Mike Yaconelli famous quotes

03-28-2025

Rest is a decision we make. Rest is choosing to do nothing when we have too much to do, slowing down when we feel pressure to go faster, stopping instead of starting. Rest is listening to our weariness and responding to our tiredness, not to what is making us tired. Rest is what happens when we say one simple word: â€œNo!
-- Mike Yaconelli

#Tired #Simple #Decision
Christianity is not about learning how to live within the lines; Christianity is about the joy of coloring. The grace of God is preposterous enough to accept as beautiful a coloring that anyone else would reject as ugly. The grace of God sees beyond the scribbling to the heart of the scribbler - a scribbler who is similar to two thieves who hung on crosses on either side of Jesus. One of the two asked Jesus to please accept his scribbled and sloppy life into the kingdom of God and He did. Preposterous. And very good news for the rest of us scribblers.
-- Mike Yaconelli

#Beautiful #Jesus #Heart
Speed damages our souls because living fast consumes every ounce of our energy. Speed has a deafening roar that drowns our the whispering voices of our souls and leaves Jesus as a diminishing speck in the rearview mirror.
-- Mike Yaconelli

#Jesus #Mirrors #Voice
Voices surround us, always telling us to move faster. It may be our boss, our pastor, our parents, our wives, our husbands, our politicians, or, sadly, even ourselves. So we comply. We increase the speed. We live life in the fast lane because we have no slow lanes anymore. Every lane is fast, and the only comfort our culture can offer is more lanes and increased speed limits. The result? Too many of us are running as fast as we can, and an alarming number of us are running much faster than we can sustain.
-- Mike Yaconelli

#Running #Husband #Live Life
Speed is not neutral. Fast living used to mean a life of debauchery; now it just means fast, but the consequences are even more serious. Speeding through life endangers our relationships and our souls.
-- Mike Yaconelli

#Mean #Soul #Debauchery
The power of the Church is not a parade of flawless people, but of a flawless Christ who embraces our flaws. The Church is not made up of whole people, rather of the broken people who find wholeness in a Christ who was broken for us.
-- Mike Yaconelli

#People #Broken #Church
Spirituality is not about being fixed; it is about God's being present in the mess of our unfixedness. (Messy Spirituality)
-- Mike Yaconelli

#Spirituality #Fixed #Messy
Nothing in the church makes people in the church more angry than grace. It's ironic: we stumble into a party we weren't invited to and find the uninvited standing at the door making sure no other uninviteds get in. Then a strange phenomenon occurs: as soon as we are included in the party because of Jesus' irresponsible love, we decide to make grace "more responsible" by becoming self-appointed Kingdom Monitors, guarding the kingdom of God, keeping the riffraff out (which, as I understand it, are who the kingdom of God is supposed to include).
-- Mike Yaconelli

#Jesus #Party #Doors
Accepting the reality of our broken, flawed lives is the beginning of spirituality not because the spiritual life will remove our flaws but because we let go of seeking perfection and, instead, seek God, the one who is present in the tangledness of our lives.
-- Mike Yaconelli

#Letting Go #Spiritual #Reality
Spirituality is a mixed-up, topsy-turvy, helter-skelter godliness that turns our lives into an upside-down toboggan ride of unexpected turns, surprise bumps and bone shattering crashes ... a life ruined by a Jesus who loves us right into his arms.
-- Mike Yaconelli

#Jesus #Bumps #Arms
Children live in a world of dreams and imagination, a world of alivenessâ€¦ There is a voice of wonder and amazement inside all of us; but we grow to realize we can no longer hear it, and we live in silence. It isnâ€™t that God stopped speaking; it is that our lives became louder.
-- Mike Yaconelli

#Dream #Children #Voice
I want a lifetime of holy moments. Every day I want to be in dangerous proximity to Jesus. I long for a life that explodes with meaning and is filled with adventure, wonder, risk, and danger. I long for a faith that is gloriously treacherous. I want to be with Jesus, not knowing whether to cry or laugh.
-- Mike Yaconelli

#Jesus #Adventure #Knowing
The grace of God is dangerous. It's lavish, excessive, outrageous, and scandalous. God's grace is ridiculously inclusive. Apparently God doesn't care who He loves. He is not very careful about the people He calls His friends or the people He calls His church.
-- Mike Yaconelli

#People #Grace #Church
The Church is the place where the incompetent, the unfinished, and even the unhealthy are welcome. I believe Jesus agrees.
-- Mike Yaconelli

#Jesus #Believe #Church
Pretending is the grease of non-relationships. Pretending is how you and I get through the day without ever having to know each other. When I walk in the room, you say to me, 'How are you?' Well, you don't want to know. And, frankly, I don't want to tell you. So I just say, 'Fine,' and you go, 'Fine.' And off we go.
-- Mike Yaconelli

#Grease #Want #Rooms
Religious people love to hide behind religion. They love the rules of religion more than they love Jesus. With practice, Condemners let rules become more important than the spiritual life.
-- Mike Yaconelli

#Spiritual #Religious #Jesus
Sin does not always drive us to drink; more often it drives us to exhaustion. Tiredness is equally as debilitating as drunkenness. Burnout is slang for an inner tiredness, a fatigue of our souls. Jesus came to forgive us all of our sins, including the sin of busyness. The problem with growth in the modern church is not the slowness of growth but the rushing of growth.
-- Mike Yaconelli

#Jesus #Rushing #Soul
Im unfinished. Im unfixed. And the reality is thats where God meets me is in the mess of my life, in the unfixedness, in the brokenness. I thought he did the opposite, he got rid of all that stuff. But if you read the Bible, if you look at it at all, constantly he was showing up in peoples lives at the worst possible time of their life.
-- Mike Yaconelli

#Reality #Opposites #Stuff
Spiritual growth is more than procedure, itâ€™s a wild search for God in the midst of the tangled jungle of our souls, a search for which involves a volatile mix of messy reality, wild freedom, frustrating stuckness, increasing slowness and a healthy dose of gratitude
-- Mike Yaconelli

#Spiritual #Gratitude #Reality
Our world is... longing to see people whose God is big and holy and frightening and gentle and tender... and ours; a God whose love frightens us into His strong and powerful arms where He longs to whisper those terrifying words, 'I love you.'
-- Mike Yaconelli

#Strong #Powerful #Love You
Jesus cares more about desire than about competence
-- Mike Yaconelli

#Jesus #Desire #Care
Think about how many of us have wondered why we don't fit, why our faith doesn't stabilize us, why we seem so out of sync with most of the world. Genuine faith is the isolating force in our lives that creates tension wherever we go. To put it another way, faith is the unbalancing force in our lives that is the fruit of God's disturbing presence.
-- Mike Yaconelli

#Thinking #World #Way
There are a whole lot of people who are so freakin' busyâ€”they've so cluttered up their livesâ€”they're at their wits' end. And if they'd only just stop for a minute, they could hear the God of the universe whisper to them, â€œI love you.
-- Mike Yaconelli

#Love You #People #Busy
Until we start thinking in terms of revolution instead of compromise the Church will continue to pat itself on the back with token steps of renewal.
-- Mike Yaconelli

#Christian #Thinking #Church
Christianity is not about learning how to live within the lines; Christianity is about the joy of coloring.
-- Mike Yaconelli

#Joy #Lines #Christianity

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