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| Link | Quote | Stars | Tags | Author |
| 83f5987 | Ordinary moralistic religion operates on this principle: "I live a good and moral life; therefore God accepts me." Gospel Christianity operates in the opposite way: "God accepts me unconditionally in Jesus Christ; therefore I live a good and moral life." | Timothy J. Keller | ||
| 5b528c1 | Look at this face. Do you see my foolish hope? | Amy Tan | ||
| 9e0b99a | She quotes three current studies into the subject of self-esteem, all of which reach this conclusion and she states that 'people with high self-esteem pose a greater threat to those around them than people with low self-esteem and feeling bad about yourself is not the source of our country's biggest, most expensive social problems.'1 | Timothy J. Keller | ||
| 3b8ce55 | Havel puts it well--humanity cannot save itself. In fact, he argues, the belief that we can save ourselves--that some political system or ideology can fix human problems--has only led to more darkness. | Timothy J. Keller | ||
| 41ce465 | An ounce of sin can harm us more than a ton of suffering. Sin can harden our hearts so we lose everything, but suffering, if handled rightly, can make us wiser, happier, and deeper. | Timothy J. Keller | ||
| 48a8352 | Actually every day that your heart keeps pumping, your country is not invaded, and your brain keeps functioning is wholly an undeserved gift of God. We ought to live simple, normal, uneventful days full of amazed, thankful joy. Prayer: Lord, I thank you for my routine mercies. I thank you for sustaining my life daily, for being endlessly patient with me, for shielding me from so many consequences of my foolish behavior, for the ways you hav.. | Timothy J. Keller | ||
| 570b9cb | Jonathan Edwards wrote a sermon with the following outline:342 Our bad things will turn out for good (Rom 8:28), Our good things can never be taken away from us (Ps 4:6-7), and The best things are yet to come (1 Cor 2:9). If, | Timothy J. Keller | ||
| 2f1d037 | All this I did for thee; what doest thou for me? | Timothy J. Keller | ||
| f03330e | Western science sees the universe as "naturalistic." While other cultures see the world as consisting of both matter and spirit, Western thought understands it as consisting of material forces only, all of which operate devoid of anything that could be called "purpose." It is not the result of sin, or any cosmic battle, or any high forces determining our destinies. Western societies, therefore, see suffering as simply an accident. In this v.. | Timothy J. Keller | ||
| b167091 | Augustine writes: "We love God, therefore, for what He is in Himself, and [we love] ourselves and our neighbors for His sake." That" | Timothy J. Keller | ||
| fb34108 | By the time we get to the third story, and we hear about the plight of the lost son, we are fully prepared to expect that someone will set out to search for him. No one does. It is startling, and Jesus meant it to be so. By placing the three parables so closely together, he is inviting thoughtful listeners to ask: "Well, who should have gone out and searched for the lost son?" Jesus knew the Bible thoroughly, and he knew that at its very be.. | Timothy J. Keller | ||
| 726d592 | this is what a true elder brother would have done. He would have said, "Father, my younger brother has been a fool, and now his life is in ruins. But I will go look for him and bring him home. And if the inheritance is gone--as I expect--I'll bring him back into the family at my expense." | Timothy J. Keller | ||
| 2ddad87 | but forgiveness always comes at a cost to the one granting the forgiveness. | Timothy J. Keller | ||
| db60da7 | There is a good lesson in choosing a leader here. We are often far too easily impressed by qualities that are unimportant to God. Further, we can far too easily be swayed by pragmatic arguments. God does not prize popularity, humor, or academic intelligence, being an extrovert, and so on. He seeks men who hold to his truth, seek to lead their family rightly, are patient and self-controlled (1 Timothy 3:1-7; Titus 1:6-9). He does not want we.. | Timothy J. Keller | ||
| 58a4ba6 | Pride gets no pleasure out of having something, only out of having more of it than the next person. We say that people are proud of being rich, or clever, or good-looking, but they are not. They are proud of being richer, or cleverer, or better-looking than others. If everyone else became equally rich, or clever, or good-looking there would be nothing to be proud about.'3 In | Timothy J. Keller | ||
| b4d1394 | Christians have their attitude toward God changed from one of duty to free, loving self-giving because of what Jesus did for us on the cross. | Timothy J. Keller | ||
| b02d369 | Lord of the Word, don't let me be seduced by the world--either naively going with the crowd or becoming a hardened cynic. Help me meditate on your Word to the point of delight. Give me stability and contentment regardless of the circumstances. How I need that! Amen. | Timothy J. Keller | ||
| 4060dad | Righteous Lord, I have many who falsely accuse me. Defend me from them! But I also know my sin, and my heart rightly accuses me. I rest in Jesus's atoning death for me. | Timothy J. Keller | ||
| 1aa1e45 | Many voices argue that it is exclusionary to claim that you have the truth, but as we have seen, that view itself sets up a dichotomy with you as the heroically tolerant and others as villainously or pathetically bigoted. | Timothy J. Keller | ||
| 7aa62ab | Our culture tells us that you must look inside to discover your deepest desires and dreams and to express them. You must do this yourself, and must not rely on anyone outside to affirm and tell you who you are. | Timothy J. Keller | ||
| 9c538ff | But this is an impossibility.23 You cannot get an identity through self-recognition; it must come in a great measure from others. | Timothy J. Keller | ||
| a1b8ad2 | You see what power is - holding someone else's fear in your hand and showing it to them. | Amy Tan | ||
| 01fcc44 | All inferences from experience... are effects of custom, not of reasoning. | An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding | ||
| 413d083 | January 9 READ Psalm 7:1-5. 1 LORD my God, I take refuge in you; save and deliver me from all who pursue me, 2 or they will tear me apart like a lion and rip me to pieces with no one to rescue me. 3 LORD my God, if I have done this and there is guilt on my hands-- 4 if I have repaid my ally with evil or without cause have robbed my foe-- 5 then let my enemy pursue and overtake me; let him trample my life to the ground and make me sleep in t.. | Timothy J. Keller | ||
| 786dd07 | The gospel comes and turns them all upside down. It says: You are in such a hopeless position that you need a rescue that has nothing to do with you at all. And then it says: God in Jesus provides a rescue which gives you far more than any false salvation your heart may love to chase. | Timothy J. Keller | ||
| f5ad90c | God repeatedly refuses to allow his gracious activity to run along the expected lines of worldly influence and privilege. He puts in the center the person whom the world would put on the periphery. | Timothy J. Keller | ||
| 396de3c | The Israelites must have wondered about this patriarch who was always in trouble. . . . This God does not align himself only with the obviously valued ones, the first-born. This oracle speaks about an inversion. It affirms that we are not fated to the way the world is presently organized. That is the premise of the ministry of Jesus: the poor, the mourning, the meek, the hungry . . . are the heirs to the kingdom (Matt. 5:3-7). | Timothy J. Keller | ||
| d089e67 | Jesus Christ's salvation comes to us through his poverty, rejection, and weakness. And Christians are not saved by summoning up their strength and accomplishing great deeds but by admitting their weakness and need for a savior. | Timothy J. Keller | ||
| 4a8cb51 | Yes, of course, believing in universal moral truths can be used to oppress others. But what if that absolute truth is a man who died for his enemies, who did not respond in violence with violence but forgave them? How could that story, if it is the center of your life, lead you to take up power and dominate others? | Timothy J. Keller | ||
| 85a8194 | we can conclude that a professed Christian who is not committed to a life of generosity and justice toward the poor and marginalized is, at the very least, a living contradiction of the Gospel of Christ, the Son of God, whose Father "executes justice for the oppressed, who gives food to the hungry" | Timothy J. Keller | ||
| ee279fb | In a penetrating insight, Bauckham writes that belief in the story of salvation "also breaks the cycle by which the oppressed become oppressors in their turn."47 In the Old Testament the Israelites are constantly warned not to oppress immigrants and racial outsiders "because you were foreigners in Egypt" (Leviticus 19:33-34). The memory of their salvation from slavery not by their own power but by God's grace was to radically undermine thei.. | Timothy J. Keller | ||
| 80b53f0 | The reason for this persistent story line in the Bible is not simply because the writers like underdogs. It is because the ultimate example of God's working in the world was Jesus Christ, the only founder of a major religion who died in disgrace, not surrounded by all of his loving disciples but abandoned by everybody whom he cared about, including his Father. | Timothy J. Keller | ||
| 5732c5a | A salvation earned by good works and moral effort would favor the more able, competent, accomplished, and privileged. But salvation by sheer grace favors the failed, the outsiders, the weak, because it goes only to those who know salvation must be by sheer grace. | Timothy J. Keller | ||
| e25b220 | That is why even when we believe with all our minds that life is meaningless, we simply can't live that way. We know better. | Timothy J. Keller | ||
| d7d61e7 | Lord, when I forget the Gospel I become dependent on the smiles and evaluation of others. I hear all criticism as a condemnation of my very being. But you have said that "there is now no condemnation" for me (Romans 8:1). You delight and sing over me (Zephaniah 3:14-17); you see me as a beauty (Colossians 1:22). Let me always remember that! Amen." | Timothy J. Keller | ||
| 7f34a03 | The lesson is that the medium is not the message, that we must not ignore uncomfortable truths just because they come through an unimpressive messenger. | Timothy J. Keller | ||
| 4309542 | Sit for thirty minutes and write down at least thirty things you learn from Mark 1:17," which reads, "'Come, follow me,' Jesus said, 'and I will send you out to fish for people.'" Then she instructed us, "Don't think after ten minutes and four or five things written down that you've figured it out. Take the whole thirty minutes and try to get to thirty things observed." | Timothy J. Keller | ||
| 36532fd | In 1961 the Russians put the first man into space, Yuri Gagarin. Nikita Khrushchev was the Russian premier, and he said that when Gagarin went into space, the cosmonaut discovered that there was no God there. In response C. S. Lewis wrote an article, "The Seeing Eye." Lewis said if there is a God who created us, we could not discover him by going up into the air. God would not relate to human beings the way a man on the second floor relates.. | Timothy J. Keller | ||
| 5c3aae0 | First, each side should accept that both religious belief and skepticism are on the rise. Atheist author Sam Harris and Religious Right leader Pat Robertson should each admit the fact that his particular tribe is strong and increasing in influence. This would eliminate the self-talk that is rampant in each camp, namely that it will soon be extinct, overrun by the opposition. Nothing like that is imminently possible. If we stopped saying suc.. | Timothy J. Keller | ||
| e91d1c5 | when you say, "Doctrine doesn't matter; what matters is that you live a good life," that is a doctrine. It is called the doctrine of salvation by your works rather than by grace. It assumes that you are not so bad that you need a Savior, that you are not so weak that you can't pull yourself together and live as you should. You are actually espousing a whole set of doctrines about the nature of God, humanity, and sin." | Timothy J. Keller | ||
| 66ad18b | The Christian life begins not with high deeds and achievements but with the most simple and ordinary act of humble asking. Then the life and joy grow in us over the years through commonplace, almost boring practices. Daily obedience, reading and prayer, worship attendance, serving our brothers and sisters in Christ as well as our neighbors, depending on Jesus during times of suffering. And bit by bit our faith will grow, and the foundation .. | Timothy J. Keller | ||
| c9ec8e6 | Could you explain to someone else how the gospel can (and should) transform our sense of identity? How much do you experience that transformed sense of identity? * In what ways has God's Word encouraged you or challenged you? Pray about it. * Pray that God would give you what you need to enable you to develop true gospel-humility and the freedom of self-forgetfulness. | Timothy J. Keller | ||
| 8cc764f | The same year that Dawkins's The God Delusion was published, Francis Collins published The Language of God. Collins is an eminent research scientist and head of the Human Genome Project. | Timothy J. Keller | ||
| 94b6d15 | The church of Jesus Christ is therefore like the ocean. It is enormous and diverse. Like the ocean there are warm and clear spots and deadly cold spots, places you can enter easily without danger and places where it will immediately whisk you away and kill you. I realize how risky it is to tell my readers that they should seek out a church. I don't do it lightly, and I urge them to do so with the utmost care. But there is no alternative. Yo.. | Timothy J. Keller |