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ddb4cce
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In a nutshell, the Bible from Genesis 3 to Revelation 22 tells the story of a God reckless with desire to get his family back.
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Philip Yancey |
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I would far rather convey grace than explain it.
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Philip Yancey |
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Power can do everything but the most important thing: it cannot control love.
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love
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Philip Yancey |
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6626d86
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One more, final question came from the audience on my last night in Newtown, and it was the one I most did not want to hear: "Will God protect my child?" I stayed silent for what seemed like minutes. More than anything I wanted to answer with authority, "Yes! Of course God will protect you. Let me read you some promises from the Bible." I knew, though, that behind me on the same platform twenty-six candles were flickering in memory of victi..
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Philip Yancey |
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Christians are not perfect, by any means, but they can be people made fully alive.
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Philip Yancey |
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Grace is everywhere, like lenses that go unnoticed because you are looking through them.
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Philip Yancey |
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women much like this prostitute fled toward Jesus, not away from him. The worse a person felt about herself, the more likely she saw Jesus as a refuge. Has the church lost that gift?
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Philip Yancey |
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6648a29
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We grow up hungry for love, and in ways so deep as to remain unexpressed we long for our Maker to love us.
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Philip Yancey |
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I go to church as an expression of my need for God and for God's family.
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Philip Yancey |
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Some things just have to be believed to be seen.
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Philip Yancey |
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cee30c1
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At the heart of the gospel is a God who deliberately surrenders to the wild, irresistable power of love.
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Philip Yancey |
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a87e99f
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Misunderstanding must be nakedly exposed before true understanding can begin to flourish.
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understanding
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Philip Yancey |
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0ee5b06
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We do well to remember that the Bible has far more to say about how to live during the journey than about the ultimate destination.
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Philip Yancey |
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Dependence, humility, simplicity, cooperation, and a sense of abandon are qualities greatly prized in the spiritual life, but extremely elusive for people who live in comfort.
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Philip Yancey |
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As I look around on Sunday morning at the people populating the pews, I see the risk that God has assumed. For whatever reason, God now reveals himself in the world not through a pillar of smoke and fire, not even through the physical body of his Son in Galilee, but through the mongrel collection that comprises my local church and every other such gathering in God's name. (p. 68, Church: Why Bother?)
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christian-living
belief-in-god
church
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Philip Yancey |
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26d1f97
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I have found that living with faith in an unseen world requires constant effort.
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Philip Yancey |
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a530e44
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Jesus gave us a model for the work of the church at the Last Supper. While his disciples kept proposing more organization - Hey, let's elect officers, establish hierarchy, set standards of professionalism - Jesus quietly picked up a towel and basin of water and began to wash their feet.
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spirituality
church
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Philip Yancey |
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4da3a30
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God does not seem impressed by size or power or wealth. Faith is what he wants, and the heroes who emerge are heroes of faith, not strength or wealth.
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faith
god
hero
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Philip Yancey |
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8ee7563
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We feel pain as an outrage; Jesus did too, which is why he performed miracles of healing. In Gethsemane, he did not pray, "Thank you for this opportunity to suffer," but rather pled desperately for an escape. And yet he was willing to undergo suffering in service of a higher goal. In the end he left the hard questions ("if there be any other way . . .") to the will of the Father, and trusted that God could use even the outrage of his death ..
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Philip Yancey |
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c1a31df
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When he lived on earth, [Jesus] surrounded himself with ordinary people who misunderstood him, failed to exercise much spiritual power, and sometimes behaved like churlish schoolchildren.
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Philip Yancey |
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fb15f72
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Jesus] invoked a different kind of power: love, not coercion.
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Philip Yancey |
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6b0e655
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Bear one another's burdens, the Bible says. It is a lesson about pain that we all can agree on. Some of us will not see pain as a gift; some will always accuse God of being unfair for allowing it. But, the fact is, pain and suffering are here among us, and we need to respond in some way. The response Jesus gave was to bear the burdens of those he touched. To live in the world as his body, his emotional incarnation, we must follow his exampl..
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Philip Yancey |
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2205eee
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As we rely on God, and trust his Spirit to mold us in his image, true hope takes shape within us, "a hope that does not disappoint."We can literally become better persons because of suffering. Pain, however meaningless it may seem at the time, can be transformed. Where is God when it hurts? He is in us--not in the things that hurt--helping to transform bad into good.We can safely say that God can bring good out of evil; we cannot say that G..
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Philip Yancey |
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Whatever else it is, the kingdom of God is decidedly not a call to violent revolution.
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Philip Yancey |
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Where is God when it hurts? We know one answer because God came to earth and showed us. You need only follow Jesus around and note how he responded to the tragedies of his day: large-scale tragedies such as an act of government terrorism in the temple or a tower collapsing on eighteen innocent bystanders; as well as small tragedies, such as a widow who has lost her only son or even a Roman soldier whose servant has fallen ill. At moments li..
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doubt
compassion
faith
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Philip Yancey |
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d09b69f
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Family is the one human institution we have no choice over. We get in simply by being born, and as a result we are involuntarily thrown together with a menagerie of strange and unlike people. Church calls for another step: to voluntarily choose to band together with a strange menagerie because of a common bond in Jesus Christ. I have found that such a community more resembles a family than any other human institution. Henri Nouwen once defi..
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faith
family
church
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Philip Yancey |
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dcb3d32
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C. S. Lewis observed that almost all crimes of Christian history have come about when religion is confused with politics. Politics, which always runs by the rules of ungrace, allures us to trade away grace for power, a temptation the church has often been unable to resist.
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Philip Yancey |
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170fce4
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As the books of Job, Jeremiah, and Habakkuk clearly show, God has a high threshold of tolerance for what appropriate to say in a prayer. God can "handle" my unsuppressed rage. I may well find that my vindictive feelings need God's correction - but only by taking those feelings to God will I have the opportunity for correction and healing."
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rage
prayer
psalm
healing
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Philip Yancey |
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2278906
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We admit that we will never reach our ideal in this life, a distinctive the church claims that most other human institutions try to deny.
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Philip Yancey |
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2ec291e
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On a small scale, person-to-person, Jesus encountered the kinds of suffering common to all of us. And how did he respond? Avoiding philosophical theories and theological lessons, he reached out with healing and compassion. He forgave sin, healed the afflicted, cast out evil, and even overcame death.
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Philip Yancey |
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2f200bb
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I fell in love. It felt exactly like a fall, a head-over-heels tumble into a state of unbearable lightness. The earth tilted on its axis. I did not believe in romantic love at the time, thinking it a human construct, an invention of fourteenth century Italian poets. I was as unprepared for love as I had been for goodness and beauty. Suddenly, my heart seemed swollen, too large for my chest.
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Philip Yancey |
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485f73d
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Jesus never met a disease he could not cure, a birth defect he could not reverse, a demon he could not exorcise. But he did meet skeptics he could not convince and sinners he could not convert. Forgiveness of sins requires an act of will on the receiver's part, and some who heard Jesus' strongest words about grace and forgiveness turned away unrepentant.
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Philip Yancey |
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d146531
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As I have said, the Bible consistently changes the questions we bring to the problem of pain. It rarely, or ambiguously, answers the backward-looking question "Why?" Instead, it raises the very different, forward-looking question, "To what end?"We are not put on earth merely to satisfy our desires, to pursue life, liberty, and happiness.We are here to be changed, to be made more like God in order to prepare us for a lifetime with him. And t..
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Philip Yancey |
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dd368df
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We have taller buildings but shorter tempers; wider freeways but narrower viewpoints; we spend more but have less; we buy more but enjoy it less; we have bigger houses and smaller families; more conveniences, yet less time; we have more degrees but less sense; more knowledge but less judgment; more experts, yet more problems; we have more gadgets but less satisfaction; more medicine, yet less wellness; we take more vitamins but see fewer re..
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Philip Yancey |
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0cfcb15
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A philosophy may explain difficult things, but has no power to change them. The gospel, the story of Jesus' life, promises change.
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Philip Yancey |
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21f97e9
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The first step in helping a suffering person is to acknowledge that the pain is valid, and worthy of a sympathetic response.
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Philip Yancey |
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8d48dfc
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How differently would the world view Christians if we focused on our own failings rather than on society's? As I read the New Testament I am struck by how little attention it gives to the faults of the surrounding culture. Jesus and Paul say nothing about violent gladiator games or infanticide, both common practices among the Romans. In a telling passage, the apostle Paul responds fiercely to a report of incest in the Corinthian church. He ..
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Philip Yancey |
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06cddac
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Death, decay, entropy, and destruction are the true suspensions of God's laws; miracles are the early glimpses of restoration.
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Philip Yancey |
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815f19f
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We are all trophies of God's grace, some more dramatically than others; Jesus came for the sick and not the well, for the sinner and not the righteous. He came to redeem and transform, to make all things new. May you go forth more committed than ever to nourish the souls who you touch, those tender lives who have sustained the enormous assaults of the universe. (pp.88)
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grace
redemption
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Philip Yancey |
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e33e2b7
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People on sinking ships do not complain of distractions during their prayer.
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Philip Yancey |
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One bold message in the Book of Job is that you can say anything to God. Throw at him your grief, your anger, your doubt, your bitterness, your betrayal, your disappointment--he can absorb them all. As often as not, spiritual giants of the Bible are shown contending with God. They prefer to go away limping, like Jacob, rather than to shut God out. In this respect, the Bible prefigures a tenet of modern psychology: you can't really deny your..
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Philip Yancey |
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7ebbf99
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Frederick Buechner writes, "Turn around and believe that the good news that we are loved is gooder than we ever dared hope, and that to believe in that good news, to live out of it and toward it, to be in love with that good news, is of all glad things in this world the gladdest thing of all."
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Philip Yancey |
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31c14ba
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Life with God is an individual matter, and general formulas do not easily apply.
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life
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Philip Yancey |
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8635469
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C. S. Lewis introduced the phrase "pain, the megaphone of God." "God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains," he said; "it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world."3 The word megaphone is apropos, because by its nature pain shouts. When I stub my toe or twist an ankle, pain loudly announces to my brain that something is wrong. Similarly, the existence of suffering on this earth is, I believe, a scr..
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Philip Yancey |