Quotes

My friend Kurt Teasley started a book of good quotes, an idea I would like to imitate here. I loved it; he would get so pumped up about one, and he has been known to wield those quotes like conversational grenades. Oh, how fun it is to talk deeply about important things, and oh, how helpful are those older, wiser men and women who have distilled truth with such clarity. Go first to Scripture to have your mind renewed, but don't hesitate to sometimes wander by this page, too, to see if any new thought-provokers have been added. Enjoy.  I begin with the four quotes I probably use most often use...

The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it. (Flannery

O'Connor)

God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him. (John Piper)

What comes to mind when we think about God is the most important thing about us. (AW Tozer)

Be killing sin, or it will be killing you. (John Owen)

And of course, we must hear from one of my favorite writers, a very ordinary layman of the Church of England...

Indeed, if we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that Our Lord finds our desires, not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased. (CS Lewis)

You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations — these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit — immortal horrors or everlasting splendours. (CS Lewis)

A young man who wishes to remain a sound atheist cannot be too careful of his reading. (CS Lewis)

Christianity, if false, is of no importance, and if true, of infinite importance. The only thing it cannot be is moderately important. (CS Lewis)

God cannot give us a happiness and peace apart from Himself, because it is not there. There is no such thing. (CS Lewis)

I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else. (CS Lewis)

Miracles are a retelling in small letters of the very same story which is written across the whole world in letters too large for some of us to see. (CS Lewis)

We all want progress, but if you're on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road; in that case, the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive. (CS Lewis)

If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world. (CS Lewis)

To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket — safe, dark, motionless, airless — it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The alternative to tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy, is damnation. The only place outside of Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is Hell. (CS Lewis)

I need Christ, not something that resembles Him. (CS Lewis)

Everyone feels benevolent if nothing happens to be annoying him at the moment. (CS Lewis)

The Christian does not think that God will love us because we are good, but God will make us good because he loves us. (CS Lewis)

And here are some other good ones I've run across...

One hundred religious persons knit into a unity by careful organizations do not constitute a church any more than eleven dead men make a football team. The first requisite is life, always. (AW Tozer)

This was Kurt's bombshell in at least one conversation... It is doubtful whether God can bless a man greatly until He has hurt him deeply. (AW Tozer)

The custom of sinning takes away the sense of it, the course of the world takes away the shame of it. (John Owen)

Resolved, never to do anything which I should be afraid to do if it were the last hour of my life. (Jonathan Edwards)

An older theologian's original statement of Piper's famous quote... The happiness of the creature consists in rejoicing in God, by which also God is magnified and exalted. (Jonathan Edwards)

The essence of faith is being satisfied with all God is for us in Jesus. (John Piper)

You and I have more in common morally with Adolf Hitler than we do with God. The gap in holiness which differentiates you and me with Adolf Hitler is infinitesimal compared to the gap that separates you and me from God. (CJ Mahaney)

Listen to your life. See it for the fathomless mystery that it is. In the boredom and pain of it no less than in the excitement and gladness: touch, taste, smell your way to the holy and hidden heart of it because in the last analysis all moments are key moments, and life itself is grace. (Frederick Buechner)

When we walk in the Lord's presence, everything we see, hear, touch, or taste reminds us of Him. This is what is meant by a prayerful life. It is not a life in which we say many prayers but a life in which nothing, absolutely nothing, is done, said, or understood independently of Him who is the origin and purpose of our existence. (Henri Nouwen)

I would sooner walk in the dark, and hold hard to a promise of my God, than trust in the light of the brightest day that ever dawned. (Charles Spurgeon)

I had rather be in hell with Christ, than be in heaven without Him. (Martin Luther)

He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose. (Jim Elliot)

When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die. (Dietrich Bonhoeffer)

Christianity has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and not tried. (GK Chesterton)

Let your religion be less of a theory and more of a love affair. (GK Chesterton)

Tolerance is the virtue of the man without convictions. (GK Chesterton)

Solitude is not something you must hope for in the future. Rather, it is a deepening of the present, and unless you look for it in the present you will never find it. (Thomas Merton)

I submit to you that if a man hasn't discovered something that he will die for, he isn't fit to live. (Martin Luther King Jr.)

Our life of poverty is as necessary as the work itself. Only in heaven will we see how much we owe to the poor for helping us to love God better because of them. (Mother Theresa)

God judged it better to bring good out of evil than to suffer no evil to exist. (Augustine)

Love God, and do as you please. (Augustine)

Grant what thou commandest and then command what thou wilt. (Augustine)

Morality will keep you out of jail, but only the blood of Jesus will keep you out of hell.  (Spurgeon)

From Rica Cobb's facebook status...  Before you consider getting on one knee, you should get on two.  (Keith Coker)

By perseverance the snail reached the ark.  (Spurgeon)

Our anxiety does not empty tomorrow of its sorrow, but only empties today of its strength.  (Spurgeon)

Many men owe the grandeur of their lives to their tremendous difficulties.  (Spurgeon)

Faith is a refusal to panic.  (Martyn Lloyd-Jones)

People tell me judge not lest ye be judged. I always tell them, twist not scripture lest ye be like Satan.  (Paul Washer)

What’s the will of God for my life? You don’t need to know the will of God in your life; you need to know the God of your life!  (Paul Washer)

Most of you live your life on flimsy little songs, not upon the word of God.  (Paul Washer)

A man who is intimate with God will never be intimidated by man.  (Leonard Ravenhill)

Faith is permitting ourselves to be seized by the things we do not see  (Luther)

When asked to recant before the powerful Catholic Church, Martin Luther replies...  I cannot and will not recant anything, for to go against conscience is neither right nor safe.  Here I stand, I can do no other, so help me God.  Amen.  (Luther)

Our Lord has written the promise of resurrection, not in books alone, but in every leaf in springtime.  (Luther)

Joy is the simplest form of gratitude.  (Karl Barth)


Why do bad things happen to good people?  That only happened once, and He volunteered.  (RC Sproul Jr.) 


For, since we are all naturally prone to hypocrisy, any empty semblance of righteousness is quite enough to satisfy us instead of righteousness itself.  (Calvin)


...men are never duly touched and impressed with a  conviction of their insignificance, until they have contrasted themselves with the majesty of God.  (Calvin)   


We resent his intrusions into our privacy, his demand for our homage, his expectation of our obedience.  Why can't he mind his own business, we ask petulantly, and leave us alone?  To which he instantly replies that we are his business and that he will never leave us alone.  (John Stott)


Who delivered up Jesus to die?  Not Judas, for money; not Pilate, for fear; not the Jews, for envy; -but the Father, for love!  (Octavius Winslow)




If God like a father denies us what we want now, it is in order to give us some far better thing later on.  The will of God, we can rest assured, is invariably a better thing.  (Elizabeth Elliot)


The place God calls you to is where your deep gladness and the world's deep hunger meet.  (Frederick Buechner)


God will take you where you did not intend to go in order to produce in you that which you could not achieve on your own.  (Paul Tripp)


Do you wish to see God's love?  Look at the cross.  Do you wish to see God's anger/wrath?  Look at the cross?  (DA Carson)