Top 160 Jen Hatmaker Quotes (2024 Update)
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101. “It’s so weird to live in this world. What a bizarre tension to care deeply about the refugee crisis in Syria and also about Gilmore Girls. It is so disorienting to fret over aged-out foster kids while saving money for a beach vacation. Is it even okay to have fun when there is so much suffering in our communities and churches and world? What does it say about us when we love things like sports, food, travel, and fashion in a world plagued with hunger and human trafficking?”

— Jen Hatmaker

102. “How lovely is a faith community that goes forth as loving sisters and brothers rather than angry defenders and separatists.”

— Jen Hatmaker

103. “How can teachers teach when parents demand exceptions and cry foul every time their kid gets crossways? Sometimes we step in and advocate, but sometimes our kids are lame and need to own up. Let them feel the sting of detention, a zero, a lost privilege, a time-out. Let failure instruct them.”

— Jen Hatmaker

104. “We cannot think our way into a new kind of living. We must live our way into a new kind of thinking.”

— Jen Hatmaker

105. “It started as a selfish act and has turned into a way of life. I can’t stand to watch someone throw anything away that belongs in my green bin.”

— Jen Hatmaker

106. “Love refuses to deny or dismantle another’s perspective simply because I don’t share it.”

— Jen Hatmaker

107. “Worry less about getting recognized and more about becoming good at what you do. Take yourself seriously. Take your art seriously. You are both worth this.”

— Jen Hatmaker

108. “Stewardship is like that. I won’t answer for the way another Christian mismanaged money. I won’t be charged with another person’s irresponsible consumption. Nor will I get credit for how another faith community shared or sacrificed luxuries for the marginalized. I’ll answer for my choices.”

— Jen Hatmaker

109. “It’s not magic; it’s hard work by vested people who share a vision for God’s kingdom in their city. An influential church is nothing more than a bunch of believers who get in the game and live on mission.”

— Jen Hatmaker

110. “The poor world is begging for mercy like Bartimaus, while the rich world is asking for more favor like James and John.”

— Jen Hatmaker

111. “Our only hope is to follow the example of Jesus and get back out there, winning people over with ridiculous love.”

— Jen Hatmaker

112. “The kingdom advances in our small neighborhoods and small acts of love and small moments of faithfulness and small feats of courage. It is not encapsulated in programs and top-down structures but activated through the body of Christ daring to be faithful everywhere we’ve been planted.”

— Jen Hatmaker

113. “God’s Word is a place where the by-the-book people and the I-didn’t-know-there-was-a-book people can live in harmony.”

— Jen Hatmaker

114. “God measures our entire existence by only two things: how we love Him and how we love people.”

— Jen Hatmaker

115. “Hey, here’s something crazy: In the Word, poverty, widows, hunger – these are not metaphors. There are billions of lambs that literally need to be fed. With food.”

— Jen Hatmaker

116. “I approach this project in the spirit of a fast: an intentional reduction, a deliberate abstinence to summon God’s movement in my life. A fast creates margin for God to move.”

— Jen Hatmaker

117. “If we took Jesus’ famous teachings away and just focused on the way He lived, He would still be radical.”

— Jen Hatmaker

118. “Usually the things we think we need become the very things we need a break from.”

— Jen Hatmaker

119. “After Jesus’ fast, he began healing, rescuing, redeeming. The Spirit filled up the emptiness Jesus created, launching him into ministry. In some supernatural way the abstinence from food was the catalyst for Jesus’ unveiling; the real fireworks were next.”

— Jen Hatmaker

120. “The best I offer the world is the truth – my highest gift. What the world does with it is not up to me. I am not in charge of outcomes, opinions, assessments. I am not in the business of damage control. When I present a fabricated version of myself – the self who knows all, is ever certain, always steps strong – we all lose, because I cannot keep up with that lie and neither can you.”

— Jen Hatmaker

121. “Desperately wanting God’s kingdom to come, we lead with the law, like a sixteen-year-old girl who thought a Bible on a desk corner would represent the story of God more than the warm, safe embrace of human connection.”

— Jen Hatmaker

122. “Love God and follow Him. Really, nothing else matters. If you are ever unsure what to do, remember how Jesus loved people. He was the best at it. You can trust Him because anywhere He asks you to go, He has been there too. This is not an easy path, Lovies. Jesus went to hard places and did hard things; He loved folks everyone else hated or despised. But if you trust us at all, believe me: this is the life you want, this Jesus life.”

— Jen Hatmaker

123. “Would Jesus overindulge on garbage food while climbing out of a debt hole from buying things He couldn’t afford to keep up with neighbors He couldn’t impress? In so many ways I am the opposite of Jesus’ lifestyle. This keeps me up at night. I can’t have authentic communion with Him while mired in the trappings He begged me to avoid.”

— Jen Hatmaker

124. “You are doing a wonderful job. Parenting is mind-numbingly hard and no one is perfect at it and we’ll all jack a thousand parts, yet somehow, against all odds, it will be enough.”

— Jen Hatmaker

125. “It’s about building bridges with those who won’t come to us on Sunday, not as a project but because Jesus loves them and told us to. It’s a dangerous journey that requires honesty and vulnerability.”

— Jen Hatmaker

126. “It is one thing to “feel nice feelings” toward the minority voice; it is something else entirely to challenge existing power structures to include the whole variety of God’s people.”

— Jen Hatmaker

127. “If our kids only expect blessings and exemptions, they will be terrible grown-ups.”

— Jen Hatmaker

128. “She works hard because she has to. She isn’t attempting to discern an elusive calling. She is raising her babies, working for a living, doing the best she can with what she has. Her purpose may not venture outside the walls of her home. We will never know her name. She probably won’t step into leadership or innovation or advocacy or social revolution. Yet she is also worthy of the calling she has received.”

— Jen Hatmaker

129. “Could the highest level of “right theology” involve loving God and people like Jesus suggested?”

— Jen Hatmaker

130. “If understood, believed, and lived out, God’s plan would naturally place Christians at the epicenter of their communities, like hope magnets, like soft places to fall, like living sanctuaries. We’d be coveted neighbors and trusted advocates, friends to all and enemies of none. Our reputation would precede us, and we would be such a joy to the world.”

— Jen Hatmaker

131. “Who you are matters. Your soul is cause for great delight. There is freedom in this discovery and absolute liberation in its ownership. When who you are on the inside matches the outside, you are ready for everything else.”

— Jen Hatmaker

132. “Treat other women like your sisters instead of rivals.”

— Jen Hatmaker

133. “It is no wonder humanity has long preferred legalism, which involves much cleaner territory. Give me a rule any day. Give me a clear “in” and “out” because boundaries make me feel safe. If I can clearly mark the borders, then I am assured of my insider status – the position I feel compelled to defend, the one thing I can be sure of. I want to stand before God having gotten it right.”

— Jen Hatmaker

134. “That brings us back to the overemphasis on Sunday morning as the front door: If love is the most effective way – and the Bible says it is – then how much genuine love can one pastor show an entire congregation? His bandwidth is not wide enough; this is a crippling, impossible burden.”

— Jen Hatmaker

135. “People in America are not ignorant of Christianity. They’ve heard the message, seen our churches on every corner, they flick by our Christian TV shows, they see our fish symbols on the backs of our cars. They’ve seen so much of pop Christian culture that they have a programmed response to us: Ignore, ignore, ignore. What’s needed is a change of parameters – something that will alter their emotional response.”

— Jen Hatmaker

136. “Isolation concentrates every struggle. The longer we keep our heartaches tucked away in the dark, the more menacing they become. Pulling them into the light among trusted people who love you is, I swear, 50 percent of the recovery process.”

— Jen Hatmaker

137. “Jesus, may there be less of me and my junk and more of You and Your kingdom.” I will reduce, so He can increase.”

— Jen Hatmaker

138. “I don’t need to have the most, be the best, or reach the top. It is okay to pursue a life marked by obscurity and simplicity. It doesn’t matter what I own or how I’m perceived.”

— Jen Hatmaker

139. “The next generation is screaming, ‘We can’t find God in church! How does God work in the broken places? Why are Christians so mean and scared and defensive? Where is the ‘good news’ part?”

— Jen Hatmaker

140. “It isn’t our responsibility to defend our values and prioritize our message over our posture. We inherited a kingdom that cannot be shaken; we are an unthreatened people. God will stay on His throne without our rigorous defense.”

— Jen Hatmaker

141. “In all our efforts, if we are not about people, our labors aren’t really about Jesus but about us.”

— Jen Hatmaker

142. “We can heal and hurt each other, and we do. I’m hoping to help lead a tribe that does more healing and less hurting. I consider that my job.”

— Jen Hatmaker

143. “If the kingdom of God belongs to the poor, the bottom dwellers, then rich American Christians are going to have the hardest time finding it.”

— Jen Hatmaker

144. “We can’t deliver folks from their pits, but we can sure get in there with them until God does. Live long enough and it becomes clear that stuff is not the stuff of life. People are. We need each other, so we probably ought to practice radical grace, because our well-flaunted opinions are cold companions when real life hits.”

— Jen Hatmaker

145. “If Jesus made the sanctuary free and available for all, we should too. If the savior of the world decided that demarkations and hierarchies and power players were no longer necessary to the health of his church, then who are we to reinstate a ranking system after Jesus rendered it obsolete?”

— Jen Hatmaker

146. “We mustn’t use the sorrow of another to reinforce our joy, even unintentionally.”

— Jen Hatmaker

147. “This is the mission we are all called to as believers, the noble task of the church. It’s not enough to be theologically brilliant without the heart of a missionary. It’s sometimes intangible work planted in the messy soil of relationships instead of the cleaner territory of theology.”

— Jen Hatmaker

148. “There is a horrid beauty in following God slightly blind. The victory later is sweeter, the prize more valuable than breath. Obviously, we are Americans; we like a plan, we like assurances. But the ways of faith exist so far outside of our tidy boundaries, it is a wonder we can ever receive its mysteries at all.”

— Jen Hatmaker

149. “Wise women know what to hold onto and what to release, and how to walk confidently in their choices – no regrets, no apologies, no guilt. I deeply believe God wants this freedom for us. Scripture instructs us to live presently and joyfully, resisting worry and believing Jesus set us free for freedom’s sake.”

— Jen Hatmaker

150. “It’s so weird to live in this world. What a bizarre tension to care deeply about the refugee crisis in Syria and also about Gilmore Girls.”

— Jen Hatmaker