Jaime Riston > Jaime's Quotes

“The spirit of complaint is born out of an unwillingness to trust God with today.
Like the Israelites, it means you are spending your time looking back toward Egypt or wishing for the future all the while missing what God is doing right now.”
― Priscilla Shirer

“Lord, please do this ... or do something better!”
― Priscilla Shirer, God is Able

“We pray because our own solutions don’t work and because prayer deploys, activates, and fortifies us against the attacks of the enemy. We pray because we’re serious about taking back the ground he has sought to take from us.”
― Priscilla Shirer, Fervent: A Woman's Battle Plan to Serious, Specific, and Strategic Prayer

“God is the God of “right now.” He doesn’t want you sitting around regretting yesterday. Nor does He want you wringing your hands and worrying about the future. He wants you focusing on what He is saying to you and putting in front of you … right now.”
― Priscilla Shirer, Discerning the Voice of God: How to Recognize When He Speaks

“Prayer is the portal that brings the power of heaven down to earth. It is kryptonite to the enemy and to all his ploys against you.”
― Priscilla Shirer, Fervent: A Woman's Battle Plan to Serious, Specific, and Strategic Prayer

“If I were your enemy, I’d magnify your fears, making them appear insurmountable, intimidating you with enough worries until avoiding them becomes your driving motivation. I would use anxiety to cripple you, to paralyze you, leaving you indecisive, clinging to safety and sameness, always on the defensive because of what might happen. When you hear the word faith, all I’d want you to hear is “unnecessary risk.”
― Priscilla Shirer, Fervent: A Woman's Battle Plan to Serious, Specific, and Strategic Prayer

“At the end of the day, the enemy is going to be sorry he ever messed with you. You’re about to become his worst nightmare a million times over. He thought he could wear you down, sure that after a while you’d give up without much of a fight. Well, just wait till he encounters the fight of God’s Spirit in you. Because . . . This. Means. War.”
― Priscilla Shirer, Fervent: A Woman's Battle Plan to Serious, Specific, and Strategic Prayer

“God’s real desire, in addition to displaying His glory, is to claim your heart and the hearts of those you love.”
― Priscilla Shirer, Fervent: A Woman's Battle Plan to Serious, Specific, and Strategic Prayer

“If I were your enemy, I’d disguise myself and manipulate your perspectives so that you’d focus on the wrong culprit—your husband, your friend, your hurt, your finances, anything or anyone except me. Because when you zero in on the most convenient, obvious places to strike back against your problems, you get the impression you’re fighting for something. Even though all you’re really doing is just . . . fighting. For nothing.”
― Priscilla Shirer, Fervent: A Woman's Battle Plan to Serious, Specific, and Strategic Prayer

“Because this is war. The fight of your life. A very real enemy has been strategizing and scheming against you, assaulting you, coming after your emotions, your mind, your man, your child, your future. In fact, he’s doing it right this second. Right where you’re sitting. Right where you are.”
― Priscilla Shirer, Fervent: A Woman's Battle Plan to Serious, Specific, and Strategic Prayer

“A prayer that’s seeking passion should not be about manufacturing a better feeling or jostling up a better mood. It’s simply about holding out your open hands—in thanksgiving first, in gratitude for God’s faithfulness and His goodness and His assured, accomplished victory over the enemy. Then asking. Asking for what He already wants to give you. Then waiting (expecting) to receive the promise of newness and freshness from His Spirit as you go along, more each day—praying until, as the prophet Hosea said . . . He will come to us like the rain, like the spring rain watering the earth. (Hos. 6:3)”
― Priscilla Shirer, Fervent: A Woman's Battle Plan to Serious, Specific, and Strategic Prayer

“Nothing—nothing!—is too far gone that your God cannot resurrect it.”
― Priscilla Shirer, Fervent: A Woman's Battle Plan to Serious, Specific, and Strategic Prayer

“The things that are “freely given to us by God” (1 Corinthians 2:12) are the only things we need to know now. A lot of the reason we grow so upset and disturbed about not hearing specifically from God is that we want what isn’t “freely given.” When we pray, “Lord, show me Your will,” we’re often asking for things that He knows are not pertinent for another twenty years. We want God to paint the whole picture right away, but He wisely withholds certain truths and information from us until we need it, when we can actually do something with it besides just mess it up.”
― Priscilla Shirer, Discerning the Voice of God: How to Recognize When He Speaks

“I have no greater joy than this, to hear of my children walking in the truth. (3 John 4)”
― Priscilla Shirer, Fervent: A Woman's Battle Plan to Serious, Specific, and Strategic Prayer

“But I say his reign of terror stops here. Stops now. He might keep coming, but he won’t have victory anymore. Because it all starts failing when we start praying.”
― Priscilla Shirer, Fervent: A Woman's Battle Plan to Serious, Specific, and Strategic Prayer

“God’s plan for you is to move you into a position of impact by infusing you with truth and employing you in prayer. You don’t need to be a genius to do it. You don’t need to learn ten-dollar words and be able to spout them with theological ease. You just need to bring your honest, transparent, available—and, let’s just say it—your fed-up, over-it, stepped-on-your-last-nerve self, and be ready to become fervently relentless. All in His name.”
― Priscilla Shirer, Fervent: A Woman's Battle Plan to Serious, Specific, and Strategic Prayer

“I want my life to radiate what happens when God has a person's heart at His full control, when every event or circumstance is simply another avenue to know Him better and show forth His glory.”
― Priscilla Shirer, Life Interrupted: Navigating the Unexpected

“Marriage stands for the creation of unity among two people who were once separated in every way before love reached out and found the other—the way God reached out and found us, and covenanted with us, and loved us, and despite who we are, despite what we’re like, still loves us. This image, more than almost anything, is exactly what the enemy wants to denigrate.”
― Priscilla Shirer, Fervent: A Woman's Battle Plan to Serious, Specific, and Strategic Prayer

“Peace is the deep, inner, eternal stability the believer possesses by virtue of relationship with Jesus, a sense of balance that’s not subject to external circumstance. It’s also the quality that enables us to live harmoniously with others.”
― Priscilla Shirer, Fervent: A Woman's Battle Plan to Serious, Specific, and Strategic Prayer

“there’s a time for everything in your life. God alone knows what that is. And because His Spirit dwells within you, and because He is deeply interested in helping you experience the fullness of His plans for your life, you can just stay tuned and know that He’ll make it clear to you right on time, even as He keeps you loved and encouraged by His presence all along the way.”
― Priscilla Shirer, Discerning the Voice of God: How to Recognize When He Speaks

“Passion is the fuel in the engine of your purpose. It’s your “want-to.” It’s what keeps you going when mundane tasks bore you or difficult ones dissuade you. Passion is what keeps you moving in the direction your best intentions want you to go.”
― Priscilla Shirer, Fervent: A Woman's Battle Plan to Serious, Specific, and Strategic Prayer

“Believing that life interruptions—divine interruptions—are a privilege not only causes us to handle them differently but to await them eagerly.”
― Priscilla Shirer, Life Interrupted: Navigating the Unexpected

“But I do know that when you and I approach God for help, filled with our cares and distresses, our prayers are not confined to this calendar date, to this particular month and year. What may seem to be His silence and avoidance from where you sit today is already reverberating in future places. If not right here, if not right now, you can be sure His ability is taking visible, tangible shape somewhere, even if beyond the scope of your current sightline. You and I are living right this minute on a tiny dot of time within a vast sea of God-moments. And the ripple effect of today’s prayer, today’s faith—today’s now—spirals out in all directions for all eternity, bumping something here, affecting something there, all under God’s watchful eye and wisdom. Each time we turn to Him, each time we trust, each time we bring our all to the surpassing greatness of His all, we find ourselves instantly connected to every future time zone where His ability lives. We link up across generations where He is already working, present-tense, to make His glory known.”
― Priscilla Shirer, God is Able

“But this ain’t no physical battle we’re dealing with, no matter how much you may wish it to be, no matter how much better you’d feel if life was all five-senses and manageable. We are at spiritual war. So we need spiritual weapons.”
― Priscilla Shirer, Fervent: A Woman's Battle Plan to Serious, Specific, and Strategic Prayer

“We simply don’t have the luxury of playing nice with prayer. Not if we want things to change. Not if we want to be free—from whatever’s keeping us held down and held back. Not if we want our hearts whole and thriving and deep and grounded . . . different. Not if we want to reach our destinies and experience God’s promises. Not if we want our husbands and children living out what God has called them to do and be and become. Not if we want a fence of God’s protection around us. Not if we want to bear the unmistakable mark of His favor upon us. Not if we want the devil and his plans to go back to the hell where they came from.”
― Priscilla Shirer, Fervent: A Woman's Battle Plan to Serious, Specific, and Strategic Prayer

“If I were your enemy, I’d use every opportunity to bring old wounds to mind, as well as the people, events, and circumstances that caused them. I’d try to ensure that your heart was hardened with anger and bitterness. Shackled through unforgiveness.”
― Priscilla Shirer, Fervent: A Woman's Battle Plan to Serious, Specific, and Strategic Prayer

“He amplifies fear, worry, and anxiety until they’re the loudest voices in your head, causing you to deem the adventure of following God too risky to attempt (Josh. 14:8). Strategy 7—Against Your Purity He tries to tempt you toward certain sins, convincing you that you can tolerate them without risking consequence, knowing they’ll only wedge distance between you and God (Isa. 59:1–2). Strategy 8—Against Your Rest and Contentment He hopes to overload your life and schedule, pressuring you to constantly push beyond your”
― Priscilla Shirer, Fervent: A Woman's Battle Plan to Serious, Specific, and Strategic Prayer