I believe that one of the greatest lies of the centuries is the attitude among Christians that men do not want God. The Christian world has been deceived into thinking that men will not be responsive to the gospel of our Savior. After more than 20 years of sharing Christ with thousands of students and laymen, individually and in small and large groups, I can tell you that the Holy Spirit has created a hunger for God in the hearts of multitudes around the world.
Success in witnessing is simply sharing Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit and leaving the results to God.
When you personally introduce another to Christ, that is spiritual addition. But when you deliberately disciple the new Christian and help him to win, disciple, and send others who will do the same to win and disciple others, generation after generation, that is spiritual multiplication!
The devil’s goal isn’t to stop God (he can't!), it’s to stop our heart attitude of dependence on God.
We intuitively think that the way to grow is to hear exhortation. That is normal and natural to the human mind. And exhortation has an important place. We need it. We are not mature Christians if we can never bear to hear the challenges and commands of Scripture. But the Bible teaches that healthy spiritual growth takes place only when such commands land on those who know they are accepted and safe irrespective of the degree to which they successfully keep those commands.
You can't crowbar your way into change. You can only be melted.
One of the great mistakes generation after generation through church history is to slather rules onto behavior and think that external behavior is what fosters, or even accurately reflects, vital spiritual growth.
Growth in godliness is not generated by conformity to any external code—whether the Ten Commandments or the commands of Jesus or self-imposed rules or your own conscience. This does not mean the commands of Scripture are worthless. On the contrary, they are "holy and righteous and good" (Rom. 7:12). But the commands of the Bible are the steering wheel, not the engine, to your growth. They are vitally instructive, but they do not themselves give you the power you need to obey the instruction.
Just as we are tempted to strengthen our justified state through internal contribution, so we are tempted to strengthen our sanctification through external rules.
1. Justification is outside-in, and we lose it if we make it inside-out. 2. Sanctification is inside-out, and we lose it if we make it outside-in.
The gospel isn't a hotel to pass through but a home to live in. Not jumper cables to get the Christian life started but an engine to keep the Christian life going.
The defining hallmark of your life is not your cleanness but his embrace.
Your life doesn't disprove Christ's love; his life proves it.
Don't judge a hospital by the sick people in it.
If a group of people have always lived in the dark and are told a light is going to be turned on so that they will all be able to see each other, they may very well object, believing that since a single lamp will be shining the same light on everyone, they will all look identical to each other. But, of course, we know that the light would bring out their individual distinctiveness. Union with a single Christ is like that. You are given back you true self. You become the you that you were meant to be. (Analogy originally from C.S. Lewis)
When you turn to Christ, you don't have a repentance apart from Christ, you just have Christ. Therefore don't seek repentance or faith as such but seek Christ. When you have Christ you have repentance and faith. Beware of seeking an experience of repentance; just seek an experience of Christ.
Repentance that does not turn to Jesus is not real repentance; faith that has not first turned from Self is not real faith.
Fullness can be had only through emptiness.
There is a strange though consistent message throughout the Bible. We are told time and again that the way forward will feel like we're going backward.
This book is written by a fellow patient, not a doctor.
Idolatry is the folly of asking a gift to be a giver.
Your tears are His tools.
Justification by sanctification is man's way to heaven.... Sanctification by justification is God's.
Your suffering doesn't define you, His does.
We grow in Christ no further than we enjoy His embrace of us.
There are two ways to live the Christian life. You can live it either for the heart of Christ or from the heart of Christ.
If sin were the color blue; we do not occasionally say or do something blue; all that we say, do, and think has some taint of blue. Not so Jesus.
The Christian life boils down to two steps: 1. Go to Jesus 2. See #2
The heart of sin is the displacement of God
Never be so kind You forget to be clever Never be so clever You forget to be kind
Only a human can substitute for human lives But only God can take the wrath of God and survive
When was the last time you did something life giving?
Remember to breath!
Boundaries are the distance I can love you and me at the same time.
Let what you love define you, not what you don’t.
