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The gospel of grace begins and ends with forgiveness. And people write songs with titles like "Amazing Grace" for one reason: grace is the only force in the universe powerful enough to break the chains that enslave generations. Grace alone melts ungrace."
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Philip Yancey |
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At first glance legalism seems hard, but actually freedom in Christ is the harder way. It is relatively easy not to murder, hard to reach out in love; easy to avoid a neighbor's bed, hard to keep a marriage alive; easy to pay taxes, hard to serve the poor. When living in freedom, I must remain open to the Spirit for guidance. I am more aware of what I have neglected than what I have achieved. I cannot hide behind a mask of behavior, like th..
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Philip Yancey |
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You cannot earn God's acceptance by climbing; you must receive it as a gift.
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Philip Yancey |
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How would my life change if I truly believed the Bible's astounding words about God's love for me, if I looked in the mirror and saw what God sees?
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Philip Yancey |
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Everywhere a greater joy is preceded by a greater suffering,
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Philip Yancey |
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Ariel Durant, "There is no significant example in history, before our time, of a society successfully maintaining moral life without the aid of religion." The Durants add a foreboding remark, "The greatest question of our time is . . . whether men can live without God." Amid such confusion, Christians should be positioned to provide the guidance our society needs. With regret I must say frankly that I doubt that will happen. Because of our ..
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Philip Yancey |
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Lest I sound like a cranky moralist, I should say that to me the real question is not why modern secularists oppose traditional morality; it is on what basis they defend any morality.
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Philip Yancey |
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When we ignore the world outside the walls we suffer--as does it.
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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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Those who mourn sense the rupture of a world severed from God and thus edge closer to the Father who promises to make all things new.
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Philip Yancey |
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As Paul Tournier said, "Where there is no longer any opportunity for doubt, there is no longer any opportunity for faith either."
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Philip Yancey |
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The redemptive way goes through pain, not around it.
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Philip Yancey |
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Doubt always coexists with faith, for in the presence of certainty who would need faith at all?
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Philip Yancey |
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All suffering is suffering. As C. S. Lewis said, there is no such thing as "the sum of the world's suffering," an abstraction of the philosophers. There are simply individual people who hurt. And who wonder why God permits it."
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Philip Yancey |
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According to Barna surveys, 61 percent of today's youth had been churched at one point during their teen years but are now spiritually disengaged.
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Philip Yancey |
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Hay siempre fe cuando se produce un gran numero de milagros?
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Philip Yancey |
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The suffering person faces choices. She can recoil in anger and despair against God. Or she can accept the trial as an opportunity for joy. I do not mean to imply that God loves one type of sufferer and rejects the other, or even that one is more "spiritual" than the other. I believe God understands those people who kick and struggle and scream as well as those who learn that suffering can be a means of grace, of transformation. (Remember, ..
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Philip Yancey |
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Always, no matter the circumstances, we have the assurance of "Immanuel," which simply means "God with us."
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Philip Yancey |
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senseless. I prefer the word "buzzed," following the brain/amplifier analogy."
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Philip Yancey |
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Sadly, Jesus' followers tend to take the reverse approach. Some churches gradually lower the ideals, accommodating moral standards to a changing culture. Others raise the bar of grace so that needy people feel unwelcome: "We don't want that kind of person in our church." Either way we fail to communicate the spectacular good news that everyone fails and yet a gracious God offers forgiveness to all."
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Philip Yancey |
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Rejoicing in suffering" does not mean Christians should act happy about tragedy and pain when they feel like crying. Rather, the Bible aims the spotlight on the end result, the productive use God can make of suffering in our lives. To achieve that result, however, he first needs our commitment of trust, and the process of giving him that commitment can be described as rejoicing."
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Philip Yancey |
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Pain allows us, the fortunate ones at least, to lead free and active lives. If you ever doubt that, visit a leprosarium and observe for yourself a world without pain.
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Philip Yancey |
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God shattered the inexorable law of sin and retribution by invading earth, absorbing the worst we had to offer, crucifixion, and then fashioning from that cruel deed the remedy for the human condition. Calvary broke up the logjam between justice and forgiveness. By accepting onto his innocent self all the severe demands of justice, Jesus broke forever the chain of ungrace.
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Philip Yancey |
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The church works best as a separate force, a conscience to society that keeps itself at arm's length from the state. The closer it gets, the less effectively it can challenge the surrounding culture and the more perilously it risks losing its central message. Jesus left his followers the command to make disciples from all nations. We have no charge to "Christianize" the United States or any other country -- an impossible goal in any case."..
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Philip Yancey |
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I feel called to minister to telephone marketers. You know, the kind who call at inconvenient hours and deliver their spiel before you can say a word." Immediately I flashed back to the times I have responded rudely or simply hung up. "All day long these sales callers hear people curse at them and slam the phone down," she continued. "I listen attentively to their pitch, then I try to respond kindly, though I almost never buy what they're s..
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Philip Yancey |
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Everyone is entitled to my opinion.
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Philip Yancey |
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Playing off a short story by H. G. Wells, Simone Weil drew an analogy to a land of blind people in which scientists could devise a complete system of physics leaving out the concept of light. Weightless, pressureless, undetectable by the senses -- why believe in light? To the blind, it need not exist. Occasionally, however, questions might arise among the blind. What makes plants grow upwards, defying the law of gravity? What ripens fruits..
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Philip Yancey |
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The Israelites give ample proof that signs may only addict us to signs, not to God.
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Philip Yancey |
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Our confused society badly needs a community of contrast, a counter-culture of ordinary pilgrims who insist on living a different way. We can make the world stop and think before pulling a trigger, or exacting revenge, or neglecting the vulnerable, or practising euthanasia on those it deems 'devoid of value'.
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Philip Yancey |
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The key is this: the main benefit of giving is in its effect on the giver. Yes, people in Africa and India need my financial help, as the fund-raising appeals urgently remind me. But in truth my need to give is every bit as desperate as their need to receive.
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Philip Yancey |
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If God's kingdom had a "No Oddballs Allowed" sign posted, none of us could get in."
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Philip Yancey |
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Christ-followers need not live in fear, even when it seems that society may be turning against us. We rest in full confidence that God, in control of human history, will have the final word: "The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Messiah, and he will reign for ever and ever." We each of us do our part, loving others as God loves us, tending the world as stewards of a gracious landlord. The yeast spreads, the..
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Philip Yancey |
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In other words, the proof of spiritual maturity is not how 'pure' you are but awareness of your impurity. That very awareness opens the door to grace.
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Philip Yancey |
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Legalism is a subtle danger because no one thinks of himself as a legalist.
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Philip Yancey |
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I know of only two alternatives to hypocrisy: perfection or honesty.
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Philip Yancey |
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God is present in the hungry, the homeless, the sick, and the imprisoned, as Jesus claimed in Matthew 25, and we serve God when we serve them.
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Philip Yancey |
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Civilisation once looked to art as the means of passing wisdom from one generation to the next. Writing itself was invented in part to convey the sacred: permanent things deserved a permanent place, hence the hieroglyphs on Egyptian tombs. But a modern civilisation that no longer believes in permanent things, one that accepts no certain narrative of meaning,
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Philip Yancey |
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Law merely indicated the sickness; grace brought about the cure.
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Philip Yancey |
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Jesus proclaimed unmistakably that God's law is so perfect and absolute that no one can achieve righteousness. Yet God's grace is so great that we do not have to.
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Philip Yancey |
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Civilisation once looked to art as the means of passing wisdom from one generation to the next. Writing itself was invented in part to convey the sacred: permanent things deserved a permanent place, hence the hieroglyphs on Egyptian tombs. But a modern civilisation that no longer believes in permanent things, one that accepts no certain narrative of meaning, resorts to deconstruction, not construction.
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Philip Yancey |
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Los israelitas dieron amplias pruebas de que podemos llegar a desear las senales sin desear en realidad a Dios.
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Philip Yancey |
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It makes a huge difference whether I treat a nonbeliever as someone who is wrong rather than as someone who is on the way but lost.
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Philip Yancey |