Charles Colson famous quotes

I know the resurrection is a fact, and Watergate proved it to me. How? Because 12 men testified they had seen Jesus raised from the dead, then they proclaimed that truth for 40 years, never once denying it. Every one was beaten, tortured, stoned and put in prison. They would not have endured that if it weren't true. Watergate embroiled 12 of the most powerful men in the world-and they couldn't keep a lie for three weeks. You're telling me 12 apostles could keep a lie for 40 years? Absolutely impossible.
-- Charles Colson

#Jesus #Powerful #Lying

But all at once I realized that it was not my success God had used to enable me to help those in this prison, or in hundreds of others just like it. My life of success was not what made this morning so glorious -- all my achievements meant nothing in God's economy. "No, the real legacy of my life was my biggest failure -- that I was an ex-convict. My greatest humiliation -- being sent to prison -- was the beginning of God's greatest use of my life; He chose the one thing in which I could not glory for His glory.
-- Charles Colson

#Morning #Real #Achievement

Christians should never have a political party. It is a huge mistake to become married to an ideology, because the greatest enemy of the gospel is ideology. Ideology is a man-made format of how the world ought to work, and Christians instead believed in the revealing truth Scripture.
-- Charles Colson

#Christian #Mistake #Party

The BIBLE - banned, burned, beloved.  More widely read, more frequently attacked than any other book in history. Generations of intellectuals have attempted to discredit it,  dictators of every age have outlawed it and executed those who read it.  Yet soldiers carry it into battle believing it more powerful than their weapons.  Fragments of it smuggled into solitary prison cells have transformed ruthless killers into gentle saints
-- Charles Colson

#Powerful #Believe #Book

God doesn't want our success; He wants us. He doesn't demand our achievements; He demands our obedience.
-- Charles Colson

#Achievement #Demand #Want

I can work for the Lord in or out of prison.
-- Charles Colson

#Prison #Lord

What we do flows from who we are.
-- Charles Colson

#Inspirational #Environmental #Who We Are

No, you can take it from an expert in cover-ups-I've lived through Watergate-that nothing less than a resurrected Christ could have caused those men to maintain to their dying whispers that Jesus is alive and is Lord. Two thousand years later, nothing less than the power of the risen Christ could inspire Christians around the world to remain faithful-despite prison, torture, and death.
-- Charles Colson

#Christian #Jesus #Easter

It is not what we do that matters, but what a sovereign God chooses to do through us. God doesn't want our success; He wants us. He doesn't demand our achievements; He demands our obedience. The Kingdom of God is a kingdom of paradox, where through the ugly defeat of a cross, a holy God is utterly glorified. Victory comes through defeat; healing through brokenness; finding self through losing self.
-- Charles Colson

#Healing #Self #Achievement

We should always pray with as much earnestness as those who expect everything from God; we should always act with as much energy as those who expect everything from themselves.
-- Charles Colson

#Prayer #Energy #Praying

One of the most wonderful things about being a Christian is that I don't ever get up in the morning and wonder if what I do matters. I live every day to the fullest because I can live it through Christ and I know no matter what I do today, I'm going to do something to advance the Kingdom of God.
-- Charles Colson

#Christian #Morning #Kingdoms

A government cannot be truly just without affirming the intrinsic value of human life.
-- Charles Colson

#Government #Human Life #Intrinsic Value

Tolerance once meant that we could use our reason to discern good and evil in open debate. Today tolerance has been used to call good evil and evil good.
-- Charles Colson

#Christian #Evil #Tolerance

Remain at your post and do your duty - for the glory of God and His kingdom.
-- Charles Colson

#Kingdoms #Glory #Duty

When God wanted to defeat sin, His ultimate weapon was the sacrifice of His own Son. On Christmas Day two thousand years ago, the birth of a tiny baby in an obscure village in the Middle East was God's supreme triumph of good over evil.
-- Charles Colson

#Baby #Son #Sacrifice

Few things are so deadly as a misguided sense of compassion.
-- Charles Colson

#Compassion #Misguided

Power is like saltwater; the more you drink, the thirstier you get.
-- Charles Colson

#Drink

Genuine Christianity is more than a relationship with Jesus, as expressed in personal piety, church attendance, Bible study, and works of charity. It is more than discipleship, more than believing a system of doctrines about God. Genuine Christianity is a way of seeing and comprehending all reality. It is a worldview.
-- Charles Colson

#Jesus #Believe #Reality

Judeo-Christian revelation is not the negative influence secularists proclaim it to be. Rather, it is the taproot of our civilization.
-- Charles Colson

#Christian #Civilization #Negative

God is dead not because He doesn't exist, but because we live, play, procreate, govern, and die as though He doesn't.
-- Charles Colson

#Atheist #Play

Christians need to take the lead in educating people that children are gifts, as my autistic grandson most surely is. By going down the path we're currently on, we might one day get rid of genetic diseases, but only at the cost of our own humanity.
-- Charles Colson

#Christian #Children #People

The Bible-banned, burned, beloved-is more widely read and more frequently attacked than any other book in history.
-- Charles Colson

#Book #Beloved #Banned

You cannot live your life other than walking in the truth. Your means are as important as your ends.
-- Charles Colson

#Mean #Live Your Life #Important

People who cannot restrain their own baser instincts, who cannot treat one another with civility, are not capable of self-government... without virtue, a society can be ruled only by fear, a truth that tyrants understand all too well
-- Charles Colson

#Self #Tyrants #Government

Knowing that we are fulfilling God's purpose is the only thing that gives rest to the restless human heart.
-- Charles Colson

#Christian #Heart #Knowing

Moral crusaders with zeal but no ethical understanding are likely to give us solutions that are worse than the problems.
-- Charles Colson

#Giving #Understanding #Moral

Our culture has forgotten what the Founders knew: The American experiment is a moral, not just a political, exercise.
-- Charles Colson

#Exercise #Political #Culture

Today's marginalization of Christianity is a direct result of our failure to understand our faith as a total worldview.
-- Charles Colson

#Today #Christianity #Results

I'd walk over my own grandmother to re-elect Richard Nixon.
-- Charles Colson

#Grandmother #Walks

The church has been brought into the same value system as the world: fame, success, materialism and celebrity. We watch the leading churches and the leading Christians for our cues. We want to emulate the best known preachers with the biggest sanctuaries and the grandest edifices. Preoccupation with these values has perverted the church's message.
-- Charles Colson

#Christian #Religion #Church

True tolerance is not a total lack of judgment. It's knowing what should be tolerated, and refusing to tolerate that which shouldn't.
-- Charles Colson

#Knowing #Tolerance #Judgment

The Bible's historical accuracy is a reminder that while "the heavens declare the glory of God," there's also plenty of evidence among the rubble and ruins.
-- Charles Colson

#Bible #Heaven #Historical

Life is a mess. And theology must be lived out in the midst of that mess.
-- Charles Colson

#Life Is #Midst #Theology

The dynamism and freedom that characterizes the West is the product of Christianity's reforming itself and moving forward culturally. The ascendancy of the West is the story of the difference that Christianity makes, and it's a story we can't let our culture forget.
-- Charles Colson

#Moving #Differences #Culture

The church is the only institution supernaturally endowed by God. It is the one institution of which Jesus promised that the gates of hell will not prevail against it.
-- Charles Colson

#Christian #Jesus #Church

Who speaks for God? He does quite nicely for Himself. Through His holy and infallible Word - and the quiet obedience of His servants.
-- Charles Colson

#Bible #Christian #Doe

Let's acknowledge that America's increasing decadence is giving aid and comfort to the enemy. When we tolerate trash on television, permit ***** to invade our homes via the Internet, and allow babies to be killed at the point of birth, we are inflaming radical Islam.
-- Charles Colson

#Baby #Home #America

The life function of [the local church] is to love the God who created it - to care for others out of obedience to Christ, to heal those who hurt, to take away fear, to restore community, to belong to one another, to proclaim the Good News while living it out. The church is the invisible made visible.
-- Charles Colson

#Hurt #Community #Church

The true mark of a Christian leader is trying to build up other people. Raise up other leaders!
-- Charles Colson

#Christian #People #Leader

The first 20 stories written about a public figure set the tone for the next 2,000 and it is almost impossible to reverse it.
-- Charles Colson

#Stories #Next #Firsts

It's part of the buzz of the city among Christians. It wouldn't surprise me that it got to George Bush. He reads, he picks stuff up, he talks to people. And he's pretty serious about his own Christian beliefs.
-- Charles Colson

#Christian #Cities #People