Philip Yancey Quotes:

When the world asks if there is any hope, we can say absolutely! No one is exempt from tragedy or disappointment- God himself was not exempt. Jesus offered no immunity, no way out of the unfairness, but rather a way through it to the other side.

Topics: Hope, Encouragement, Jesus, Unfairness, Exemption

When I pray for another person, I am praying for God to open my eyes so that I can see that person as God does, and then enter into the stream of love that God already directs toward that person.

Topics: Eye, Doe, Praying, Eye Opening, Hearing God

Yet as I read the birth stories about Jesus I cannot help but conclude that though the world may be tilted toward the rich and powerful, God is tilted toward the underdog.

Topics: Christmas, Jesus, Powerful, Powerful God

On a small scale, person-to-person, Jesus encountered the kinds of suffering common to all of us. And how did he respond? Avoiding philosophical theories and theological lessons, he reached out with healing and compassion. He forgave sin, healed the afflicted, cast out evil, and even overcame death.

Topics: Jesus, Philosophical, Healing

Any discussion of how pain and suffering fit into God's scheme ultimately leads back to the cross.

source: - Philip Yancey (2009). “Grace Notes”, p.111, Harper Collins

Topics: Easter, Pain, Suffering, Calvary, Christ On The Cross

Grace means that God already loves us as much as an infinite God can possibly love.

Topics: Mean, Grace, Infinite

True healing, of deep connective tissue, takes place in community. Where is God when it hurts? Where God's people are.

Topics: Hurt, Healing, People

I have come to know a God who has a soft spot for rebels, who recruits people like the adulterer David, the whiner Jeremiah, the traitor Peter, and the human-rights abuser Saul of Tarsus. I have come to know a God whose Son made prodigals the heroes of his stories and the trophies of his ministry.

source: - Philip Yancey (2010). “What Good is God?: On the Road with Stories of Grace”, p.185, Hachette UK

Topics: Hero, Son, Rights, Jeremiah, Abusers

The giants of the faith all had one thing in common: neither victory nor success, but passion.

Topics: Passion, Coaching, Victory

As the books of Job, Jeremiah, and Habakkuk clearly show, God has a high threshold of tolerance for what appropriate to say in a prayer. God can "handle" my unsuppressed rage. I may well find that my vindictive feelings need God's correction - but only by taking those feelings to God will I have the opportunity for correction and healing.

Topics: Jobs, Prayer, Book, Jeremiah, Need God

God reproduces and lives out His image in millions of ordinary people like us. It is a supreme mystery. We are called to bear that image as a Body because any one of us taken individually would present an incomplete image, one partly false and always distorted, like a single glass chip hacked from a mirror. But collectively, in all our diversity, we can come together as a community of believers to restore the image of God in the world.

Topics: Faith, Taken, Glasses

If prayer stands as the place where God and human beings meet, then I must learn about prayer.

source: - Philip Yancey (2011). “Prayer”, p.18, Hachette UK

Topics: Prayer, Being Me, Humans, My Struggle

In the stories of extravagant grace given to us by Jesus, there are no loopholes disqualifying us from God's love.

Topics: Jesus, Grace, Stories, Extravagant, Loopholes

We in the church have humility and contrition to offer the world, not a formula for success. Almost alone in our success-oriented society, we admit that we have failed, are failing, and always will fail.

Topics: Humility, Church, World, Contrition, Formula For Success

I have learned that faith means trusting in advance what will only make sense in reverse.

source: - "Finding God in Unexpected Places". Book by Philip Yancey, 1995.

Topics: Inspirational, Mean, I Have Learned

Faith in God offers no insurance against tragedy.

Topics: Suffering, Tragedy, Faith In God

Jesus tended to honor the losers of this world, not the winners. Our modern culture extravagantly rewards beauty, athletic skill, wealth, and artistic achievement, qualities which seemed to impress Jesus not at all.

Topics: Jesus, Skills, Achievement, Modern Culture

One who has been touched by grace will no longer look on those who stray as "those evil people" or "those poor people who need our help." Nor must we search for signs of "loveworthiness." Grace teaches us that God loves because of who God is, not because of who we are.

source: - Philip Yancey (2003). “What's So Amazing about Grace?”, p.89, HarperCollins Christian Publishing

Topics: Love Is, Evil, People

Human beings do not readily admit desperation. When they do, the kingdom of heaven draws near

Topics: Heaven, Kingdoms, Desperation

Grace, like water, flows to the lowest part.

Topics: Water, Grace, Flow, God's Grace, Amazing Grace

Prayer is to the skeptic a delusion, a waste of time. To the believer it represents perhaps the most important use of time.

Topics: Prayer, Important, Use, Use Of Time

The Bible never belittles human disappointment ... but it does add one key word: temporary.

Topics: Disappointment, Belittle, Temporary

What I see in the Bible, especially in the book of Psalms, which is a book of gratitude for the created world, is a recognition that all good things on Earth are God's, every good gift is from above. They are good if we recognize where they came from and if we treat them the way the Designer intended them to be treated.

Topics: Gratitude, Book, World, Book Of Psalms

I go to church as an expression of my need for God and for God's family.

Topics: Expression, Church, Needs

I rejected the church for a time because I found so little grace there. I returned because I found grace nowhere else.

source: - Philip Yancey (1997). “What's So Amazing about Grace?”, p.16, Harper Collins

Topics: Grace, Church, Littles

The Gospels and the rest of the New Testament reflect the life of Jesus, what it means for us & what it means for the world.

Topics: Jesus, Mean, World

Power, no matter how well-intentioned, tends to cause suffering. Love, being vulnerable, absorbs it. In a point of convergence on a hill called Calvary, God renounced the one for the sake of the other.

Topics: Jesus, Suffering, Matter, Calvary

Prayer is the act of seeing reality from God's point of view.

Topics: Prayer, Reality, Views

Christians get very angry toward other Christians who sin differently than they do.

Topics: Christian, Sin, Angry

At the heart of the gospel is a God who deliberately surrenders to the wild, irresistable power of love.

Topics: Heart, Surrender, Power Of Love

I would far rather convey grace than explain it.

Topics: Grace

Like all good things, prayer requires some discipline. Yet I believe that life with God should seem more like friendship than duty. Prayer includes moments of ecstasy and also dullness, mindless distraction and acute concentration, flashes of joy and bouts of irritation. In other words, prayer has features in common with all relationships that matter.

Topics: Prayer, Believe, Irritation

We often surround ourselves with the people we most want to live with, thus forming a club or clique, not a community. Anyone can form a club; it takes grace, shared vision, and hard work to form a community.

Topics: Hard Work, People, Community, Clique, Shared Vision

The problem of pain meets its match in the scandal of grace.

source: - Philip Yancey (1997). “What's So Amazing about Grace?”, p.61, Harper Collins

Topics: Pain, Grace, Scandal

I once heard a theologian remark that in the Gospels people approached Jesus with a question 183 times whereas he replied with a direct answer only three times. Instead, he responded with a different question, a story, or some other indirection. Evidently Jesus wants us to work out answers on our own, using the principles that he taught and lived.

Topics: Jesus, People, Work Out

God loves people because of who God is, not because of who we are.

Topics: People, Who God Is, Who We Are, God Loves You, God Never Blinks

Imperfection is the prerequisite for grace. Light only gets in through the cracks.

Topics: Light, Imperfection, Grace, Prerequisites

Sociologists have a theory of the looking-glass self: You become what the most important person in your life (wife, father, boss, etc.) thinks you are. How would my life change if I truly believed the Bible's astounding words about God's love for me, if I looked in the mirror and saw what God sees?

Topics: Life Changing, Father, Thinking, God's Love, Most Important Person

By focusing too myopically on what we want God to do on our behalf, we may miss the significance of what he has already done.

Topics: Missing, May, Want

If prayer stands as the place where God and human beings meet, then I must learn about prayer. Most of my struggles in the Christian life circle around the same two themes: why God doesn't act the way we want God to, and why I don't act the way God wants me to. Prayer is the precise point where those themes converge.

Topics: Christian, Prayer, Struggle

The proof of spiritual maturity is not how pure you are but awareness of your impurity. That very awareness opens the door to grace.

source: - Philip Yancey (2009). “Grace Notes”, p.372, Harper Collins

Topics: Spiritual, Humility, Maturity, Impurity, Spiritual Maturity

The world thirsts for grace. When grace descends, the world falls silent before it.

Topics: Fall, Grace, World

We do well to remember that the Bible has far more to say about how to live during the journey than about the ultimate destination.

source: - Philip Yancey (2009). “Grace Notes”, p.222, Harper Collins

Topics: Journey, Remember, Destination

In no other arena is the church at greater risk of losing its calling than in the public square

Topics: Squares, Risk, Church

We admit that we will never reach our ideal in this life, a distinctive the church claims that most other human institutions try to deny.

Topics: Church, Trying, Institutions

Prayer may seem at first like disengagement, a reflective time to consider God's point of view. But that vantage presses us back to accomplish God's will, the work of the kingdom. We are God's fellow workers, and as such we turn to prayer to equip us for the partnership.

Topics: Prayer, Views, May, Disengagement, Fellow Workers

Some who attempt prayer never have the sense of anyone listening on the other end. They blame themselves for doing it wrong.... Prayer requires the faith to believe that God listens.

Topics: Prayer, Believe, Listening

At Calvary, God accepted his own unbreakable terms of justice.

Topics: Justice, Unbreakable, Accepted

To some, the image of a pale body glimmering on a dark night whispers of defeat. What good is a God who does not control his Son's suffering? But another sound can be heard: the shout of a God crying out to human beings, "I LOVE YOU." Love was compressed for all history in that lonely figure on the cross, who said that he could call down angels at any moment on a rescue mission, but chose not to - because of us. At Calvary, God accepted his own unbreakable terms of justice. Any discussion of how pain and suffering fit into God's scheme ultimately leads back to the cross.

Topics: Lonely, Pain, Love You, Calvary

True faith does not so much attempt to manipulate God to do our will as it does to position us to do his will.

Topics: Doe, Manipulate, Position

Grace is everywhere, like lenses that go unnoticed because you are looking through them.

Topics: Grace, Lenses, Unnoticed

Jesus never met a disease he could not cure, a birth defect he could not reverse, a demon he could not exorcise. But he did meet skeptics he could not convince and sinners he could not convert. Forgiveness of sins requires an act of will on the receiver's part, and some who heard Jesus' strongest words about grace and forgiveness turned away unrepentant.

Topics: Jesus, Grace, Disease, Forgiveness Of Sins, Grace And Forgiveness

Grace is free only because the giver himself has borne the cost.

Topics: Grace, Cost, Giver

The only thing harder than forgiveness is the alternative.

Topics: Grace, Alternatives, Harder

Politics draws lines between people; in contrast, Jesus' love cuts across those lines and dispenses grace. That does not mean, of course, that Christians should not involve themselves in politics. It simply means that as we do so we must not let the rules of power displace the command to love.

Topics: Christian, Jesus, Mean

Grace comes free of charge to people who do not deserve it and I am one of those people... Now I am trying in my own small way to pipe the tune of grace. I do so because I know, more surely than I know anything, that any pang of healing or forgiveness or goodness I have ever felt comes solely from the grace of God.

Topics: Healing, People, Grace

Grace is the most perplexing, powerful force in the universe, and, I believe, the only hope for our twisted, violent planet.

Topics: Powerful, Believe, Grace

We tend to think, 'Life should be fair because God is fair.' But God is not life. And if I confuse God with the physical reality of life- by expecting constant good health for example- then I set myself up for crashing disappointment.

Topics: Disappointment, Reality, Thinking, Reality Of Life

Forgiveness is the only way to break the cycle of blame-and pain-in a relationship...It does not settle all questions of blame and justice and fairness...But it does allow relationships to start over. In that way, said Solzhenitsyn, we differ from all animals. It is not our capacity to think that makes us different, but our capacity to repent, and to forgive.

source: - David Boaz (2010). “Libertarianism”, p.248, Simon and Schuster

Topics: Pain, Thinking, Animal

If we comprehend what Christ has done for us, then surely out of gratitude we will strive to live 'worthy' of such great love. We will strive for holiness not to make God love us but because He already does.

source: - Philip Yancey (2003). “What's So Amazing about Grace?”, p.112, HarperCollins Christian Publishing

Topics: Gratitude, Great Love, Doe, God Loves Us

If God doesn't want something for me, I shouldn't want it either. Spending time in meditative prayer, getting to know God, helps align my desires with God's.

Topics: Prayer, Desire, Want

We grow up hungry for love, and in ways so deep as to remain unexpressed we long for our Maker to love us.

Topics: Growing Up, Long, Way, Hungry For Love

The Cross of Christ may have overcome evil, but it did not overcome unfairness. For that, Easter is required.

Topics: Easter, Evil, Religion, Unfairness

When I am tempted to complain about God's lack of presence, I remind myself that God has much more reason to complain about my lack of presence.

Topics: Complaining, Reason, Tempted

No one ever converted to Christianity because they lost the argument.

Topics: Argument, Christianity, Lost, Converting

Love deems this world worth rescuing.

Topics: World, This World

Prayer is a declaration of dependence upon God.

Topics: Prayer, Declaration

Sometimes I feel like the most liberal person among conservatives, and sometimes like the most conservative among liberals.

Topics: Conservative, Sometimes, Feels

I doubt God keeps track of how many arguments we win; God may indeed keep track of how well we love.

Topics: Winning, Track, Doubt

Some things just have to be believed to be seen.

We're concerned with how things turn out; God seems more concerned with how we turn out.

Topics: Spiritual, Turns, Concerned

Grace means there is nothing we can do to make God love us more . . . And grace means there is nothing we can do to make God love us less

source: - Philip Yancey (1997). “What's So Amazing about Grace?”, p.70, Harper Collins

Topics: Mean, Grace, God Love

I do not get to know God and then do His will. I get to know Him by doing His will.

source: - Philip Yancey (2009). “Reaching for the Invisible God: What Can We Expect to Find?”, p.95, Zondervan

Topics: Knowing God, Knows

C. S. Lewis observed that almost all crimes of Christian history have come about when religion is confused with politics. Politics, which always runs by the rules of ungrace, allures us to trade away grace for power, a temptation the church has often been unable to resist.

source: - Philip Yancey (1997). “What's So Amazing about Grace?”, p.233, Harper Collins

Topics: Christian, Running, Confused

The point of the Book of Job is not suffering: where is God When It hurts? The prologue (chapters 1-2) dealt with that issue. The point of the Book of Job is faith: Where is Job when it hurts?

Topics: Faith, Religious, Hurt, Prologue

In a nutshell, the Bible from Genesis 3 to Revelation 22 tells the story of a God reckless with desire to get his family back.

source: - FaceBook post by Philip Yancey from Sep 22, 2013

Topics: Desire, Stories, Reckless

Why pray? Evidently, God likes to be asked. God certainly does not need our wisdom or our knowledge, nor even the information contained in our prayers ("your Father knows what you need before you ask him"). But by inviting us into the partnership of creation, God also invites us into relationship. God is love, said the apostle John. God does not merely have love or feel love. God is love and cannot not love. As such, God yearns for relationship with the creatures made in his image.

Topics: Prayer, Father, Doe, Inviting, Apostles

Who would complain if God allowed one hour of suffering in an entire lifetime of comfort? Why complain about a lifetime that includes suffering when that lifetime is a mere hour of eternity?

Topics: Suffering, Comfort, Complaining, One Hour

The bible never belittles disappointment, but it does add one key word: temporary - What we feel now, we will not always feel. Our disappointment is itself a sign, and aching, a hunger for something better. And faith is, in the end, a kind of homesickness - for a home we have never visited but have never once stopped longing for.

source: - Philip Yancey (2009). “Disappointment with God: Three Questions No One Asks Aloud”, p.202, Harper Collins

Topics: Faith, Religious, Disappointment

There is an "offense" to the Gospel no matter how graciously we present it. It includes the message that God, not humanity, is the ultimate judge of right and wrong, and that the choices we make here have eternal consequences.

source: - Source: www.biblegateway.com

Topics: Judging, Choices, Humanity

The people of God are not merely to mark time, waiting for God to step in and set right all that is wrong. Rather, they are to model the new heaven and new earth, and by so doing awaken longings for what God will someday bring to pass.

source: - Philip Yancey (2009). “Disappointment with God: Three Questions No One Asks Aloud”, p.237, Harper Collins

Topics: God, Christian, Religious, Waiting On God, Heaven And Earth

Whenever faith seems an entitlement, or a measuring rod, we cast our lots with the Pharisees and grace softly slips away.

source: - Philip Yancey (2002). “Soul Survivor: How My Faith Survived the Church”, p.56, Image

Topics: Grace, Pharisees, Entitlement

Doubt always coexists with faith, for in the presence of certainty who would need faith at all?

source: - Philip Yancey (2009). “Reaching for the Invisible God: What Can We Expect to Find?”, p.40, Zondervan

Topics: Doubt, Needs, Certainty

A faithful person sees life from the perspective of trust, not fear. Bedrock faith allows me to believe that, despite the chaos of the present moment, God does reign; that regardless of how worthless I may feel, I truly matter to a God of love; that no pain lasts forever and no evil triumphs in the end. Faith sees even the darkest deed of all history, the death of God's Son, as a necessary prelude to the brightest.

source: - Philip Yancey (2009). “Reaching for the Invisible God Study Guide”, p.28, Zondervan

Topics: Faith, Pain, Believe, Bedrock

One of the things I found is that the things we want to say for well-intentioned motives often cause more harm than good. People don't need our words. They mainly need our presence, they need our love. And if you come in too quickly with explanations, you may do more harm than good.

source: - Source: www.pbs.org

Topics: People, Needs, Our Words

Jesus announced a great reversal of values in His Sermon on the Mount, elevating not the rich or attractive, but rather the poor, the persecuted, and those who mourn.

Topics: Jesus, Rich, Poor, Reversal, Sermon On The Mount

The church is, above all, a place to receive grace: it brings forgiven people together with the aim of equipping us to dispense grace to others.

Topics: People, Grace, Church

Grace is a free gift of God, but to receive a gift you must have open hands.

source: - Source: www.biblegateway.com

Topics: Hands, Free Gifts, Grace

God has, quite literally, all the time in the world for each one of us.

source: - Philip Yancey (2009). “Grace Notes”, p.290, Harper Collins

Topics: World

Often, it seems, we're [Christians] perceived more as guilt dispensers than as grace dispensers.

Topics: Christian, Grace, Guilt

Prayer is - keeping company with God.

Topics: Prayer, Company

Jesus reserved his hardest words for the hidden sins of hypocrisy, pride, greed and legalism.

Topics: Jesus, Pride, Hypocrisy, Legalism

For me, the world of nature bears spectacular witness to the imaginative genius of our Creator.

source: - Philip Yancey (1995). “Finding God in Unexpected Places”, Ballantine Books

Topics: Genius, World, Bears

Having spent time around "sinners" and also around purported saints, I have a hunch why Jesus spent so much time with the former group: I think he preferred their company. Because the sinners were honest about themselves and had no pretense, Jesus could deal with them. In contrast, the saints put on airs, judged him, and sought to catch him in a moral trap. In the end it was the saints, not the sinners, who arrested Jesus.

source: - FaceBook post by Philip Yancey from Nov 12, 2013

Topics: Jesus, Thinking, Air, Pretense

We preach sermons, write books on apologetics, conduct city-wide evangelistic campaigns. For those alienated from the church, that approach no longer has the same drawing power. And for the truly needy, words alone don't satisfy; "A hungry person has no ears," as one relief worker told me. A skeptical world judges the truth of what we say by the proof of how we live.

Topics: Book, Writing, Drawing

Jesus gave us a model for the work of the church at the Last Supper. While his disciples kept proposing more organization - Hey, let's elect officers, establish hierarchy, set standards of professionalism - Jesus quietly picked up a towel and basin of water and began to wash their feet.

source: - Philip Yancey (2010). “Church: Why Bother?: My Personal Pilgrimage”, p.62, Zondervan

Topics: Jesus, Organization, Feet, Last Supper

He (Job) did not seek the Giver because of His gifts; when all gifts were removed he still sought the Giver.

source: - Philip Yancey (1997). “Where Is God When It Hurts?”, p.98, Zondervan

Topics: God, Jobs, Giver

For me, prayer is not so much me setting out a shopping list of requests for God to consider as it is a way of keeping company with God.

source: - FaceBook post by Philip Yancey from Dec 27, 2013

Topics: Prayer, Shopping, Way

I have come to know a God of compassion and mercy and love.

source: - Philip Yancey (2009). “Grace Notes”, p.80, Harper Collins

Topics: Compassion, And Love, Mercy

Prayer is not a means of removing the unknown and predictable elements in life, but rather a way of including the unknown and unpredictable in the outworking of the grace of God in our lives.

source: - FaceBook post by Philip Yancey from Aug 03, 2012

Topics: Prayer, Mean, Grace

... the issue is not whether I agree with someone but rather how I treat someone with whom I profoundly disagree. We Christians are called to use the "weapons of grace," which means treating even our opponents with love and respect.

source: - Philip Yancey (2014). “Vanishing Grace Study Guide: Whatever Happened to the Good News?”, p.12, Harper Collins

Topics: Christian, Mean, Issues

We deserve punishment and get forgiveness; we deserve God’s wrath and get God’s love.

source: - Philip Yancey (2010). “What Good is God?: On the Road with Stories of Grace”, p.363, Hachette UK

Topics: Wrath, Punishment, Serving God

O God, make the bad people good, and the good people nice

Topics: Nice, People, Theologian

The Quakers have a saying: "An enemy is one whose story we have not heard." To communicate to post-Christians, I must first listen to their stories for clues to how they view the world and how they view people like me.

Topics: Christian, Views, People, Quaker

When Jesus came to earth, demons recognized him, the sick flocked to him, and sinners doused his feet and head with perfume. Meanwhile he offended pious Jews with their strict preconceptions of what God should be like. Their rejection makes me wonder, could religious types be doing just the reverse now? Could we be perpetuating an image of Jesus that fits our pious expectations but does not match the person portrayed so vividly in the Gospels?

source: - Philip Yancey (2010). “The Jesus I Never Knew Study Guide”, p.82, Harper Collins

Topics: Religious, Jesus, Feet

We, Jesus' followers, are the agents assigned to carry out God's will on earth. Too easily we expect God to do something for us when instead God wants to do it through us.

Topics: Jesus, Followers, Agents, Jesus Followers, God's Will

Politics deals with externals: borders, wealth, crimes. Authentic forgiveness deals with the evil in a persons heart, something for which politics has no cure. Virulent evil (racism, ethnic hatred) spreads through society like an airborne disease, one cough infects a whole busload. When moments of grace do occur, the world must pause, fall silent, and acknowledge that indeed forgiveness offers a kind of cure. There will be no escape from wars, from hunger, from misery, from rancid discrimination, from denial of human rights, if our hearts aren't changed.

Topics: War, Fall, Heart, Airborne

Whatever makes us feel superior to other people, whatever tempts us to convey a sense of superiority, that is the gravity of our sinful nature, not grace.

Topics: Humility, People, Grace

God does not accept me conditionally, on the basis of my performance, but bestows his love and forgiveness freely, despite my innumerable failures.

source: - Philip Yancey (2009). “Reaching for the Invisible God Study Guide”, p.123, Zondervan

Topics: Doe, His Love, Love And Forgiveness, Accept Me

Jesus' response to suffering people and to "nobodies" provides a glimpse into the heart of God. God is not the unmoved Absolute, but rather the Loving One who draws near.

source: - Philip Yancey (2010). “The Jesus I Never Knew Study Guide”, p.51, Harper Collins

Topics: Jesus, Heart, People

Jesus is the best clue we have as to what God is like and He is consistently gracious and merciful, especially to those who are failures. He is harsh to uptight, judgmental people, but merciful and gracious to the failures. He seems to draw out the smallest kernel of faith in each person that He's with. So, I presume that that's the way God is going to judge humanity.

Topics: Jesus, People, Judging, Judgmental People

Only in prayer can we learn to love God with all our heart, mind and soul.

Topics: Prayer, Heart, Soul, Heart Mind And Soul

God operates by different rules of time and space. And God's infinite greatness, which we would expect to diminish us, actually makes possible the very closeness that we desire. A God unbound by our rules of time has the ability to invest in every person on earth. God has, quite literally, all the time in the world for each one of us.

source: - FaceBook post by Philip Yancey from Jun 28, 2012

Topics: Greatness, Space, Desire, Unbound

Grace does not depend on what we have done for God but rather what God has done for us. Ask people what they must do to get to heaven and most reply, "Be good." Jesus' stories contradict that answer. All we must do is cry, "Help!"

source: - Philip Yancey (1997). “What's So Amazing about Grace?”, p.55, Harper Collins

Topics: Jesus, People, Heaven

Indeed we are all in peril if the flawed messenger invalidates the message.

source: - Philip Yancey (2002). “Soul Survivor: How My Faith Survived the Church”, p.39, Image

Topics: Messengers, Messages, Peril

What you and I think about Jesus and how we respond to Him will determine our destiny for all eternity.

Topics: Jesus, Destiny, Thinking

Jesus was a master of grace: he attracted sinners and moral outcasts even as he offended the religious and responsible people of his day.

source: - Source: www.biblegateway.com

Topics: Religious, Jesus, People

Jesus never tried to hide his loneliness and dependence on other people. He chose his disciples not as servants but as friends. He shared moments of joy and grief with them, and asked for them in times of need. They became his family, his substitute mother and brothers and sisters. They gave up everything for him, as he had given up everything for them. He loved them, plain and simple.

Topics: Mother, Brother, Jesus, Joy And Grief, Dependence On Others

The Christian knows to serve the weak not because they deserve it but because God extended his love to us when we deserved the opposite. Christ came down from heaven, and whenever his disciples entertained dreams of prestige and power he reminded them that the greatest is the one who serves. The ladder of power reaches up, the ladder of grace reaches down.

source: - Philip Yancey (2008). “What's So Amazing About Grace?”, p.180, Zondervan

Topics: Christian, Dream, Opposites

People who think they are free eventually end up slaves to their own desires, and those who give their freedom away to the only One you can trust with that freedom eventually get it back.

Topics: Thinking, People, Giving

Grace is heartfelt, tinged with love, a spillover gift of the God who extended undeserved favor toward us.

source: - Source: www.biblegateway.com

Topics: Grace, Heartfelt, Favors

The people who related to God best--Abraham, Moses, David, Isaiah, Jeremiah--treated him with startling familiarity. They talked to God as if he were sitting in a chair beside them, as one might talk to a counselor, a boss, a parent, or a lover. They treated him like a person.

source: - Philip Yancey (2009). “Disappointment with God: Three Questions No One Asks Aloud”, p.39, Harper Collins

Topics: God, People, Boss, Jeremiah, Sitting In A Chair

Rather, God has commissioned us as agents of intervention in the midst of a hostile and broken world.

Topics: Broken, Agents, World, Broken World

Faith is not simply a private matter, or something we practice once a week at church. Rather, it should have a contagious effect on the broader world. Jesus used these images to illustrate His kingdom.: a sprinkle of yeast causing the whole loaf to rise, a pinch of salt preserving a slab of meat, the smallest seed in the garden growing into a great tree in which birds of the air come to nest.

source: - FaceBook post by Philip Yancey from Jun 23, 2016

Topics: Jesus, Garden, Air, Slabs

Prayer is - not just bowing your head a few times a day, it pervades all of life.

Topics: Prayer

It's easy to fall into the trap of feeling like you've heard everything before and that you have nothing left to learn.

Topics: Fall, Feelings, Like You

I have found that living with faith in an unseen world requires constant effort.

source: - Philip Yancey (2003). “Rumors of Another World: What on Earth are We Missing?”, p.47, Harper Collins

Topics: Effort, Unseen, World

The surgery of life hurts. It helps me, though, to know that the surgeon himself, the Wounded Surgeon, has felt every stab of pain and every sorrow.

source: - Philip Yancey (2009). “Where Is God When it Hurts/What's So Amazing About Grace?”, p.149, Zondervan

Topics: Hurt, Pain, Sorrow, Surgeons, Life Hurts

There is but one true Giver in the universe; all else are debtors.

source: - Philip Yancey (2005). “Finding God in Unexpected Places: Revised and Updated”, p.195, WaterBrook

Topics: Debtors, Giver, Universe

We can’t expect the nation to operate by Christian principles… but we can expect this of the church.

Topics: Christian, Church, Principles

... the core problem with Christians communicating faith: we do not always do so in love. That is an indispensable point to presenting faith in a grace-full way.

Topics: Christian, Grace, Way

Jesus did not give the parables to teach us how to live. He gave them, I believe, to correct our notions about who God is and who God loves.

source: - Philip Yancey (1997). “What's So Amazing about Grace?”, p.53, Harper Collins

Topics: Jesus, Believe, Giving, Parables

God's visit to earth took place in an animal shelter with no attendants present and nowhere to lay the newborn king but a feed trough. ... For just an instant the sky grew luminous with angels, yet who saw the spectacle? Illiterate hirelings who watched the flocks of others, "nobodies" who failed to leave their names.

source: - Philip Yancey (1995). “The Jesus I Never Knew”, p.37, Harper Collins

Topics: Christmas, Kings, Angel, Trough, Animal Shelter

The more we love, and the more unlikely people we love, the more we resemble God - who, after all, loves ornery creatures like us.

source: - Philip Yancey (2014). “Vanishing Grace Study Guide: Whatever Happened to the Good News?”, p.22, Harper Collins

Topics: People, Ornery, Unlikely

Unless we love natural goods - sex, alcohol, food, money, success, power - in the way God intended, we become their slaves, as any addict can attest.

Topics: Sex, Alcohol, Way

Perhaps the most powerful thing Christians can do to communicate to a skeptical world is to live fulfilled lives, exhibiting proof that Jesus' way truly leads to a life most abundant and most thirst-satisfying.

Topics: Christian, Jesus, Powerful, Fulfilled Life

The Old Testament anticipates [Jesus] all the way through.

Topics: Jesus, Way, Old Testament

As Ecclesiastes tells it, a wholesale devotion to pleasure will, paradoxically, lead to a state of utter despair.

source: - Philip Yancey (2002). “The Bible Jesus Read: An Eight-session Exploration of the Old Testament Participant's Guide”, p.97, Harper Collins

Topics: Despair, Devotion, Ecclesiastes, Utter Despair

If my activism, however well-motivated, drives out love, then I have misunderstood Jesus’ gospel. I am stuck with law, not the gospel of grace.

source: - Philip Yancey (2009). “Grace Notes”, p.356, Harper Collins

Topics: Jesus, Law, Grace

Eugene Peterson points out that "the root meaning in Hebrew of salvation is to be broad, to become spacious, to enlarge. It carries the sense of deliverance from an existence that has become compressed, confined and cramped." God wants to set free, to make it possible for us to live open and loving lives with God and our neighbors. "I run in the path of your commands, for you have set my heart free," wrote the psalmist.

Topics: Running, Heart, Loving Life

We are all trophies of God's grace, some more dramatically than others; Jesus came for the sick and not the well, for the sinner and not the righteous. He came to redeem and transform, to make all things new. May you go forth more committed than ever to nourish the souls who you touch, those tender lives who have sustained the enormous assaults of the universe. (pp.88)

source: - FaceBook post by Philip Yancey from Jul 09, 2012

Topics: Jesus, Sick, Grace, All Things New

Nature was one of the key forces that brought me back to God, for I wanted to know the Artist responsible for beauty such as I saw on grand scale in photos from space telescopes or on minute scale such as in the intricate designs on a butterfly wing.

Topics: Butterfly, Artist, Wings, Butterfly Wings

God does not seem impressed by size or power or wealth. Faith is what he wants, and the heroes who emerge are heroes of faith, not strength or wealth.

source: - Philip Yancey (2010). “The Bible Jesus Read: Why the Old Testament Matters”, p.26, Harper Collins

Topics: Hero, Doe, Want

Henri Nouwen says, "When we come to realize that ... only God saves, then we are free to serve, then we can live truly humble lives." Nouwen changed his approach from "selling pearls," or peddling the good news, to "hunting for the treasure" already present in those he was called to love - a shift from dispensing religion to dispensing grace. It makes all the difference in the world whether I view my neighbor as a potential convert or as someone whom God already loves.

Topics: Humble, Hunting, Views, Peddling

Someone asked the Swiss physician & author Paul Tournier how he helped his patients get rid of their fears. He replied, 'I don't. Everything that's worthwhile in life is scary. Choosing a school, choosing a career, getting married, having kids--all those things are scary. If it is not fearful, it is not worthwhile.'

source: - Philip Yancey (2009). “Where Is God When it Hurts/What's So Amazing About Grace?”, p.38, Zondervan

Topics: Kids, School, Careers, Having Kids, Swiss

The rubber hits the road when we try to show grace to a person most unlike us, even someone morally offensive.

source: - Source: www.biblegateway.com

Topics: Grace, Trying, Rubber

What would a church look like that created space for quietness, that bucked the celebrity trend and unplugged from noisy media, that actively resisted our consumer culture? What would worship look like if we directed it more toward God than toward our own amusement?

Topics: Media, Space, Church, Consumer Culture

The deadening part of Bible study is when you think you've already got it all figured out.

Topics: Thinking, Study, Bible Study

What a nation needs more than anything else is not a Christian ruler in the palace but a Christian prophet within earshot.

Topics: Christian, Needs, Palaces

John Wesley taught that the gospel of Christ involved more than saving souls. It should have an impact on all of society, and his followers worked to accomplish just that. They were dispensing grace to the broader world, and in the process their spirit helped change a nation, saving it from the revolutionary chaos that had spread across Europe.

Topics: Impact, Should Have, Europe, Saving Souls

I am learning that mature faith, which encompasses both simple faith and fidelity, works the opposite of paranoia. It reassembles all the events of life around trust in a loving God. When good things happen, I accept them as gifts from God, worthy of thanksgiving. When bad things happen, I do not take them as necessarily sent by God -- I see evidence in the Bible to the contrary -- and I find in them no reason to divorce God. Rather, I trust that God can use even those bad things for my benefit.

source: - Philip Yancey (2009). “Reaching for the Invisible God Study Guide”, p.28, Zondervan

Topics: Divorce, Simple, Opposites, When Bad Things Happen, Bad Things Happen

Christians have an important role to play in contending that no human life is "devoid of value." We can do so through courageous protest, as happened in Germany, as well, as in compassionate care for the most vulnerable members of society, as Mother Teresa did. In both approaches theology - what one believes about God and human life - matters. The world desperately needs that good news.

Topics: Christian, Mother, Believe

If we insist on visible proofs from God, we may well prepare the way for a permanent state of disappointment. True faith does not so much attempt to manipulate God to do our will as it does to position us to do his will. As I searched through the Bible for models of great faith, I was struck by how few saints experienced anything like Job's dramatic encounter with God. The rest responded to the hiddenness not by demanding that he show himself, but by going ahead and believing him though he stayed hidden.

source: - Philip Yancey (2009). “Disappointment with God: Three Questions No One Asks Aloud”, p.199, Harper Collins

Topics: Faith, Religious, Jobs, True Faith, Believing Him

The world says you gain your life by getting more and more and more and more, but Jesus says, 'No, that leads to death. You get it back by giving it away and when you give it away you get it back.'

Topics: Jesus, Giving, World

Individuals and societies are not helpless victims of heredity. We have the power to change - not by looking "down" to nature but "up" to God, who consistently calls us forward to become the people we were designed to be. A confused world urgently needs a model of what that looks like. If Christians fail to provide that model, who will?

Topics: Christian, Confused, People, Individuals And Society

Thunderously, inarguably, the Sermon on the Mount proves that before God we all stand on level ground: murderers and temper-throwers, adulterers and lusters, thieves and coveters. We are all desperate, and that is in fact the only state appropriate to a human being who wants to know God. Having fallen from the absolute Ideal, we have nowhere to land but in the safety net of absolute grace.

source: - Philip Yancey (2008). “The Jesus I Never Knew”, p.105, Zondervan

Topics: Land, Safety, Grace, Throwers, Luster

By striving to prove how much they deserve God's love, legalists miss the whole point of the gospel, that it is a gift from God to people who don't deserve it. The solution to sin is not to impose an ever-stricter code of behavior. It is to know God.

source: - Philip Yancey (1997). “What's So Amazing about Grace?”, p.210, Harper Collins

Topics: People, Missing, Behavior

God already knows the naked truth about us, of course. Why not acknowledge it?

Topics: Naked, Why Not, Acknowledge

As I look around on Sunday morning at the people populating the pews, I see the risk that God has assumed. For whatever reason, God now reveals himself in the world not through a pillar of smoke and fire, not even through the physical body of his Son in Galilee, but through the mongrel collection that comprises my local church and every other such gathering in God’s name. (p. 68, Church: Why Bother?)

source: - FaceBook post by Philip Yancey from Jan 18, 2016

Topics: Faith, Morning, Sunday, Local Church, Smoke And Fire

Our confused society badly needs a community of contrast, a counterculture of ordinary pilgrims who insist living a different way. Unlike popular culture, we will lavish attention on the least "deserving" in direct opposition to our celebrity culture's emphasis on success, wealth, and beauty.

Topics: Confused, Community, Ordinary, Celebrity Culture, Counterculture

Christians fail to communicate to others because we ignore basic principles in relationship. When we make condescending judgments or proclaim lofty words that don't translate into action, or simply speak without first listening, we fail to love - and thus deter a thirsty world from Living Water. The good news about God's grace goes unheard.

Topics: Christian, Water, Grace

Parents learn the uses of power and its limits. They can insist on certain outward behavior but cannot change inner attitudes. They can require obedience but not goodness - and certainly not love.

source: - Philip Yancey (2002). “Reaching for the Invisible God: What Can We Expect to Find?”, p.244, Zondervan

Topics: Attitude, Parent, Use Of Power

We whine about things we have little control over; we lament what we believe ought to be changed.

source: - Philip Yancey (2001). “The Bible Jesus Read”, p.128, Zondervan

Topics: Believe, Littles, Changed

I say this with care, but I wonder if a fierce, insistent desire for a miracle - even a physical healing - sometimes betrays a lack of faith rather than an abundance of it. When yearning for a miraculous resolution to a problem, do we make our loyalty to God contingent on whether he reveals himself yet again in the seen world?

source: - Philip Yancey (2009). “Disappointment with God: Three Questions No One Asks Aloud”, p.199, Harper Collins

Topics: Faith, Loyalty, Religious, Lack Of Faith, Physical Healing

People instinctively know the difference between something done with a profit motive and something done with a love motive.

source: - Philip Yancey (2010). “What Good is God?: On the Road with Stories of Grace”, p.287, Hachette UK

Topics: Differences, People, Done, Profit Motive

Some of us seem so anxious about avoiding hell that we forget to celebrate our journey toward heaven.

source: - Philip Yancey (1997). “What's So Amazing about Grace?”, p.14, Harper Collins

Topics: Journey, Heaven, Forget

Curiously, the righteous Pharisees had little historical impact, save for a brief time in a remote corner of the Roman Empire. But Jesus' disciples - an ornery, undependable, and hopelessly flawed group of men - became drunk with the power of a gospel that offered free forgiveness to the worst sinners and traitors. Those men managed to change the world.

source: - Philip Yancey (2009). “Grace Notes”, p.95, Harper Collins

Topics: Jesus, Men, Impact, Pharisees, Ornery

I would say my being disheartened has more to do with American culture than anything else. We are becoming a very shallow culture. My goodness, the celebrity ethos has taken over completely. Turn on the television and you see that over and over. There's very little substance. And so, everything gets shorter. Everything is entertainment oriented. Our churches reflect that. A thirty-five minute sermon without a Power Point or video clips is rare these days. That's not true in other countries so much.

Topics: Country, Taken, Ethos, Video Clips, Disheartened

The church works best not as a power center, rather as a countercultural community - in the world but not of it - that shows others how to live the most fulfilled and meaningful life on earth. In modern society that means rejecting the false gods of independence, success, and pleasure and replacing them with love for God and neighbor.

Topics: Meaningful, Community, Independence, False Gods

All too often the church holds up a mirror reflecting back the society around it, rather than a window revealing a different way.

source: - Philip Yancey (2003). “What's So Amazing about Grace?”, p.83, HarperCollins Christian Publishing

Topics: Mirrors, Reflecting Back, Church, Reflecting

Prayer is a place where God and humans meet.

Topics: Prayer, Humans

A philosophy may explain difficult things, but has no power to change them. The gospel, the story of Jesus' life, promises change.

source: - Philip Yancey (2009). “Grace Notes”, p.230, Harper Collins

Topics: Jesus, Philosophy, Promise

All of the images of Jesus and of the kingdom are small things: be a light in the darkness.

Topics: Jesus, Light, Darkness

Christians are not perfect, by any means, but they can be people made fully alive.

source: - Philip Yancey (2002). “Soul Survivor: How My Faith Survived the Church”, p.12, Image

Topics: Christian, Mean, Perfect

Christians are simply pilgrims who acknowledge their lostness and their desire for help in finding the way.

Topics: Christian, Desire, Way, Pilgrim

We need faith and the mind of the Lord Jesus to recognize something of lasting value in even our most ordinary tasks.

Topics: Jesus, Mind, Ordinary

I ask God most often that we would be an unbroken line of Christians until Christ shall return.

Topics: Christian, Return, Would Be

[Jesus] invoked a different kind of power: love, not coercion.

source: - Philip Yancey (2010). “The Jesus I Never Knew Study Guide”, p.77, Harper Collins

Topics: Jesus, Different, Coercion

The shift in American society from admiring Christians to fearing and criticizing them provides an opportunity for self-reflection. How have we been presenting the message we believe in? Might there be a more grace-filled way?

Topics: Christian, Believe, Reflection, American Society

The uncommitted share many of our core values, but if we do not live out those values in a compelling way, we will not awaken a thirst for their ultimate Source.

source: - Philip Yancey (2014). “Vanishing Grace Study Guide: Whatever Happened to the Good News?”, p.24, Zondervan

Topics: Way, Share, Source, Uncommitted

When he lived on earth, [Jesus] surrounded himself with ordinary people who misunderstood him, failed to exercise much spiritual power, and sometimes behaved like churlish schoolchildren.

Topics: Spiritual, Jesus, Exercise, Spiritual Power

Never do I see Jesus lecturing people on the need to accept blindness or lameness as an expression of God's secret will; rather, he healed them.

Topics: Jesus, Expression, People, Lecturing

Pain narrows vision. The most private of sensations, it forces us to think of ourselves and little else.

source: - Philip Yancey (1988). “Disappointment with God: Three Questions No One Asks Aloud”, p.264, Harper Collins

Topics: Pain, Thinking, Vision

As I read the Bible, it seems clear that God satisfies his "eternal appetite" by loving individual human beings. I imagine He views each halting step forward in my spiritual "walk" with the eagerness of a parent watching a child take the very first step.

source: - Philip Yancey (2009). “Grace Notes”, p.67, Harper Collins

Topics: Spiritual, Children, Views

Repentance, not proper behavior or even holiness, is the doorway to grace. And the opposite of sin is grace, not virtue.

Topics: Opposites, Grace, Holiness

Power can do everything but the most important thing: it cannot control love.

source: - Philip Yancey (2009). “Disappointment with God: Three Questions No One Asks Aloud”, p.53, Harper Collins

Topics: Important, Can Do, Important Things

Charles Williams has said of the Lord's Prayer, "No word in English carries a greater possibility of terror than the little word 'as' in that clause." What makes the 'as' so terrifying? The fact that Jesus plainly links our forgiven-ness by the Father with our forgiving-ness of fellow human beings. Jesus' next remark could not be more explicit: 'If you do not forgive men their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins.'

source: - Philip Yancey (1997). “What's So Amazing about Grace?”, p.87, Harper Collins

Topics: Jesus, Prayer, Father

Whatever else we may say about it, the atonement fulfills the Jewish principle that only one who has been hurt can forgive. At Calvary, God chose to be hurt.

source: - Philip Yancey (2009). “Grace Notes”, p.99, Harper Collins

Topics: Hurt, Forgiving, Principles, Calvary

[...]women much like this prostitute fled toward Jesus, not away from him. The worse a person felt about herself, the more likely she saw Jesus as a refuge. Has the church lost that gift?

source: - Philip Yancey (2009). “Grace Notes”, p.171, Harper Collins

Topics: Jesus, Church, Saws

... learning humility is a prerequisite for grace.

Topics: Humility, Grace, Prerequisites

Jesus represents a point of common ground an esteemed rabbi to the Jew, a god to the Hindu, an enlightened one to the Buddhist, a great prophet to the Muslim. Even to the New Age guru, Jesus is the pinnacle of God-consciousness. At the same time, Jesus is the divider. None but Christians see Him as a member of the Godhead on an exclusive mission to repair the broken world.

Topics: Christian, Jesus, Buddhist, New Age, Broken World

Augustine started from God's grace and got it right, Pelagius started from human effort and got it wrong. Augustine passionately pursued God; Pelagius methodically worked to please God.

source: - Philip Yancey (1997). “What's So Amazing about Grace?”, p.71, Harper Collins

Topics: Effort, Grace, Augustine

If Jesus had never lived, we would not have been able to invent him.

source: - Philip Yancey (1995). “The Jesus I Never Knew”, p.23, Harper Collins

Topics: Jesus, Able, Has Beens

A God wise enough to create me and the world I live in is wise enough to watch out for me.

source: - Philip Yancey (1997). “Where Is God When It Hurts?”, p.115, Zondervan

Topics: Wise, Watches, World

If your church conveys that spirit of condescension or judgment, it's likely not a place where grace is on tap.

source: - Source: www.biblegateway.com

Topics: Grace, Church, Spirit, Condescension

Prayer enters the pool of God's love and widens outward.

Topics: Prayer, Pool, God's Love

And perhaps, exhibiting the fruit of the Spirit may be our very best defense against a materialist view of mankind here on earth.

Topics: Views, Defense, Fruits Of The Spirit

I think God isn't interested in intervening every time some little bad thing happens. God is interested in getting the message of good news and love and comfort and hope across through people like us, ordinary people, or extraordinary people like Bono.

source: - Source: www.pbs.org

Topics: Thinking, People, And Love, Intervening, Comfort And Hope

I have yet to find any support in the Bible for an attitude of smugness: Ah, they deserve their punishment; watch them squirm.

Topics: Attitude, Punishment, Support, Smugness

Prayer unfolds in the stillness of the soul.

Topics: Prayer, Soul, Stillness