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Perhaps the reason politics has proved such a snare for the church is that power rarely coexists with love. People in power draw up lists of friends and enemies, then reward their friends and punish their enemies. Christians are commanded to love even their enemies.
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Philip Yancey |
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I have written about the "toxic church" I grew up in: a legalistic, angry, racist church in the South. I joke about being "in recovery" from that church, learning along the way that much presented as absolute truth was in fact wrong. As a result, when I began writing I saw myself as someone on the edge, more comfortable asking questions than proposing answers. My early book titles (Where Is God When It Hurts, Disappointment with God) betray..
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Philip Yancey |
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I grew up with the strong impression that a person became spiritual by attending to these gray-area rules. For the life of me, I could not figure out much difference between the dispensations of Law and Grace. My visits to other churches have convinced me that this ladder-like approach to spirituality is nearly universal. Catholics, Mennonites, Churches of Christ, Lutherans, and Southern Baptists all have their own custom agenda of legalism..
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Philip Yancey |
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I get mailings from Amnesty International, and as I look at their photos of men and women who have been beaten and cattle-prodded and jabbed and spit on and electrocuted, I ask myself, "What kind of human being could do that to another human being?" Then, I read the book of Acts and meet the kind of person who could do such a thing, now an apostle of grace, a servant of Jesus Christ, the greatest missionary history has ever known. If God ca..
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Philip Yancey |
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Somehow, that "faith" was what God valued, and it soon became clear that faith was the best way for humans to express a love for God."
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Philip Yancey |
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the New Testament holds up the model of a church whose activities exist primarily for the sake of outsiders. What keeps us from becoming the church God had in mind?
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Philip Yancey |
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Self-sufficiency which first reared its head in the Garden of Eden, is the most fatal sin because it pulls us as if by a magnet that their lack of self-sufficiency is obvious to them every day. They must turn somewhere for strength, and sometimes they go through life relying on their natural gifts. But there's a chance, just a chance, that people who lack such natural advantages may cry out to God in their time of need.
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Philip Yancey |
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The test of observance of Christ's teachings is our consciousness of our failure to attain an ideal perfection. The degree to which we draw near this perfection cannot be seen; all we can see is the extent of our deviation. LEO TOLSTOY The
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Philip Yancey |
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when I turn from church history and examine myself, I find that I too am vulnerable to the Temptation. I lack the willpower to resist shortcut solutions to human needs. I lack the patience to allow God to work in a slow, "gentlemanly" way. I want to seize control myself, to compel others to help accomplish the causes I believe in. I am willing to trade away certain freedoms for the guarantee of safety and protection. I am willing to trade a..
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Philip Yancey |
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Grace means there is nothing we can do to make God love us more... And grace means there is nothing we can do to make God love us less... Grace means that God already loves us as much as an infinite God can possibly love.
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love
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Philip Yancey |
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To pray is to walk in the full light of God, and to say simply, without holding back, 'I am human and you are God.
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Philip Yancey |
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The atheistic philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche was once asked what made him so negative toward Christians. He replied, "I would believe in their salvation if they looked a little more like people who have been saved."
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Philip Yancey |
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God is the ultimate judge of hypocrisy in the church, I decided; I would leave such judgment in God's capable hands. I began to relax and grow softer, more forgiving of others. After all, who has a perfect spouse, or perfect parents or children? We do not give up on the institution of family because of its imperfections--why give up on the church?
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Philip Yancey |
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We should leave a worship service asking ourselves not "What did I get out of it?" but rather "Was God pleased with what happened?"
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Philip Yancey |
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Taken as a whole, the Bible clearly puts the emphasis on what pleases God--the point of worship, after all. To worship, says Walter Wink, is to remember Who owns the house.
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Philip Yancey |
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Jesus honored the dignity of people, whether he agreed with them or not. He would not found his kingdom on the basis of race or class or other such divisions.
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Philip Yancey |
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From Jesus I learn that, whatever activism I get involved in, it must not drive out love and humility, or otherwise I betray the kingdom of heaven.
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Philip Yancey |
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A pilgrim is a fellow-traveler on the spiritual journey, not a professional guide.
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Philip Yancey |
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There is only one way for any of us to resolve the tension between the high ideals of the gospel and the grim reality of ourselves: to accept that we will never measure up, but that we do not have to. We are judged by the righteousness of the Christ who lives within, not our own.
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Philip Yancey |
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It seems that God arranged the most humiliating circumstances possible for His entrance, as if to avoid any charge of favoritism.
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Philip Yancey |
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Grace is for the desperate, the needy, the broken, those who cannot make it on their own. Grace is for all of
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Philip Yancey |
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Whatever you may believe about it, the birth of Jesus was so important that it split history into two parts. Everything that has ever happened on this planet falls into a category of before Christ or after Christ.
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Philip Yancey |
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Dependence, sorrow, repentance, a longing to change--these are the gates to God's kingdom.
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Philip Yancey |
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sinners.
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Philip Yancey |
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All human nature vigorously resists grace because grace changes us and the change is painful.
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Philip Yancey |
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Along with Chesterton, I've had to take my place among those who acknowledge that we are what is wrong with the world. What is my snobbishness toward my childhood church, for instance, but an inverted form of the harsh judgment it showed me?
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Philip Yancey |
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What is faith, after all, but believing in advance what will only make sense in reverse
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Philip Yancey |
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He learned, like every good novelist, that human behaviour can neither be explained nor predicted, only rendered.
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Philip Yancey |
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Even in "post-Christian" societies the gospel will continue to do its subversive work. Jesus used small things to describe his kingdom: a sprinkling of yeast that causes the whole loaf to rise, a pinch of salt that preserves a slab of meat, the smallest seed in the garden that grows into a great bush in which the birds of the air come to nest. Practices that used to be common--human sacrifice, slavery, duels to the death, child labor, explo..
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Philip Yancey |
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Ironically, (the church's) respect in the world declines in proportion to how vigorously we attempt to force others to adopt our point of view.
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evangelism-apologetics
relevance
theocracy
secularism
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Philip Yancey |
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Novelist Reynolds Price said there is one sentence all humankind craves to hear: "The Maker of all things loves and wants me."
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Philip Yancey |
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The novelist Reynolds Price says there is one sentence above all that people crave from stories: The Maker of all things loves and wants me. Christians still believe in that truth.
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Philip Yancey |
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Barbara Brown Taylor, an Episcopal priest, decided to leave her clergy position in part because of the church's failure to administer that grace: One thing that had always troubled me was the way people disappeared from church when their lives were breaking down. Separation and divorce were the most common explanations for long absences, but so were depression, alcoholism, job loss, and mortal illness. One new widow told me that she could n..
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Philip Yancey |
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Those who have known pain profoundly are the ones most wary of uttering the cliches about suffering. Experience with the mystery takes one beyond the realm of ideas and produces finally a muteness or at least a reticence to express in words the solace that can only be expressed by an attitude of union with the sufferer. JOHN HOWARD GRIFFIN
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Philip Yancey |
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prayer incorporates the unknown and unpredictable in the outworking of God's grace.
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Philip Yancey |
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The church has allowed itself to get so swept up in political issues that it plays by the rules of power, which are rules of ungrace
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Philip Yancey |
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The question {WHY}, though, never goes away-- not for me, not for anybody. We keep groping toward light while living in darkness.
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Philip Yancey |
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Where did our sense of beauty and pleasure come from? That seems to me a huge question--the philosophical equivalent, for atheists, to the problem of pain for Christians. The Teacher's answer is clear: A good and loving God naturally would want his creatures to experience delight, joy, and personal fulfillment. G. K. Chesterton credits pleasure, or eternity in his heart, as the signpost that eventually directed him to God:
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Philip Yancey |
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Our need to give is every bit as desperate as the poor's need to receive.
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Philip Yancey |
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Church is a place where I can say, unashamedly, "I don't need to sin. I need another sinner."
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Philip Yancey |
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I have marveled at, and sometimes openly questioned, the self-restraint God has shown throughout history, allowing the Genghis Khans and the Hitlers and the Stalins to have their way. But nothing - nothing - compares to the self-restraint shown that dark Friday in Jerusalem.
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Philip Yancey |
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Sometimes God seemed as close as his wife or children. Sometimes he had no sense of God's presence, no faith to lean on. "God is wild, you know," he wrote. "We're not in charge."
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Philip Yancey |
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We need a renewed awareness of death, yes. But we need far more. We need a faith, in the midst of our groaning, that death is not the last word, but the next to last. What is mortal will be swallowed up by life.
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Philip Yancey |
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Breaking the cycle of ungrace means taking the initiative.
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Philip Yancey |