Tullian Tchividjian Quotes:

The people who tend to be the most gracious are those who know how badly they need grace

Topics: People, Grace, Needs

Our hearts are continuously rebellious. Every time we sin in thought, word, or deed, we're essentially saying in that moment that, "I don't need you God. I don't want you God. I like my way better than your way." If this goes on day after day after day, year after year, month after month, it would understandable for God to say, "I've given you ten trillion tries. You're finished." But it's not. So in that sense, His grace is always surprising, never ceases to be amazing and His mercy is remarkably outrageous.

Topics: Heart, Years, Grace, Don't Need You, I Don't Need You

Your identity is firmly anchored in Christ's accomplishment, not yours; his strength, not yours; his performance, not yours; his victory, not yours.

source: - Tullian Tchividjian (2013). “One Way Love: Inexhaustible Grace for an Exhausted World”, p.225, David C Cook

Topics: Accomplishment, Victory, Identity

I never realized how much I've become dependent on human approval until God took it away. I didn't even realize that I was in a self-made prison of human approval and human acceptance. Most of the prisons we live in we are not conscious of. God showed me Jesus plus nothing equals everything. And everything minus Jesus equals nothing. That set me free.

Topics: Jesus, Acceptance, Self

Legalism says God will love us if we change. The gospel says God will change us because He loves us.

source: - Twitter post from Jun 17, 2014

Topics: Lawyer, Legalism, Gods Will, God's Love

My job as a pastor and theologian is to tease out the nature and the necessity of the gospel in meticulous ways, in everything I say, in everything I like. I want desperately for the church in America to rediscover the power and the beauty and the nature and the necessity of the gospel.

Topics: Jobs, America, Church, Meticulous

God's acceptance of us cannot be gained by our successes nor forfeited by our failures.

Topics: Acceptance

Self-righteousness is unavoidable. You can either be a self-righteous Pharisee where you think you are better than everyone else or you can be a self-righteous pagan who thinks you are better than the Pharisee. If you are a self-righteous person, I could become very self-righteous thinking that you're self-righteous and you think you're so good but I know you're bad. I know I'm bad so that makes me better than you.

Topics: Thinking, Self, Pharisees, Self Righteousness

God's ability to clean things up is infinitely greater than our ability to mess things up.

Topics: Ability, Mess

I grew up in a remarkable home, the middle of seven children. My parents raised us well. They loved us well. We laughed hard growing up. But being the middle child, I couldn't figure out where I fit in the home, whether I was the youngest of the older three or the oldest of the younger three. When you don't know where you fit inside the home and you're young and you're desperate to fit in somewhere, I'd figured where I would fit outside the home. So I made some bad decisions about who I hung out with, I dropped out of high school, got kicked out of the house.

Topics: Children, Growing Up, School, Middle Child

The heart of the Christian faith is Good News, not good advice, good technique, or good behavior.

Topics: Christian, Heart, Advice, Good Behavior

I've got three kids. I worry about them but the gospel freed me and freed my wife. We are not trying to make our kids think that we're super spiritual or we've got it all together. They see mom and dad being real people. What they hear dad talking about at home is not different from what they see from dad [at church]. That won't guarantee that they'll avoid the whole PK, MK thing. But we are hopefully not contributing to what normally produces that crisis, which is pretending.

Topics: Mom, Spiritual, Dad, Contributing, Hopefully Not

Christianity is not about good people getting better. It is good news for bad people coping with their failure to be good.

Topics: People, Get Better, News, Good Behavior, Bad People

Between writing, traveling, speaking, preaching, and doing my best to be a good husband to my wife and my three kids, that's about as much as one man or at least this man can do.

Topics: Husband, Kids, Writing

If people knew the REAL us, they would run. God knows, stays, and loves.

source: - Twitter post from Sep 4, 2013

Topics: Running, Real, People

While our sin reaches far, God's grace reaches farther. God came after us not to strip away our freedom but to strip away our slavery to self, that we could become truly free.

Topics: Self, Grace, Slavery

The gospel is for the defeated, not the dominant.

Topics: Defeated

God's grace is so counterintuitive and everything we do in our life is just based on conditions. You do this for me and I'll do that for you. Or if you don't do this for me, I won't do that for you. And God's grace works in a completely different direction.

Topics: Grace, Different, Different Directions

Grace always runs downhill, meeting us at the bottom, not the top.

Topics: Running, Grace, Bottom

My daily sins require daily distribution of God's grace. In that sense, it never ceases to surprise me because I don't deserve any of it. I mean, I deserve to be locked in a cage and for God to throw away the key.

Topics: Mean, Keys, Grace

My observation of Christendom is that most of us tend to base our relationship with God on our performance instead of on His grace.

Topics: Grace, Our Relationship, Relationship With God, Christendom

Unfulfilled dreams, ongoing relational tension, the loss of friendships, a hard marriage, rebellious teenagers, the death of loved ones, remaining sinful patterns - whatever it is for you - live long enough, lose enough, suffer enough, and the idealism of youth fades, leaving behind the reality of life in a broken world as a broken person.

Topics: Dream, Teenager, Loss, Rebellious Teenagers, Reality Of Life

My struggle isn't believing my performance can earn God's favor; my struggle is believing my performance can keep God's favor

Topics: Struggle, Believe, Favors, My Struggle

Only the gospel can truly save you. The gospel doesn't make bad people good; it makes dead people alive...the gospel is God's acceptance of us based on what Christ has done, not on what we can do.

Topics: Acceptance, People, Done, World Religions, Dead People

The Bible is one long story of God meeting our rebellion with His rescue, our sin with His salvation, our guilt with His grace, our badness with His goodness. The overwhelming focus of the Bible is not the work of the redeemed but the work of the Redeemer. Which means that the Bible is not first a recipe for Christian living but a revelation book of Jesus who is the answer to our un-Christian living.

Topics: Christian, Jesus, Book, Christian Living, Long Story

The lifeblood of Christianity is not our persistence in moving toward God but God's persistence in moving toward us.

Topics: Moving, Persistence, Christianity

The gospel brings things together. One of the great demonstration of the gospel's power is reconciliation. I've got friends who are surfers, doctors, lawyers, artists and entertainers. Some people are cool and some people are geeky. I look around at my friends and I think, only the gospel has the power to put together a friendship like this.

Topics: Thinking, Artist, Doctors

God is not interested in what you think you should be or feel. He is not interested in the narrative you construct for yourself, or that others construct for you. Rather, He is interested in you, the you who suffers, the you who inflicts suffering on others, the you who hides, the you who has bad days (and good ones). And He meets you where you are.

Topics: Bad Day, Thinking, Suffering

The only thing that frees you from the need to pretend in order to make people believe you are something when you are actually not is the gospel because the gospel tells you that identity, my meaning, my security, and all of those things are in Christ.

Topics: Believe, Order, People

The heart of sanctification is the life which feeds on justification.

Topics: Heart, Justification, Sanctification

The gospel frees you from the pressure of having to fix people: your worth is located in Christ, not in their transformation.

Topics: People, Pressure, Transformation

The world isn't scandalized by our freedom but by our fakeness.

Topics: World, Fakeness

Grace is unconditional acceptance given to an undeserving person by an unobligated giver.

source: - Twitter post from May 16, 2014

Topics: Acceptance, Grace, Given, Undeserving, Unconditional Acceptance

The Bible makes it clear that self-righteousness is the premier enemy of the Gospel.

Topics: Self, Enemy, Righteousness, Self Righteousness

Jesus plus nothing equals everything; everything minus Jesus equals nothing.

Topics: Jesus, Minus, Plus

The emphasis of the Bible is on the work of the Redeemer, not on the work of the redeemed.

Topics: Emphasis, Redeemed, Redeemer

The gospel doesn't make bad people good, it makes dead people alive.

Topics: People, Alive, Dead People

To focus on how I'm doing more than what Christ has done is Christian narcissism

Topics: Christian, Focus, Done

The gospel alone liberates you to live a life of scandalous generosity, unrestrained sacrifice, uncommon valor, and unbounded courage.

Topics: Sacrifice, Generosity, Uncommon, Scandalous

Grace frees you to be honest about what you've always known to be true about yourself: that you're weaker & more afraid than you want to be.

Topics: Grace, Want, Honest

We make a big mistake when we conclude that the law is the answer to bad behavior. In fact, the law alone stirs up more of such behavior. People get worse, not better, when you lay down the law. To be sure, the Spirit does use both God's law and God's gospel in our sanctification. But the law and the gospel do very different things.

Topics: Mistake, Law, People, Bad Behavior

Christian growth doesn't happen by first behaving better, but by believing better--believi ng in bigger, deeper, brighter ways what Christ has already secured for sinners.

Topics: Christian, Believe, Growth, Christian Growth

God loves broken people because broken people are all that there are.

Topics: People, Broken, God Love

Legalism breeds a sense of entitlement that turns us into complainers.

Topics: Entitlement, Legalism, Complainers, Sense Of Entitlement

God is the one to be praised, not our transformation.

Topics: Transformation

Jesus is not the man at the top of the stairs; He is the man at the bottom, the friend of sinners, the savior of those in need of one. Which is all of us, all of the time.

Topics: Jesus, Men, Needs

Whether it's a Christian or a non-Christian, there's nothing like suffering to show us how small, needy, and not in control we are. Suffering has a way of sobering us up to the realization that we can't make it on our own, that we need help, that we're broken.

source: - Tullian Tchividjian, Nick Lannon (2015). “It Is Finished: 365 Days of Good News”, David C Cook

Topics: Christian, Broken, Suffering, Needy, Life Worth Living

Real, pure, unadulterated freedom happens when the resources of the gospel smash any sense of need to secure for myself anything beyond what Christ has already secured for me.

Topics: Real, Needs, Christ

Only when you realize that the gospel has nothing to do with your obedience but with Christ's obedience for you, will you start to obey. The only Christians who end up getting better are those who realize that if they don't get better, God will love them anyway.

Topics: Christian, Get Better, Realizing

What I'm most deeply grateful for is that God's love for us, approval of us, and commitment to us does not ride on our resolve but on Jesus' resolve for us. The gospel is the good news announcing Jesus' infallible devotion to us despite our inconsistent devotion to Him. The gospel is not a command to hang on to Jesus; it's a promise that no matter how weak and unsuccessful our faith and efforts may be, God is always holding on to us.

Topics: Jesus, Grateful, Commitment, Announcing

When we depend on anything smaller than God to provide us with the security, significance, meaning, and value that we long for, God will love us enough to take it away. Much of our anger and bitterness, therefore, is God prying open our hands and taking away something we've held onto more tightly than him.

Topics: Hands, Long, Bitterness, Anger And Bitterness

Only the gospel can truly save you. The gospel doesn't make good people good; it makes dead people alive. That's the difference between the gospel of Jesus Christ and every other world religion. All the others exhort their followers to save themselves by being good, by conforming their lives to whatever their worshiped deity is. But the gospel is God's acceptance of us based on what Christ has done, not on what we can do.

Topics: Jesus, Acceptance, Other Worlds

Job's unraveling wasn't wrong or sinful; rather, it was emotionally realistic.

Topics: Jobs, Unraveling, Realistic

Your pain could be God prying open your life and heart to remove a gift of His that you've been on to more dearly than Him.

Topics: Pain, Heart

The deepest fear we have, 'the fear beneath all fears,' is the fear of not measuring up, the fear of judgment. It's this fear that creates the stress and depression of everyday life.

Topics: Stress, Everyday, Judgment, Measuring Up, Deepest Fear

God's capacity to forgive is greater than our capacity to sin; while our sin reaches far, God's grace reaches farther. It's a message revealing the radical contrast between the sinful heart of mankind and the gracious heart of mankind's Creator.

Topics: Heart, Grace, Forgiving

In the Old Testament, we are continually told that our good works are not enough, that God has made a provision. This provision is pointed to at every place in the Old Testament.

Topics: Enough, Old Testament, Good Work

The cross [is] the ultimate statement of God's involvement in the world on this side of heaven.

Topics: Heaven, Sides, World

Information is seldom enough to heal a wounded heart.

Topics: Heart, Information, Enough, Wounded Heart

Only when we see that the way of God's law is absolutely inflexible will we see that God's grace is absolutely indispensable. A high view of the law reminds us that God accepts us on the basis of Christ's perfection, not our progress. Grace, properly understood, is the movement of a holy God toward an unholy people. He doesn't cheapen the law or ease its requirements. He fulfills them in his Son, who then gives his righteousness to us. That's the gospel. Pure and simple.

Topics: Son, Simple, Views, Holy God

Submitting self to God is the only real freedom-because the deepest slavery is self-dependence, self-reliance. When you live your life believing that everything (family, finances, relationships, career) depends primarily on you, you're enslaved to your strengths and weaknesses. You're trying to be your own savior. Freedom comes when we start trusting in God's abilities and wisdom instead of our own. Real life begins when we transfer our trust from our own efforts to the efforts of Christ.

Topics: Real, Believe, Self, Real Freedom

Here's one way I can know that I've forgotten the gospel of grace: when your sin bothers me more than my sin.

source: - Twitter post from Jan 28, 2015

Topics: Religious, Grace, Way

We are broken people living in a broken world with other broken people. We all need grace.

source: - Twitter post from Jan 03, 2015

Topics: People, Broken, Grace, Broken World

Grace is love that seeks you out when you have nothing to give in return. Grace is love coming at you that has nothing to do with you. Grace is being loved when you are unlovable.

source: - Tullian Tchividjian (2013). “One Way Love: Inexhaustible Grace for an Exhausted World”, p.32, David C Cook

Topics: Giving, Grace, Return, Unlovable

If you feel compelled to respond every time you're criticized it reveals just how much you've built your identity on being right.

source: - Twitter post from Dec 08, 2014

Topics: Identity, Feels, Compelled

Remember on your best day that Jesus had to die for you. Remember on your worst day that he did.

source: - Twitter post from Nov 23, 2013

Topics: Jesus, Remember, Worst, Worst Day

If you uproot the idol and fail to plant the love of Christ in its place, the idol will grow back.

source: - "Counterfeit Gods: When the Empty Promises of Love, Money and Power Let You Down". Book by Timothy Keller, 2010.

Topics: Idols, Failing, Christ

Our deepest fear is judgment. Our deepest longing is love. The gospel of grace removes the one and provides the other.

source: - FaceBook post by Tullian Tchividjian from Jan 23, 2015

Topics: Grace, Longing, Judgment, Deepest Fear, Our Deepest Fear

Because of Jesus the sin we cannot forget God does not remember.

source: - FaceBook post by Tullian Tchividjian from May 06, 2015

Topics: Jesus, Doe, Remember

What kind of person should you be to someone who has fallen? The kind of person you will run to when you fall.

source: - Twitter post from Apr 10, 2015

Topics: Running, Fall, Kind

If the depths of everyone's sin was made public, we would all be much more gracious to each other.

source: - Twitter post from Mar 07, 2015

Topics: Depth, Sin, Made

Mt. Sinai says, 'You must do. Mt. Calvary says, 'Because you couldn't, Jesus did.' Don't run to the wrong mountain for your hiding place

Topics: Friday, Running, Jesus, Sinai, Calvary

The gospel doesn't just free me from what people think of me, but also from what I think of me.

Topics: Thinking, People, Think Of Me

The gospel is good news to those who know they don't measure up. It's offensive to those who think they do.

source: - Twitter post from Mar 07, 2015

Topics: Thinking, News, Offensive

God wants every local church to be the first place people think to go when they've really messed up...not the last.

source: - FaceBook post by Tullian Tchividjian from Jan 11, 2015

Topics: Thinking, People, Church, Local Church, Messed Up

Walking with God doesn't lead to God's favor; God's favor leads to walking with God.

source: - Twitter post from Nov 12, 2012

Topics: Favors, Walking With God, Walking

The grace of God sets us free from a life of perfection, performing, and pretending.

source: - Twitter post from Jan 23, 2015

Topics: Perfection, Grace, Pretending

If we're not reaching the same people Jesus reached, then we're not preaching the same message Jesus preached.

source: - Twitter post from Jan 28, 2015

Topics: Jesus, People, Messages

A preacher who doesn't believe he's that bad will attract people who don't think they're that bad. And that's bad.

source: - Twitter post from Sep 01, 2014

Topics: Believe, Thinking, People

God does everything through people who understand they're nothing. And God does nothing through those who think they're everything.

Topics: Thinking, People, Doe

Sanctification consists of the daily realization that in Christ we have died, and in Christ we have been raised.

Topics: Realization, Christ, Raised

God did not rescue me out of the pain, He rescued me through the pain!

source: - Source: www.lifeisstory.com

Topics: Pain, Rescue, Rescue Me

Because Jesus was strong for me, I am free to be weak; because Jesus won for me, I am free to lose; because Jesus was someone, I am free to be no one; because Jesus was extraordinary, I am free to be ordinary; because Jesus succeeded for me, I am free to fail.

Topics: Jesus, Strong, Ordinary

Once God saves us He doesn't move us beyond the gospel, but He moves us more deeply into the gospel.

source: - Source: www.christianpost.com

Topics: Moving

Nothing makes me want to obey more than knowing that God unconditionally loves me and forgives me even when I disobey.

source: - Twitter post from Mar 28, 2015

Topics: Knowing, Forgive Me, Forgiving, Love Unconditionally

Passive righteousness tells us that God does not need our good works. Active righteousness tells us that our neighbor does. The aim and direction of good works are horizontal, not vertical.

source: - Tullian Tchividjian (2013). “One Way Love: Inexhaustible Grace for an Exhausted World”, p.200, David C Cook

Topics: Doe, Needs, Neighbor

Suffering reveals to us the two things that ultimately matter: that we are weak but He is strong.

source: - Twitter post from May 20, 2015

Topics: Strong, Two, Suffering

The deepest cry of the human heart is to be loved without condition, no matter what. The gospel of grace announces that you are.

source: - Twitter post from Jan 06, 2015

Topics: Heart, Grace, Matter

We don't need answers and explanations as much as we need God's presence in and through the suffering.

source: - Source: www.lifeisstory.com

Topics: Suffering, Needs, Answers, Need God, God's Presence

Self-righteousness is the fruit of a low view of God's law and a lite view of your own sin.

source: - Twitter post from Feb 07, 2015

Topics: Self, Views, Law, Self Righteousness

The desperate addict is closer to the heart of grace than the devout moralist.

source: - Twitter post from Dec 10, 2014

Topics: Heart, Grace, Desperate

Rest assured: Before God, the righteousness of Christ is all we need; before God, the righteousness of Christ is all we have.

source: - Twitter post from Sep 07, 2014

Topics: Needs, Christ, Righteousness

Sometimes God has to remind you that you're weak so that you can be set free from your "self-sufficiency."

source: - Twitter post from Feb 07, 2015

Topics: Self, Sometimes, Weak, Sufficiency

The biggest lie about grace that Satan wants the church to buy is the idea that it’s dangerous and therefore needs to be kept in check.

Topics: Lying, Ideas, Grace

You see, the secret of the gospel is that we become more spiritually mature when we focus less on what we need to do for God and focus more on all that God has already done for us. The irony of the gospel is that we actually perform better as we grow in our understanding that our relationship with God is based on Christ's performance for us, not our performance for him.

Topics: Focus, Understanding, Secret

People who know they are not good make the best messengers of grace because they are desperately aware of their own need for it.

source: - Twitter post from Feb 11, 2015

Topics: People, Grace, Needs

The law demands that we do it all; the gospel declares that Jesus paid it all.

source: - Twitter post from Feb 16, 2015

Topics: Jesus, Law, Demand

There is no better news than that the God who makes the demand for perfection also meets the demand for perfection on our behalf.

source: - Twitter post from Jun 01, 2015

Topics: Perfection, News, Demand

A biblical understanding of the Christian life is not 'let go and let God,' it's 'trust God and get going.'

Topics: Christian, Letting Go, Biblical, Let Go And Let God

Christianity is not "Jesus is our example." Christianity is "Jesus is our substitute."

source: - Twitter post from Dec 14, 2014

Topics: Jesus, Example, Christianity

When the Christian faith becomes defined by who we are and what we do and not by who Christ is and what he did for us, we miss the gospel - and we, ironically, become more disobedient.

Topics: Christian, Missing, Who We Are

Grace flows most refreshingly through the faucet of brokenness.

source: - Twitter post from Jun 05, 2015

Topics: Grace, Flow, Brokenness

Because the church has moved away from the gospel anytime you move away from the gospel, you at the same time move toward pretense, you move toward image-keeping, you move toward the need to pretend.

source: - Source: www.christianpost.com

Topics: Moving, Church, Needs

Because Jesus was someone, you’re free to be no one.

source: - Tullian Tchividjian (2013). “One Way Love: Inexhaustible Grace for an Exhausted World”, p.36, David C Cook

Topics: Jesus

Graciousness is the fruit of someone who knows how badly they themselves need grace.

source: - Twitter post from Feb 26, 2015

Topics: Grace, Needs, Fruit, Graciousness

If your theological convictions are not producing a deeper love for others, then it's time to rethink some stuff.

source: - Twitter post from Mar 05, 2015

Topics: Stuff, Conviction, Deeper Love

The good news of the gospel [for sufferers] is not an exhortation from above to 'hang on at all costs,' or 'grin and bear it' in the midst of hardship. No, the good news is that God is hanging on to you, and in the end, when all is said and done, the power of God will triumph over every pain and loss.

Topics: Pain, Loss, Triumph, Pain And Loss

We often read the Bible as if it were fundamentally about us: our improvement, our life, our triumph, our victory, our faith, our holiness, our godliness.

Topics: Victory, Triumph, Holiness

The truth, whether we admit it or not, is that grace scares us to death. It scares us primarily because it wrestles control and manageability out of our hands - introducing chaos and freedom.

Topics: Hands, Grace, Scare

Grace doesn't lead us into destructive behavior. Sin does. And grace is the only remedy for sin. The kindness of God leads to repentance.

source: - Twitter post from Oct 25, 2014

Topics: Kindness, Grace, Doe, Kindness Of God, Destructive Behavior

Assurance never comes from looking at ourselves. It only comes as a consequence of looking to Christ.

Topics: Christ, Assurance, Consequence

If you look at the gospel, it just doesn't break things apart. The gospel brings things together. One of the great demonstration of the gospel's power is reconciliation.

source: - Source: www.christianpost.com

Topics: Together, Looks, Break

I didn't realize that I was in a self-made prison of human approval and human acceptance. Didn't even realize it. Most of the prisons we live in we are not conscious of.

source: - Source: www.christianpost.com

Topics: Acceptance, Self, Approval

There are a still lot of people in today's church who can easily identify the idolatry outside the church and are pretty proud of the fact that they are not like them. And yet, we are far too slow to recognize the idolatry inside the church and more painfully, the idolatry inside our hearts.

source: - Source: www.christianpost.com

Topics: Heart, People, Church

Moralism doesn't produce morality; it produces immorality.

source: - Tullian Tchividjian (2012). “Glorious Ruin: How Suffering Sets You Free”, p.59, David C Cook

Topics: Morality, Produce, Immorality, Moralism

Contrary to what we conclude naturally, the gospel is not too good to be true. It is true! Its the truest truth in the entire universe. No strings attached! No fine print to read. No buts. No conditions. No qualifications. No footnotes. And especially, no need for balance.

Topics: Strings Attached, Balance, Needs, No Strings Attached, Fine Print

Even political insiders recognize that years of political effort on behalf of Evangelical Christians have generated little cultural gain.

source: - Tullian Tchividjian (2009). “Unfashionable: Making a Difference in the World by Being Different”, p.66, Multnomah

Topics: Christian, Years, Effort

I was always in places where I was widely accepted, approved and loved and I was finally in a place where people did not approve of me, did not accept me and did not love me. It was killing me.

source: - Source: www.christianpost.com

Topics: People, Killing, Accepted

Jesus has done everything for you.

source: - Tullian Tchividjian (2013). “One Way Love: Inexhaustible Grace for an Exhausted World”, p.21, David C Cook

Topics: Jesus, Done

The Gospel is not ultimately a defense from pain, it is the message of God's rescue through pain. In fact, it allows us to drop our defenses, to escape not from pain but from the prison of "How" and "Why" to the freedom of "Who?"

source: - Tullian Tchividjian (2012). “Glorious Ruin: How Suffering Sets You Free”, p.38, David C Cook

Topics: Pain, Defense, Messages, Message Of God

In those moments when I'm obsessively counting my sins against me, it is good news to remember that God has counted my sins against Christ.

source: - Twitter post from Feb 08, 2015

Topics: News, Remember, Sin

The overwhelming emphasis of contemporary Christianity: "Just do it." The overwhelming emphasis of Biblical Christianity: "It is finished"

source: - Twitter post from Dec 23, 2014

Topics: Biblical, Christianity, Emphasis

Whatever we may mean by 'Christian growth,' it is ultimately this: less faith in me, more faith in God.

source: - Twitter post from Sep 24, 2012

Topics: Christian, Mean, Growth, Christian Growth

You can be sure that your deepest desires reveal important truths about your spiritual condition.

source: - Tullian Tchividjian (2009). “Do I Know God?: Finding Certainty in Life's Most Important Relationship”, p.102, Multnomah

Topics: Christian, Spiritual, Important

The world tells us in a thousand different ways that the bigger we become, the freer we will be. The richer, the more beautiful, and the more powerful we grow, the more security, liberty, and happiness we will experience. And yet, the gospel tells us just the opposite, that the smaller we become, the freer we will be.

source: - Tullian Tchividjian, Nick Lannon (2015). “It Is Finished: 365 Days of Good News”, David C Cook

Topics: Beautiful, Powerful, Opposites

The ironic thing about legalism is that it not only doesn't make people work harder, it makes them give up. Moralism doesn't produce morality; rather, it produces immorality.

source: - Tullian Tchividjian (2013). “One Way Love: Inexhaustible Grace for an Exhausted World”, p.91, David C Cook

Topics: Giving Up, Hard Work, People, Ironic Things, Moralism

The good news of suffering is that it brings us to the end of ourselves - a purpose it has certainly served in my life. It brings us to the place of honesty, which is the place of desperation, which is the place of faith, which is the place of freedom.

source: - Tullian Tchividjian (2012). “Glorious Ruin: How Suffering Sets You Free”, p.195, David C Cook

Topics: Inspirational, Honesty, Suffering

As long as I am focusing on the faults of others, then I don't have to face my own.

source: - Twitter post from Nov 25, 2014

Topics: Long, Faces, Faults

When you don't have anything to lose, you discover something wonderful: you're free to take great risks without fear or reservation.

Topics: Risk, Wonderful, Reservations

Holy Saturday. The best reminder that the silence of God doesn't equal the absence of God.

source: - Twitter post from Apr 04, 2015

Topics: Silence, Absence, Holy

There is no better story in the Old Testament, or perhaps the whole Bible, for depicting the difference between the ladder-defined life and the cross-defined life than that of the Tower of Babel.

Topics: Differences, Tower Of Babel, Towers, Babel

God reminds us again and again that things between He and us are forever fixed. They are the rendezvous points where God declares to us concretely that the debt has been paid, the ledger put away, and that everything we need, in Christ we already possess. This re-convincing produces humility, because we realize that our needs are fulfilled. We don’t have to worry about ourselves anymore. This in turn frees us to stop looking out for what we think we need and liberates us to love our neighbor by looking out for what they need.

Topics: Humility, Thinking, Worry, Rendezvous

It's better to feel sorry for doing something bad than to feel superior for doing something good.

source: - Twitter post from Jan 02, 2015

Topics: Sorry, Feels, Superiors

From the time God saved me at 21 years old, I've always been fascinated by the parables of Jesus.

Topics: Jesus, Years, Parables

My job is not to show my children that I'm the man, but to show them that Christ is the man.

source: - Source: www.christianpost.com

Topics: Jobs, Children, Men

I wish I could say that everything I do is for God’s glory but I can’t. And neither can you. What I can say is Jesus’ blood covers all my efforts to glorify myself.

Topics: Jesus, Blood, Effort

The bad news that we are all guilty is met with the best news that God loves and forgives guilty people.

source: - Twitter post from Jun 17, 2015

Topics: People, Forgiving, News

Because Jesus came to secure for us what we could never secure for ourselves, life doesn't have to be a tireless effort to establish ourselves, justify ourselves, validate ourselves.

Topics: Jesus, Effort, Justify

Contrary to popular assumptions, the Bible is not a record of the blessed good, but rather the blessed bad. Thats not a typo. The Bible is a record of the blessed bad. The Bible is not a witness to the best people making it up to God; its a witness to God making it down to the worst people.

source: - Tullian Tchividjian (2013). “One Way Love: Inexhaustible Grace for an Exhausted World”, p.31, David C Cook

Topics: Blessed, People, Records, Typos

Grace could not have done it’s curing work if the law had not first done its crushing work.

Topics: Crush, Law, Grace

People who haven't experienced major setbacks sometimes feel that their hurts are somehow less legitimate or real.

source: - Tullian Tchividjian (2012). “Glorious Ruin: How Suffering Sets You Free”, p.15, David C Cook

Topics: Hurt, Real, People

Thankfully, while our self-righteousness reaches far, God's grace reaches farther.

source: - Tullian Tchividjian, Nick Lannon (2015). “It Is Finished: 365 Days of Good News”, David C Cook

Topics: Self, Grace, Righteousness, Self Righteousness

When you fail to distinguish Law and Gospel, you lose both.

Topics: Law, Failing, Loses

The people who have taught me the most about grace are those who have blown it so bad that they know how much they need it.

source: - Twitter post from Dec 07, 2014

Topics: People, Grace, Needs

When we reduce the notion of “calling” to work inside the church, we fail to equip our people to apply their Christian faith to everything they do, everywhere they are.

Topics: Christian, People, Church

Spiritual growth is marked by a growing realization of just how much grace you need.

source: - Twitter post from Jan 20, 2015

Topics: Spiritual, Grace, Growth

Because Jesus was strong for us we are free to be weak.

Topics: Jesus, Strong, Weak

Grace is thickly counter-intuitive. It feels risky and unfair. It's dangerous and disorderly. It wrestles control out of our hands. It is wild and unsettling. It turns everything that makes sense to us upside-down and inside-out.

Topics: Hands, Grace, Down And

The smaller you get-the smaller life makes you-the easier it is to see the grandeur of grace. While I am far more incapable than I may have initially thought, God is infinitely more capable than I ever hoped.

source: - "Billy Graham’s grandson takes Christians to task". Interview with Jonathan Merritt, religionnews.com. October 2, 2013.

Topics: Grace, May, Easier

...this culture of mandatory happiness actually promotes dishonesty and more suffering.

source: - Tullian Tchividjian (2012). “Glorious Ruin: How Suffering Sets You Free”, p.16, David C Cook

Topics: Suffering, Culture, Dishonesty

The gospel is not about a lifestyle that we live, it's about the law-fulfilling life that Christ lived.

source: - Source: www.christianpost.com

Topics: Law, Christ, Lifestyle, Fulfilling Life

The gospel doesn't just ignite the Christian life but it keeps Christians growing and growing every day. There's no reason to move beyond the gospel. There's only movement more into it.

source: - Source: www.christianpost.com

Topics: Christian, Moving, Movement

We are all both victims and victimizers. Just as everyone suffers, no one is innocent of causing suffering themselves.

source: - Source: www.lifeisstory.com

Topics: Suffering, Innocent, Victim

Even one who has been to God a million times with the same problem need not fear exhausting the grace of God.

source: - Twitter post from Jan 08, 2015

Topics: Grace, Needs, Problem

Thankfully, God's restraining grace keeps even the worst of us from being utterly depraved. The worst people who have ever lived could've been worse.

Topics: People, Grace, Worst, Restraining

The gospel announces that God doesn't relate to us based on our feats for Jesus, but Jesus' feats for us.

source: - Twitter post from Nov 30, 2014

Topics: Jesus, Relate, Feats

If we read the Bible asking first, 'What would Jesus do?' instead of asking 'What has Jesus done?' we’ll miss the good news that alone can set us free.

Topics: Jesus, Missing, News

The gospel sets us free to become the romantic leaders of our marriages without fright or hesitation. Because we have been forever wooed by Jesus, we are now free to forever woo our wives.

Topics: Jesus, Wife, Leader

Death is the operative device that sets us free in Christ - when we die, we truly live.

Topics: Christ, Devices, Dies

The focus of the Christian faith is not our morality; it is Jesus, who died for our immorality.

source: - Twitter post from Apr 03, 2015

Topics: Christian, Jesus, Focus, Immorality

Grace loves without reference to what may or may not happen-which is precisely why such incredible things do happen!

source: - Twitter post from Jan 20, 2018

Topics: Grace, May, Incredibles

Our assurance is anchored in the love and grace of God expressed in the glorious exchange: our sin for His righteousness.

source: - Tullian Tchividjian, Nick Lannon (2015). “It Is Finished: 365 Days of Good News”, David C Cook

Topics: Grace, Sin, Righteousness

The way of God's grace becomes indispensable when we realize that the way of God's law is inflexible.

source: - Twitter post from Feb 15, 2015

Topics: Law, Grace, Way, God's Grace

When I was 25, I believed I could change the world. At 41, I have come to the realization that I cannot change my wife, my church, or my kids, to say nothing of the world. Try as I might, I have not been able to manufacture outcomes the way I thought I could, either in my own life or other people's.

source: - "A Steadfast Lutheran Interview With Pastor Tullian Tchividjian (Part 1 of 2)". Interview with Pastor Matt Richard, steadfastlutherans.org. January 14, 2014.

Topics: Kids, People, Wife

When Martin Luther was asked what we contribute to our salvation, he said, "Sin and resistance"

source: - Twitter post from Apr 04, 2015

Topics: Resistance, Sin, Luther

Disobedience happens not when we think too much grace but when we think too little of it

Topics: Thinking, Grace, Littles

The Gospel announces that Jesus came to acquit the guilty. He came to judge and be judged in our place. Christ came to satisfy the deep judgment against us once and for all so that we could be free from the judgement of God, others, and ourselves.

Topics: Jesus, Judging, Judgement

When God saved me, He gave me a thirst to learn and to read and to study. I thrived in college. I got a bachelor's degree in philosophy and then went to Reformed Theological Seminary in Orlando.

Topics: Philosophy, College, Degrees, Orlando, Seminary

The hub of Christianity is not "do something for Jesus." The hub of Christianity is "Jesus has done everything for you".

source: - Twitter post from Mar 19, 2015

Topics: Jesus, Done, Christianity

When it comes to understanding and appreciating grace, our biggest problem is our so-called goodness...not our self-perceived badness.

source: - Twitter post from Dec 18, 2014

Topics: Self, Appreciate, Grace

God's grace meets us in messy places because messy places are all that there are.

source: - Twitter post from Apr 25, 2015

Topics: Grace, God's Grace, Messy

Since Genesis 3 we have been addicted to setting our sights on something, someone, smaller than Jesus.

Topics: Jesus, Sight, Genesis

I'm not sure I'll ever fully understand why some Christians get mad when we say that the ultimate hero in the Bible is not Noah, Abraham, Moses, David, Paul, etc... but Jesus.

Topics: Christian, Jesus, Hero

Long-term, gospel-motivate d obedience can only come from the grace of what Jesus has already done, not the guilt of what we must do.

Topics: Jesus, Long, Grace

Our default faith mode is to trust, above all things, our own ability to create a safe, controllable, predictable world.

Topics: World, Safe, Default

Grace is upside-down, to-do-list wrecking, scandalous and way-too free. It's one-way love.

Topics: Grace, Way, Lists, Scandalous

The law is God's first word; the gospel is God's final word.

Topics: Law, Finals, Firsts

Performancism is the mindset that equates our identity and value directly with our performance and accomplishments.

Topics: Accomplishment, Identity, Mindset

God is inviting you today to appropriately grieve your pains and losses and to acknowledge the world is seriously broken.

source: - Source: www.lifeisstory.com

Topics: Pain, Loss, Grieving, Pain And Loss

I think there is tribalism is a big deal inside of the church, that the church thinks of themselves as a tribe and not a mission.

source: - Source: www.christianpost.com

Topics: Thinking, Church, Tribes, Tribalism

The pain cleared my vision, and once it was taken away, I realized just how much I'd been relying on the endorsement of others to make me feel like I mattered.

source: - Source: www.lifeisstory.com

Topics: Pain, Taken, Vision

Don't get me wrong - what we do is important. But it is infinitely less important than what Jesus has done for us.

source: - Tullian Tchividjian (2013). “One Way Love: Inexhaustible Grace for an Exhausted World”, p.21, David C Cook

Topics: Jesus, Important, Done

Explanations are a substitute for trust.

source: - Tullian Tchividjian (2009). “Do I Know God?: Finding Certainty in Life's Most Important Relationship”, p.162, Multnomah

Topics: Substitutes, Explanation

The Gospel frees us to speak honestly about the reality of pain, confident that nothing is riding on our ability to cope with or fend off suffering.

source: - Source: www.lifeisstory.com

Topics: Pain, Reality, Suffering

We must reacquaint ourselves with the biblical weight of the problem that we less-than-perfect human beings contend with in the face of a holy and righteous God.

source: - Source: www.lifeisstory.com

Topics: Biblical, Perfect, Weight

The more I focused on my need to get better the worse I actually got - the more neurotic and self-conscious and self-absorbed I became.

source: - Source: www.lifeisstory.com

Topics: Self, Get Better, Needs, Self Absorbed

If you have suffered the loss of a family member to chronic disease, if you suffer debilitating seasons of depression, if you have lost your job and livelihood, gone through a divorce that came out of the blue, know that God is not punishing you. He is not waiting for you to do something.

source: - Source: www.lifeisstory.com

Topics: Jobs, Divorce, Loss

I think for far too long the Church has concluded that Christians don't need the gospel, it's simple what non-Christian people need in order to be saved.

source: - Source: www.christianpost.com

Topics: Christian, Simple, Thinking

The Christian life has been nothing more and nothing less than a daily dependence on and a rediscovery of God's grace.

source: - Source: www.christianpost.com

Topics: Christian, Grace, Rediscovery, God's Grace

To progress is always to begin again.

Topics: Progress, Begin Again

Our minds are affected by sin. Our hearts are affected by sin. Our wills are affected by sin. Our bodies are affected by sin.

Topics: Heart, Mind, Body

When it comes to engaging and influencing culture, too many Christians think too highly of political activism.

Topics: Christian, Thinking, Political, Political Activism

Hollywood is not known as a culture of grace. Dog-eat-dog is more like it. People love you one day and hate you the next. Personal value is very much attached to box office revenues and the unpredictable and often cruel winds of fashion.

source: - Tullian Tchividjian (2013). “One Way Love: Inexhaustible Grace for an Exhausted World”, p.119, David C Cook

Topics: Dog, Fashion, Hate, Personal Values, Box Office

I ended up dropping out of high school at 16 and getting kicked out of my home. My parents told me, sadly, that because I was so disruptive to the rest of the household, that I could no longer live under their roof.

Topics: Home, School, Parent, Dropping Out

When we imply that our works are for God and not our neighbor, we perpetuate the idea that God's love for us is dependent on what we do instead of on what Christ has done.

Topics: Ideas, Done, Christ

To be Biblically balanced is to let our theology and preaching be proportioned by the Bible's radically disproportionate focus on God's saving love for sinners seen and accomplished in the crucified and risen Christ.

Topics: Focus, Saving, Christ, Focus On God, Saving Love

There's absolutely no way you can feel the freedom to embarrass and humiliate yourself unless you have finally recognized that your identity is in someone other than yourself.

Topics: Identity, Way, Feels

The passive righteousness of faith frees me from passing final judgment on myself.

Topics: Finals, Judgment, Passing

The truth is that when it comes to suffering, if we do not go to our graves in confusion, we will not go to our graves trusting. Explanations are a substitute for trust.

source: - "Where Is God in Our Suffering? Tullian Tchividjian's 'Glorious Ruin' Offers New Perspective". Interview with Stoyan Zaimov, www.christianpost.com. October 30, 2012.

Topics: Confusion, Suffering, Truth Is

What is indisputable is the fact that unbelief is the force that gives birth to all of our bad behavior and every moral failure. It is the root.

Topics: Roots, Giving, Facts, Moral Failure, Bad Behavior