Top 62 Quotes & Sayings by Francine Rivers

When we love like Jesus does, lives change for the better.

The goal is to have every character take on a life of his or her own. Sometimes characters will come into the story that I haven't planned.

Like everyone else, there are days when I don't want to go to work. However, writing is a job like anything else.

I had been raised in the church, but I wasn't a Christian. I had a lot of head knowledge but no heart knowledge.

I actually worked in the general market for many years writing steamy historical romance, and I had more freedom in the Christian market than I ever did in the general market to write about any issue that I needed to write about.

I'll often dream about characters before I start writing their stories.

I want to see Christian fiction speak to the hard and real issues that tear people's lives apart.

My favorite book is 'Redeeming Love.' It was my first as a born-again Christian, my statement of faith, and the most exciting year I've spent writing anything.

I start work by spending time in personal Bible study. Because my projects center on a question in my own faith walk, I find Bible study essential. And God gives me scriptures daily that speak to the question with which I'm struggling.

I became a Christian late, in my late 30s, so I had a lot of things that I was bringing into my Christian life that I regret. And I had a lot of questions about faith, so that's where I start when I write.

That is one of the reasons I write: to feel the Presence of God and know He is speaking to me in a very personal way, instructing me, correcting me, redirecting me.

My job is to allow the character to live and breathe - and become as real to the reader as he or she is to me.

Well, I always wanted to write from the time I was very little, and my mother encouraged me. She wrote a journal from the time she was 15 up until about the age of 76.

I want you to love me. I want you to trust me enough to let me love you, and I want you to stay here with me so we can build a life together. That's what I want

Lord, you are God! You made us. Who better to know how to fix us when we've gone wrong? who better to set us to rights again? Who better to love us through the fire and refine us into something beautiful and useful despite our wrongs?

...for some of us, one mile can be more to walk than thirty.

Beloved, surrender wholeheartedly to Jesus Christ, who loves you. As you drink from the deep well of Scripture, the Lord will refresh you and cleanse you, mold you and re-create you through His Living Word. For the Bible is the very breath of God, giving life eternal to those who seek Him.

You are free, you just don't know it" ~Michael to Sarah

Mara, that's the life I want to give you. That's what I'm offering you. I want to fill you life with color and warmth. I want to fill it with light. Give me a chance

The Lord will provide.

I want to be free Michael, just for once in my whole life I want to be free" "You are free. You just don't know it yet

How is it possible to hold such anger against something you don't believe in?

We all wanted what we wanted, and when the Lord fulfilled HIS purpose rather than ours, we struck out against him. In anger. In disappointment. Yet, it is God's will that prevails.

Never doubt God in the darkness what he has given us in the light.

Better the discomfort that leads to repentance and restoration than temporal comfort and eternal damnation.

Julia looked back at Hadassah on the bloodstained sand. A great emptiness opened within her as she looked at the still form. Gone, too, was the salt that had kept her from completely corruption.

I'm going to give you God's truth, little girl. All men want to do is hurt you. Once you give them your heart, they tear it to shreds." ~Francine Rivers; Redeeming Love

Can you see air you breathe? Can you see the force that moves the tides or changes the seasons or sends the birds to a winter haven?" Her eyes welled. "Can Rome with all its knowledge be so foolish? Oh Marcus, you can't carve God in stone. You can't limit him to a temple. You can't imprison him on a mountaintop. Heaven is his throne; earth, his footstool. Everything you see is his. Empires will rise and empires will fall. Only God prevails.

my love isn't a weapon, it's a lifeline, reach out and take hold, and don't let go!

Love doesn't last." She didn't know how much showed her pale face. Meribah's face softened. "Sometimes it does. If it's the right kind.

You said go to her, and I let pride stand in my way. You said she needed me, and I didn't believe. You said love her, and I thought it would be easy.

Why is it only in darkness that we remember what sustained us even in the light?

I promise to love and cherish you, to honor and sustain you, in sickness and in health, in poverty and in wealth,in the bad that may darken our days, in the good that may light our way. Tirzah, beloved, I promise to be true to you in all things until I die. And even beyond that, God willing

It was no accident, no coincidence, that the seasons came round and round year after year. It was the Lord speaking to us all and showing us over and over again the birth, life, death, and resurrection of his only begotten Son, our Savior, Jesus Christ, our Lord. It was like a best-loved story being told day after day with each sunrise and sunset, year after year with the seasons, down through the ages since time began.

Jesus has given me eternal life in Him. Let them take my life here, but God holds me in the palm of His hand and no one can take Him from me.

Love God and He will enable you to love others even when they disappoint you.

Calamity is a blessing when it brings one to God. --- Hadassah

As gentle a man as he was, as tender as was his heart, there was nothing weak about Michael Hosea. He was the strongest-minded man Joseph had ever met. A Man like Noah. A Man like the Shepherd-king David. A man after God's own heart.

I've done everything for the wrong reasons. All the good works people credit to me are nothing because I did them expecting God to repay me. I thought if I worked hard enough, God would have to give me what I wanted. The truth is I've never served the Lord at all. I was always serving myself.

Rome tolerated every abominable practice, embraced every foul idea in the name of freedom and the rights of the common man. Citizens no longer carried on deviant behavior in private, but pridefully displayed it in public. It was those with moral values who could no longer freely walk in a public park without having to witness a revolting display. What happened to the public censors who protected the majority of citizenry from moral decadence? Did freedom have to mean abolishing common decency? Did freedom mean anyone could do anything they wanted anytime they wanted, without consequences?

Michael had once read to her how God had cast a man and woman out of paradise. Yet, for all their human faults and failures. God had shown them the way back in.

Though He slay me, yet will I trust Him.' Whatever happens is to His good purpose and for His glory. I am not afraid.

Anything less than your best dishonors God

Fiction can serve in a non-threatening way to open minds and, I hope, hearts to the Word of God.

I used to believe the purpose in life is to find happiness. I don’t believe that anymore. I believe we are all given gifts from our Father, and that our purpose is to offer them to Him. He knows how He wants us to use them.

Everyone wanted to be the best. Best student. Best servant. Best Christian. They got caught up in it, pressing and pushing until they forgot whom it was they were trying to please.

True beauty is rare, and seldom recognized by the one who possesses it.

Unless we have something worth dying for, Atretes, we've nothing worth living for.

Love the Lord your God, and love one another. Love one another as He loves. Love with strength and purpose and passion and no matter what comes against you. Don't weaken. Stand against the darkness, and love. That's the way back into Eden. That's the way back to life.

Love one another, Jesus said. Sometimes it took a lifetime to learn how. Sometimes it took someone to hit rock bottom to make someone reach up and grasp hold and be lifted from the mire to stand on a firm foundation.

Love is the way back into Eden. It is the way back to life.

Have faith have faith. When you have nothing else have faith.

I gave up what I can't keep for something I can never lose.

Stand firm in the Lord. Stand firm and let Him fight your battle. Do not try to fight alone.

The battle would not take place in the mountains, valleys, or plains of Israel. It would take place in the wilderness of the human heart.

We bear the consequences for what we have done to ourselves, and for the sin that rules this world. Jesus forgave the thief, but he didn't take him down off the cross.

[He] looked up and imagined the hand of God flinging stars like shining dust across the heavens. No. He was wrong to think such pagan thoughts, for God had only to utter a word and it was done. Only man had He shaped with His hands, using the dust He created to form His most precious and amazing creation. Only man was molded and loved into being, the breath of life in his lungs given by God.

God would light the way. Faith would keep them on the right path.

Maybe it's only those who've made such chaos of their lives who can understand the heights and depths of God's mercy.

I'm only a tool, beloved. Not your Savior