A Quote by Henri Nouwen

Do not despair, thinking that you cannot change yourself after so many years. Simply enter into the presence of Jesus as you are and ask him to give you a fearless heart where he can be with you. You cannot make yourself different. Jesus came to give you a new heart, a new spirit, a new mind, and a new body. Let him transform you by his love and so enable you to receive his affection in your whole being.
Wherefore give all diligence to the Spirit's motion and leadings, what it moves against, and what it leads to; for now will God make all things new: A new creation, new heavens, and new earth, and new heart and mind, and a new law, a new man to walk therein with his Maker with cheerfulness, and the old bonds are broken by the Spirit's leading, and to serve in newness of spirit.
Of course, none of this can happen for us until we give our lives back to God. We cannot know the joy or the life or the freedom of heart I've described until we surrender our lives to Jesus and surrender them totally... We turn, and give ourselves body, soul, and spirit back to God, asking him to cleanse our hearts and make them new. And he does. He gives us a new heart. And he comes to dwell there, in our hearts.
To be born again is, as it were, to enter upon a new existence, to have a new mind, a new heart, new views, new principles, new tastes, new affections, new likings, new dislikings, new fears, new joys, new sorrows, new love to things once hated, new hatred to things once loved, new thoughts of God, and ourselves, and the world, and the life to come, and salvation.
I ask you to consider that our Lord Jesus Christ is your true head and that you are a member of his body. He belongs to you as the head belongs to the body. All that is his is yours: breath, heart, body, soul and all his faculties. All of these you must use as if they belonged to you, so that in serving him you may give him praise, love and glory.
Man in his madness doesn't realize that God has made him from amoeba to this stage for some purpose. There is a big purpose behind it. And the purpose is that now you have to know your Spirit, by which you enter into the Kingdom of God. You have to enter into the Kingdom of God. How? What is your passport? Is your Spirit. Because when the Spirit starts shining within you, you start transforming. You start transforming into a new being - into a new personality with a new awareness and you are a different person. Your priorities change.
When I look at Jesus' warm and intimate friendships, my heart fills with praise that Jesus was. . . a man. A man of flesh-and-blood reality. His heart felt the sting of sympathy. His eyes glowed with tenderness. His arms embraced. His lips smiled. His hands touched. Jesus was male! Jesus invites us to relate to him as the Son of Man. And because he is fully man, we can relate to Jesus with affection and love.
We become new if we let ourselves be grasped and shaped by the new Man, Jesus Christ. He is the new Man par excellence. In him the new human existence became reality and we can truly become new if we deliver ourselves into his hands and let ourselves be moulded by him.
The joy of the presence of Jesus, you must be able to give wherever you go. But you cannot give what you don't have. That's why you need a pure heart, a pure heart that you will receive as a fruit of your prayer, as a fruit of your oneness with Christ.
Jesus came to reveal God to us. He is the defining word on God—on what the heart of God is truly like, on what God is up to in the world, and on what God is up to in your life. An intimate encounter with Jesus is the most transforming experience of human existence. To know him as he is, is to come home. To have his life, joy, love, and presence cannot be compared. A true knowledge of Jesus is our greatest need and our greatest happiness. To be mistaken about him is the saddest mistake of all.
Twenty-nine years ago, I came to faith in Christ after a gentleman from the Gideon's International gave me a free copy of the New Testament Bible. I started in Matthew and read all the way to Ephesians 2 when it finally clicked for me. After reading about salvation by grace through faith, I cried out to Jesus for his forgiveness and surrendered my whole life to Him. At that moment, I became a new person.
Jesus receives us with all of our limitations, He bring us the mercy of the Father who forgives us, and transforms our heart, rendering it a new heart, capable of loving Him, who loved His own to the end (cf. John 13:1). And this love is manifested in his mercy. Jesus always forgives us.
Many years from now when your children ask what New York City was like just after 9/11, this will be the book you give them in response. It's an exquisite novel full of heart, soul, passion and intelligence, and it's the one this great New York author was born to write.
What offends Him and what wounds His Heart is the lack of confidence...Your heart is made to love Jesus, to love Him passionately...We have only the short moments of our life to love Jesus!
Mary, my dearest Mother, give me your heart so beautiful, so pure, so immaculate, your heart so full of love and humility, that I may be able to receive Jesus in the Bread of Life, love Him as you loved Hitn and serve Him in the distressing disguise of the poorest of the poor.
Jesus proclaimed, Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. .. He is saying that a whole new order is about to enter history, and if you want to be a part of it, you will need a change so fundamental that the Gospel of John would later refer to it as a "new birth". Being born again was not meant to be a private religious experience that is hard to communicate. .. but rather the prerequisite for joining a new and very public movement - the Jesus and kingdom of God movement.
The question is not whether you would like to pray this prayer and ask Jesus to come into your heart - after all, you know, the handle to your heart is on the inside and if you do not open it Jesus cannot come in. My friend, Jesus is Lord of your heart and if He wants to come in, He will kick the door down.
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