Kevin DeYoung famous quotes

Some Christians need encouragement to think before they act. Others need encouragement to act after they think.
-- Kevin DeYoung

#Christian #Encouragement #Thinking

The goal of a church is not to have a bigger building or budget but to see the word of God increase and disciples multiply
-- Kevin DeYoung

#Goal #Church #Building

Holiness is the sum of a million little things — the avoidance of little evils and little foibles, the setting aside of little bits of worldliness and little acts of compromise, the putting to death of little inconsistencies and little indiscretions, the attention to little duties and little dealings, the hard work of little self-denials and little self-restraints, the cultivation of little benevolences and little forbearances.
-- Kevin DeYoung

#Hard Work #Self #Evil

Busyness kills more Christians than bullets.
-- Kevin DeYoung

#Christian #Bullets

Submission to the Scriptures is submission to God. Rebellion against the Scriptures is rebellion against God
-- Kevin DeYoung

#Scripture #Rebellion #Submission

Just about everybody in America likes Jesus, but few like him for who he truly is.
-- Kevin DeYoung

#Jesus #America #Likes

Live for God. Obey the Scriptures. Think of others before yourself. Be holy. Love Jesus. And as you do these things, do whatever else you like, with whomever you like, wherever you like, and you'll be walking in the will of God.
-- Kevin DeYoung

#Jesus #Thinking #Scripture

The man who attempts Christianity without the church shoots himself in the foot, shoots his children in the leg, and shoots his grandchildren in the heart.
-- Kevin DeYoung

#Children #Heart #Men

Worldliness is whatever makes sin look normal and righteousness look strange.
-- Kevin DeYoung

#Looks #Normal #Strange

The word of God is more than enough for the people of God to live their lives to the glory of God
-- Kevin DeYoung

#People #Glory #Enough

...,the will of God for your life is pretty straightforward: Be holy like Jesus, by the power of the Spirit, for the glory of God.
-- Kevin DeYoung

#Jesus #Spirit #Life Is

The secret of the gospel is that we actually do more when we hear less about all we need to do for God and hear more about all that God has already done for us.
-- Kevin DeYoung

#Secret #Needs #Done

You can think too highly of your interpretations of Scripture, but you cannot think too highly of Scriptures interpretation of itself. You can exaggerate your authority in handling the Scriptures, but you cannot exaggerate the Scriptures authority to handle you. You can use the word of God to come to wrong conclusions, but you cannot find any wrong conclusions in the word of God.
-- Kevin DeYoung

#Thinking #Use #Scripture

Biblical wisdom means living a disciplined and prudent life in the fear of the Lord
-- Kevin DeYoung

#Mean #Biblical #Prudent

When busyness goes after joy, it goes after everyone's joy.
-- Kevin DeYoung

#Joy

The finality of Christs redemption for us is intimately tied to the finality of his revelation to us. . . . If we say revelation is not complete, we must admit that somehow the work of redemption also remains unfinished. . . . Scripture is enough because the work of Christ is enough. They stand or fall together.
-- Kevin DeYoung

#Fall #Together #Redemption

Some of us live a Christian life as if we're always under the stern, watchful eye of our Father and he is very impossible to please... No, God delights even in our heartfelt attempts at obedience.
-- Kevin DeYoung

#Christian #Father #Eye

To start the day without prayer is to suggest the devil is feeble, God is irrelevant, and we can handle things on our own.
-- Kevin DeYoung

#Prayer #Devil #Start The Day

Let us shout of our God from the rooftops, that the whole world would stand in silence before him.
-- Kevin DeYoung

#Silence #World #Rooftops

For Jesus, Scripture is powerful, decisive, and authoritative because it is nothing less than the voice of God.
-- Kevin DeYoung

#Jesus #Powerful #Voice

The Bible tells us to love our neighbors as ourselves. Surely part of loving in this way is trying to understand what another person wants us to understand. I may not understand perfectly and I may not agree, but if I love you I should try to know what it is you wish I could know.
-- Kevin DeYoung

#Love You #Wish #Trying

If the gospel is old news to you, it will be dull news to everyone else.
-- Kevin DeYoung

#News #Dull

The seed of God's Word won't grow to fruitfulness without pruning for rest, quiet, and calm
-- Kevin DeYoung

#Pruning #Calm #Quiet

Expecting perfection from ourselves or others is not what holiness is about.
-- Kevin DeYoung

#Perfection #Holiness #Expecting

It’s all too easy to turn the fight of faith into sanctification-by-checklist. Take care of a few bad habits, develop a couple good ones, and you’re set. But a moral checklist doesn’t take into consideration the idols of the hearts. It may not even have the gospel as part of the equation. And inevitably, checklist spirituality is highly selective. So you end up feeling successful at sanctification because you stayed away from drugs, lost weight, served at the soup kitchen, and renounced Styrofoam. But you’ve ignored gentleness, humility, joy, and sexual purity.
-- Kevin DeYoung

#Couple #Humility #Heart

The world needs to see Christians burning, not with self-righteous fury at the sliding morals in our country, but with passion for God.
-- Kevin DeYoung

#Christian #Country #Passion

We can stop pleading with God to show us the future, and start living and obeying like we are confident that He holds the future.
-- Kevin DeYoung

#Pleading #Shows

The one indispensable requirement for producing godly, mature Christians is godly, mature Christians.
-- Kevin DeYoung

#Christian #Godly #Requirements

Any gospel which says only what you must do and never announces what Christ has done is no gospel at all.
-- Kevin DeYoung

#Done #Christ

The goal of revelation is not information only, but affection, worship, and obedience. Christ in us will be realized only as we drink deeply of the Bible, which is God's word outside of us
-- Kevin DeYoung

#Goal #Information #Affection

No one in the history of the world has been more inclusive of repentant sinners than Jesus and no one has been more intolerant of sin.
-- Kevin DeYoung

#Jesus #World #Sin

Much of the impotence of American churches is tied to a profound ignorance and apathy about justification. Our people live in a fog of guilt. Or just as bad, they think being a better person is all God requires.
-- Kevin DeYoung

#Ignorance #Thinking #Fog

God does have a specific plan for our lives, but it is not one that He expects us to figure out before we make a decision.
-- Kevin DeYoung

#Decision #Doe #Figures

We may have the best of intentions in trying to discern God's will, but we should really stop putting ourselves through the misery of overspiritualizing every decision. Our misdirected piety makes following God more mysterious than it was meant to be
-- Kevin DeYoung

#Decision #Trying #May

All paths lead to God, but only one path will present you before God without fault and with great joy. Pick a path, any path—it will take you to God. Trust me: you will stand before Him one day. You will meet your Maker. You will see the face of Christ. There are many ways up the mountain, but only one will result in life instead of destruction.
-- Kevin DeYoung

#Joy #One Day #Mountain

It's true that every road leads to God. But only one way leads to a pleasant encounter with Him.
-- Kevin DeYoung

#Encounters #Way #Pleasant

The people on this planet who end up doing nothing are those who never realized they couldn't do everything.
-- Kevin DeYoung

#People #Doing Nothing #Ends

It is our confidence in the sovereign grace of God that gives us any hope of success in missions.
-- Kevin DeYoung

#Giving #Grace #Sovereign

No matter how long we have been walking with Jesus, we need to hear again, do not love the world.
-- Kevin DeYoung

#Jesus #Long #Needs

If we aren’t prepared to be counter-cultural we aren’t ready to be Christians.
-- Kevin DeYoung

#Christian #Ready #Prepared

Jesus didn’t do it all. Jesus didn’t meet every need. He left people waiting in line to be healed. He left one town to preach to another. He hid away to pray. He got tired. He never interacted with the vast majority of people on the planet. He spent thirty years in training and only three years in ministry. He did not try to do it all. And yet, he did everything God asked him to do.
-- Kevin DeYoung

#Jesus #Tired #Years

The kind of experience of humility and happiness that comes with gratitude tends to crowd out whatever is coarse, or ugly or mean.
-- Kevin DeYoung

#Thanksgiving #Gratitude #Mean

I try to keep in my mind the simple question: Am I trying to do good or make myself look good? Too many of our responsibilities get added to our plate when we are trying to please people, impress people, prove ourselves, acquire power, increase our prestige. All those motivations are about looking good more than doing good.
-- Kevin DeYoung

#Motivation #Responsibility #Simple

We have been stuffed full of praise for mediocrity and had our foibles diagnosed away with hyphenated jargon and pop psychology.
-- Kevin DeYoung

#Psychology #Mediocrity #Jargon

Perhaps out inactivity is not so much waiting on God as it is an expression of the fear of man, the love of the praise of man, and disbelief in God's providence.
-- Kevin DeYoung

#Men #Expression #Waiting

The reason for your entire salvation, the design behind your deliverance, the purpose for which God chose you in the first place is holiness.
-- Kevin DeYoung

#Design #Purpose #Holiness

My fear is that of all the choices people face today, the one they rarely consider is, "How can I serve most effectively and fruitfully in the local church?" I wonder if the abundance of opportunities to explore today is doing less to help make well-rounded disciples of Christ and more to help Christians avoid long term responsibility and have less long-term impact.
-- Kevin DeYoung

#Christian #Responsibility #Opportunity

The world provides no cheerleaders on the pathway to godliness.
-- Kevin DeYoung

#Pathways #World #Cheerleader

So go marry someone, provided you're equally yoked and you actually like being with each other. Go get a job, provided it's not wicked. Go live somewhere in something with somebody or nobody. But put aside the passivity and the quest for complete fulfillment and the perfectionism and the preoccupation with the future, and for God's sake start making some decisions in your life. Don't wait for the liver-shiver. If you are seeking first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, you will be in God's will, so just go out and do something.
-- Kevin DeYoung

#Jobs #Decision #Waiting

On the last day, God will not acquit us because our good works were good enough, but he will look for evidence that our good confession was not phony. It’s in this sense that we must be holy.
-- Kevin DeYoung

#Looks #Lasts #Good Enough

Just about the worst thing a leader can nurture in his heart is self-pity. And just about the worst thing a leader can do in front of his people is murmur and complain.
-- Kevin DeYoung

#Heart #Self #People

Stewarding my time is not about selfishly pursuing only the things I like to do. It’s about effectively serving others in the ways I’m best able to serve and in the ways I am most uniquely called to serve.
-- Kevin DeYoung

#Able #Way #Serving Others

Christians often equate holiness with activism and spiritual disciplines. And while it's true that activism is often the outgrowth of holiness and spiritual disciplines are necessary for the cultivation of holiness, the pattern of piety in the Scripture is more explicitly about our character. We put off sin and put on righteousness. We put to death the deeds of the flesh and put on Christ. To use the older language, we pursue mortification of the old man and the vivification of the new.
-- Kevin DeYoung

#Christian #Spiritual #Character

Anxiety is simply living out the future before it gets here.
-- Kevin DeYoung

#Anxiety

Busyness does not mean you are a faithful or fruitful Christian. It only means you are busy, just like everyone else.
-- Kevin DeYoung

#Christian #Mean #Faithful

Sincerity is a Christian virtue, as is honesty about our struggles. But my generation needs to realize that Christianity is more than chic fragility, endless self-revelation, and the coolness that comes with authenticity.
-- Kevin DeYoung

#Christian #Honesty #Struggle

Sanctification is not by surrender, but by divinely enabled toil and effort.
-- Kevin DeYoung

#Effort #Toil #Surrender

To run hard after holiness is another way of running hard after God.
-- Kevin DeYoung

#Running #Holiness #Way

Most everyone I know feels frazzled and overwhelmed most of the time,
-- Kevin DeYoung

#Overwhelmed #Feels

The only thing more important than ministry is being ministered to.
-- Kevin DeYoung

#Important #Ministry

God is not a magic eight ball we shake up and peer into whenever we have a decision to make. He is a good God who gives us brains, shows us the way of obedience, and invites us to take risks for him.
-- Kevin DeYoung

#Eight #Giving #Decision

Die to self. Live for Christ. And then do what you want, and go where you want, for God's glory.
-- Kevin DeYoung

#Self #Want #Christ

Plain horse sense ought to tell us that anything that makes no change in the man who professes it makes no difference to God either, and it is an easily observable fact that for countless numbers of persons the change from no-faith to faith makes no actual difference in the life.
-- Kevin DeYoung

#Horse #Men #Differences

Sooner could a fish live upon a tree than the wicked in Paradise.
-- Kevin DeYoung

#Tree #Wicked #Paradise

Sincere biblical repentance is as much a work of grace as not sinning in the first place. To err is human, to make progress is divine.
-- Kevin DeYoung

#Biblical #Grace #Progress

I'm pretty sure most of us would be more fulfilled if we didn't fixate on fulfillment quite so much.
-- Kevin DeYoung

#Would Be #Fulfillment #Fulfilled

Legalism is a problem in the church, but so is anti-nomianism. Granted, I don't hear anyone saying, 'Let's continue in sin that grace may abound'. That's the worse form of antinomianism. But strictly speaking, antinomianism simply means no-law, and some Christians have very little place for the law in their pursuit of holiness.
-- Kevin DeYoung

#Christian #Mean #Law

Seek first the kingdom of God, and then trust that He will take care of our needs, even before we know what they are and where we're going.
-- Kevin DeYoung

#Needs #Care #Kingdoms

If you think God has promised this world will be a five-star hotel, you will be miserable as you live through the normal struggles of life. But if you remember that God promised we would be pilgrims and this world may feel more like a desert or even a prison, you might find your life surprisingly happy.
-- Kevin DeYoung

#Stars #Struggle #Thinking

We take hold of Christ as his words take hold us.
-- Kevin DeYoung

#Christ

We walk into the future in God-glorifying confidence, not because the future is known to us but because it is known to God. And that's all we need to know. Worry about the future is not simply a character tic, it is the sin of unbelief, an indication that our hearts are not resting in the promises of God.
-- Kevin DeYoung

#Heart #Character #Worry

The only chains God wants us to wear are the chains of righteousness--not the chains of hopeless subjectivism, not the shackles of risk-free living, not the fetters of horoscope decision making--just the chains befitting a bond servant of Christ Jesus. Die to self. Live for Christ. And then do what you want, and go where you want, for God's glory.
-- Kevin DeYoung

#Jesus #Self #Decision

Our first love is Jesus. Holiness is not ultimately about living up to a moral standard. It's about living in Christ and living out of our real, vital union with him.
-- Kevin DeYoung

#Jesus #Real #First Love

If there really is a perfect will of God we are meant to discover, in which we will find tremendous freedom and fulfillment, why does it seem that everyone looking for God's will is in such bondage and confusion?
-- Kevin DeYoung

#Perfect #Confusion #Doe

There is nothing gray about whether a follower of Christ should see 50 Shades of Grey. This is a black and white issue. Don’t go. Don’t watch it. Don’t read it. Don’t rent it.
-- Kevin DeYoung

#Black And White #Issues #Watches

Obsessing over the future is not how God wants us to live, because showing us the future is not God's way.
-- Kevin DeYoung

#Want #Way #Obsessing

We are not called to bring a broken planet back to its created glory. But we are to call broken people back to their creator.
-- Kevin DeYoung

#People #Broken #Glory

Not only is holiness the goal of your redemption, it is necessary for your redemption
-- Kevin DeYoung

#Goal #Redemption #Holiness

If we do not worship God, God will not be the lesser for it. But we will.
-- Kevin DeYoung

#Worship #Gods Will #Worship God