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Our best efforts at changing society will fall short unless the church can teach the world how to love.
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Philip Yancey |
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A cease-fire between human beings depends upon a cease-fire with God.
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Philip Yancey |
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Why value humility in our approach to God? Because it accurately reflects the truth. Most of what I am -- my nationality and mother tongue, my race, my looks and body shape, my intelligence, the century in which I was born, the fact that I am still alive and relatively healthy -- I had little or no control over. On a larger scale, I cannot affect the rotation of planet earth, or the orbit that maintains a proper distance from the sun so tha..
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Philip Yancey |
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When a doctoral student at Princeton asked, "What is there left in the world for original dissertation research?" Albert Einstein replied, "Find out about prayer. Somebody must find out about prayer."
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Philip Yancey |
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We pray because we can't help it. The
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Philip Yancey |
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La fidelidad implica aprender a confiar que, mas alla del perimetro de la oscuridad, Dios aun reina y no nos ha abandonado, no importa lo que parezca.
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Philip Yancey |
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Earth is crammed with heaven And every bush aflame with God But only those who see take off their shoes. --ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING
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Philip Yancey |
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Andy Rooney, the late commentator on the 60 Minutes television show, once said, "I've decided I'm against abortion. I think it's murder. But I have a dilemma in that I much prefer the pro-choice to the pro-life people. I'd much rather eat dinner with a group of the former."
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Philip Yancey |
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Be careful," warned Nietzsche, "lest in fighting the dragon you become the dragon."
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Philip Yancey |
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As a Jewish rabbi put it, "A man should carry two stones in his pocket. On one should be inscribed, I am but dust and ashes.' On the other, For my sake was the world created.' And he should use each stone as he needs it."7-11"
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Philip Yancey |
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Jesus was not crucified for being a good citizen, for being just a little nicer than everyone else. The powers of his day correctly saw him and his followers as subversives because they took orders from a higher power than Rome or Jerusalem. What would a subversive church look like in the modern United States?
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Philip Yancey |
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I do not know if that theory is correct, but I do know that singling out one behavior as "sin" and emphasizing it over others provides a convenient way of dodging our own need for grace. High-minded moralism and shrill pronouncements of judgment may help fundraising, but they undermine a gospel of grace."
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Philip Yancey |
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Jesus' death, he said, broke down the temple barriers, dismantling the dividing walls of hostility that had separated categories of people. Grace found a way.
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Philip Yancey |
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A Franciscan Benediction
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Philip Yancey |
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Jesus gave a vivid object lesson his last night with the disciples by washing their feet, like a servant. Parents know the self-giving principle by instinct as they pour their energies into their self-absorbed children. Volunteers in soup kitchens and hospices and mission projects learn this lesson by doing.* What seems like sacrifice becomes instead a kind of nourishment because dispensing grace enriches the giver as well as the receiver.
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Philip Yancey |
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From Jesus I learn that God is on the side of the sufferer.
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Philip Yancey |
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The surgery of life hurts. It helps me, though, to know that the surgeon himself, the Wounded Surgeon, has felt every stab of pain and every sorrow.
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Philip Yancey |
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Jesus, who did not sin, also felt pain.
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Philip Yancey |
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Politics draws lines between people; in contrast, Jesus' love cuts across those lines and dispenses grace.
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Philip Yancey |
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Paul says that Spirit lives inside us, detecting needs we cannot articulate and expressing them in a language we cannot comprehend. When we don't know what to pray, he fills in the blanks. Evidently, it is our very helplessness that God, too, delights in. Our weakness gives opportunity for his strength.
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Philip Yancey |
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God does not "keep" his people. He loves us, gives himself to us, and eagerly awaits our free response. God wants us to choose to love him freely, even when that choice involves pain, because we are committed to him, not to our own good feelings and rewards. He wants us to cleave to him, as Job did, even when we have every reason to deny him hotly. That, I believe, is the central message of Job. Satan had taunted God with the accusation tha..
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Philip Yancey |
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La idea central en la mayor parte del Antiguo Testamento podria ser llamada <>. -- G. K. Chesterton
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Philip Yancey |
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After reporting on such moments, the historian Paul Johnson concludes, "Attempts to perfect Christian societies in this world, whether conducted by popes or revolutionaries, have tended to degenerate into red terrors."
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Philip Yancey |
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Prayer is an expression of who we are.... We are a living incompleteness. We are a gap, an emptiness that calls for fulfillment.
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Philip Yancey |
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God dispenses gifts, not wages. None of us gets paid according to merit, for none of us comes close to satisfying God's requirements for a perfect life. If paid on the basis of fairness, we would all end up in hell.
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Philip Yancey |
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One man told me the most helpful person during his long illness was an office colleague who called every day, just to check. His visits, usually twice a week, never exceeded fifteen minutes, but the consistency of his calls and visits became a fixed point, something he could count on when everything else in his life seemed unstable.
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Philip Yancey |
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We respond to healing grace by giving it away.
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Philip Yancey |
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Moreover, conservative Christians have come to accept that Jesus' gospel applies to the whole person and not just the soul. Didn't Jesus inaugurate his own ministry with a declaration of good news for the poor, the oppressed, the prisoners, and the blind?
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Philip Yancey |
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Like everyone else, evangelicals have a right to present arguments on all the issues, but the moment we present them as part of some "Christian" platform we abandon our moral high ground."
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Philip Yancey |
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Prayer is not a means of removing the unknown and unpredictable elements in life, but rather a way of including the unknown and unpredictable in the outworking of the grace of God in our lives.
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Philip Yancey |
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True health is the strength to live, the strength to suffer, and the strength to die.
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Philip Yancey |
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The kingdom of suffering is a democracy, and we all stand in it or alongside it with nothing but our naked humanity.
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Philip Yancey |
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Stanley Hauerwas, named "America's best theologian" by Time magazine, summed up the problem: "I have come to think that the challenge confronting Christians is not that we do not believe what we say, though that can be a problem, but that what we say we believe does not seem to make any difference for either the church or the world." When a poll of college students asked,"
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Philip Yancey |
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How differently will I relate to the uncommitted if I view them not as evil or unsaved but rather as lost.
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Philip Yancey |
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Jesus, who said little about how believers should behave when we gather together and much about how we can affect the world around us.
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Philip Yancey |
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As a counterbalance to the list of seven deadly sins, the church in the Middle Ages came up with a list of seven works of mercy: to feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, clothe the naked, house the homeless, visit the sick, ransom the captive, bury the dead.
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Philip Yancey |
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Jesus did not eliminate evil; he revealed a God willing, at immense cost, to forgive it and to heal its damage.
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Philip Yancey |
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You don't listen to me. * You judge me. * Your faith confuses me. * You talk about what's wrong instead of making it right. Reviewing these complaints, it occurs to me that Christians fail to communicate to others because we ignore basic principles in relationship. When we make condescending judgments, or proclaim lofty words that don't translate into action, or simply speak without first listening, we fail to love -- and thus deter a thir..
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Philip Yancey |
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A counselor, David Seamands, summed up his career this way: Many years ago I was driven to the conclusion that the two major causes of most emotional problems among evangelical Christians are these: the failure to understand, receive, and live out God's unconditional grace and forgiveness; and the failure to give out that unconditional love, forgiveness, and grace to other people. . . . We read, we hear, we believe a good theology of ..
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Philip Yancey |
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Contrary to popular belief, love is actually a reflection of how much we 'honor' another person--for at its core genuine love is a decision, not a feeling.
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Philip Yancey |
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The only hope for the future lay in an all-embracing attitude of forgiveness of the peoples who had been our enemies.
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Philip Yancey |
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The world thirsts for grace. When grace descends, the world falls silent before it.
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Philip Yancey |
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I could no more pray the Our Father, I could no longer call myself a Christian, if I refuse to forgive. Humanly speaking, I cannot do it, but God will give us his strength!
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Philip Yancey |
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culture? As Lesslie Newbigin poses the question, "Can one who goes the way of the Cross sit in the seat of Pilate when it falls vacant?"
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Philip Yancey |