding and Nurturing Deep and Lasting Relationships

“We must look to serve rather than be served, which means it’s possible that we might not be served in the ways we hope. We must be ever willing to broaden the circle, which means we must have an eye for the outsider rather than an eye for how we can be insiders, and it’s possible we might be forgotten in the process.”
― Christine Hoover, Messy Beautiful Friendship: Finding and Nurturing Deep and Lasting Relationships

“And perhaps the most important question: Isn’t it the greater blessing to be a person who seeks this type of community rather than clinging to false ideals and waiting for it to just “happen” to us?”
― Christine Hoover, Messy Beautiful Friendship: Finding and Nurturing Deep and Lasting Relationships

“This intimacy with God gave birth to great responsibility, for God intended his friendship with these men (through their callings, gifts, and righteousness) to extend the blessing to others.”
― Christine Hoover, Messy Beautiful Friendship: Finding and Nurturing Deep and Lasting Relationships

“Rather than expending our energy attempting to control life, rather than trying to fulfill some false standard of perfection, we must instead cultivate a dependent heart.”
― Christine Hoover, The Church Planting Wife: Help and Hope for Her Heart

“In that moment, standing at the washer and dryer, I wasn’t grumbling to myself, as if the gifts of family and ministry weren’t a blessing, or as if these opportunities were just tasks to me. I simply had a salient moment where I sat with the whole of my life in front of me and questioned if all those numbers and tasks and activities and relationships added up to my life counting for something.”
― Christine Hoover, From Good to Grace: Letting Go of the Goodness Gospel

“Even in the midst of horrendous suffering, God never leaves, never shames, and never is sidetracked from his goal of bringing redemptive beauty.”
― Christine Hoover, Searching for Spring: How God Makes All Things Beautiful in Time

“This is our destination, the point on the map we move toward: bringing God glory.”
― Christine Hoover, Messy Beautiful Friendship: Finding and Nurturing Deep and Lasting Relationships

“It appeared to me that everyone around me had friends; therefore, I concluded God was withholding a good gift from me for no apparent reason.”
― Christine Hoover, Messy Beautiful Friendship: Finding and Nurturing Deep and Lasting Relationships

“So when it comes to being a friend to others, I have to resist the belief that I am sovereign enough to change their circumstances, rescue them from all pain, and say or do just the right thing that will help them at the heart level. Only God can do that.”
― Christine Hoover, Messy Beautiful Friendship: Finding and Nurturing Deep and Lasting Relationships

“Friendship begins with a belief, stems from a belief, grows out of a belief. It follows, then, that our thoughts are consequential to our friendships.”
― Christine Hoover, Messy Beautiful Friendship: Finding and Nurturing Deep and Lasting Relationships

“In internal, imaginary conversations we are angry and accusatory, while our outward demeanor is politely distant. We turn the accusations on ourselves, convinced that everyone feels about us what that one person expressed or, with their actions, seemed to express.”
― Christine Hoover, Messy Beautiful Friendship: Finding and Nurturing Deep and Lasting Relationships

“I want God to give me good friends, and when he has, I’ve been prone to shove him aside for the attention, wisdom, and companionship of those friends, despite knowing that they were intended as gifts rather than replacements. People are not fillers for a present God, and God is not a placeholder for future friends.”
― Christine Hoover, Messy Beautiful Friendship: Finding and Nurturing Deep and Lasting Relationships

“That’s what I hoped for myself: back-door friends, women who felt comfortable waltzing in my door without knocking, who grabbed what they needed from my fridge without asking permission, who knew that there was a seat at the table and love in my heart for them, and who knew that the meal just might end with homemade ice cream.”
― Christine Hoover, Messy Beautiful Friendship: Finding and Nurturing Deep and Lasting Relationships

“Our boxes weren’t even unpacked and she was already announcing that she’d be moving out in mere months. I was feeling less than blissful and ecstatic, because it felt like he was becoming her best friend and little single ol’ me was being left in the dust.”
― Christine Hoover, Messy Beautiful Friendship: Finding and Nurturing Deep and Lasting Relationships

“And it had taken time. Their friendship had been built over many years, not a few months. Like with a good wine, time had aged the friendship well.”
― Christine Hoover, Messy Beautiful Friendship: Finding and Nurturing Deep and Lasting Relationships

“Curiously, however, we seem to be standing beside one another, holding identical longings yet resolutely believing we’re alone in them.”
― Christine Hoover, Messy Beautiful Friendship: Finding and Nurturing Deep and Lasting Relationships

“Comparison breeds fearful isolation or eager validation-seeking, neither of which are ingredients for flourishing friendships.”
― Christine Hoover, Messy Beautiful Friendship: Finding and Nurturing Deep and Lasting Relationships