Tim Chester > Quotes

“Loving Jesus is not a technique. Do not think about how you can communicate a passion for Jesus to others. Be passionate about him. Meditate on Jesus until he captures your heart afresh.”
― Tim Chester Steve Timmis

“So we do not read the Bible simply to fill our minds, but to change our hearts. We do not read the Bible simply to be informed, but to be conformed to the image of Jesus. We read the Bible to stir our affections: our fear, our hope, our love, our desire, our confidence. We read it until our heart cries out, 'The Lord is good!”
― Tim Chester Steve Timmis, Everyday Church: Gospel Communities on Mission

“Before they are preachers, leaders or church planters, the disciples are to be lovers! This is the test of whether or not they have known Jesus. This remains the case today: this cross-love is the primary, dynamic test of whether or not we have understood the gospel word and experienced its power...It is our cross-love for each other that proclaims the truth of the gospel to a watching and skeptical world. Our love for one another, to the extent that it imitates and conforms to the cross-love of Jesus for us, is evangelistic.

pp. 56-7”
― Tim Chester, Total Church: A Radical Reshaping around Gospel and Community

“That’s the scandal of grace. It means that if you’ve been working hard to be right with God, then you’ve been wasting your time because God welcomes everyone—righteous and unrighteous alike.”
― Tim Chester, A Meal with Jesus: Discovering Grace, Community, and Mission around the Table

“The Christian community demonstrates the effectiveness of the gospel. We are the living proof that the gospel is not an empty word but a powerful word that takes men and women who are lovers of self and transforms them by grace through the Spirit into people who love God and others. We are the living proof that the death of Jesus was not just a vain expression of God’s love but an effective death that achieved the salvation of a people who now love one another sincerely from a pure”
― Tim Chester, Everyday Church: Gospel Communities on Mission

“I may wonder what kind of mission God has for me, when I should be asking what kind of me God wants for his mission.”
― Tim Chester, Total Church: A Radical Reshaping around Gospel and Community

“Grace is so simple to understand and yet so hard to grasp.”
― Tim Chester, You Can Change: God's Transforming Power for Our Sinful Behavior and Negative Emotions

“As far as the Pharisees were concerned, if you gave a dish to the poor it became unclean, because the poor were the great unwashed who didn’t fulfill ceremonial washing. But Jesus says the dish becomes clean because it expresses love.”
― Tim Chester, A Meal with Jesus: Discovering Grace, Community, and Mission around the Table

“Tell someone to stop sinning and at best they may do so reluctantly and partially. But give them a vision of knowing God and his glory, and they’ll gladly root out all that gets in the way of their relationship with God (Hebrews 12:1–3).”
― Tim Chester, You Can Change: God's Transforming Power for Our Sinful Behavior and Negative Emotions

“We are God's representatives on earth. We are God's glory, displaying his likeness. After each day of creation God declares what he has made to be 'good'. But only after the 6th day God's verdict on a world that now includes humanity is 'very good'. God's work wasn't finished until there was something in the world to reflect his glory in the world. We often excuse our actions by saying, 'I'm only human.' There is nothing 'only' about being human: we're truly human as we reflect God's glory.”
― Tim Chester

“Often when people think of social involvement, they think of providing something that will meet people’s needs in some way. We will do something for the poor. We will provide for them food, furniture, help, education, skills, or whatever. These can all be good starting points. But we need to go further. Poverty is about marginalization and powerlessness. And some forms of charitable intervention can leave people marginalized. They can reinforce a sense of powerlessness. Something is done for the poor. They remain passive. They are not becoming contributors to society. They become more dependent on others. So social involvement is more than presenting people with solutions. Good social involvement is helping people to find their own solutions. We want people to be proactive in their lives and to regain their God-given dignity as human beings made to contribute to community life. So at the heart of good social action is the participation of those in”
― Tim Chester, Good News to the Poor: Social Involvement and the Gospel

“The task is to become church for them, among them and with them, and under Spirit of God to lead them to become church in their own culture.”
― Tim Chester, Everyday Church: Gospel Communities on Mission

“The main thing that prevents us from understanding the Bible aright is not a lack of hermeneutical skills but our sin.”
― Tim Chester, Total Church: A Radical Reshaping around Gospel and Community

“American Christians spend more on dieting than on world missions.5 We spend more curing our overconsumption than we do feeding the physically and spiritually hungry of the world.”
― Tim Chester, A Meal with Jesus: Discovering Grace, Community, and Mission around the Table

“Jesus is handing out God’s party invitations. They read: “You’re invited to my party in the new creation. Come as you are.”
― Tim Chester, A Meal with Jesus: Discovering Grace, Community, and Mission around the Table

“May heaven be in my eyes
   that sin might have less power upon my heart.”
― Tim Chester, Into His Presence: Praying with the Puritans

“When Peter says, “Baptism . . . now saves you,” he’s saying something similar to what we affirm when we say, “The gospel saves you.” The gospel is God’s promise. It’s the promise that the death and resurrection of Jesus have dealt with the problem of sin and judgment—if we put our faith in Jesus. Baptism is that promise in physical form.”
― Tim Chester, Truth We Can Touch: How Baptism and Communion Shape Our Lives

“As I’ve reflected on what it means to enjoy God, I think this is the number one reason I don’t enjoy God more than I do: not enough repentance. The problem is not that I sin. Sin itself doesn’t keep us from God because God is gracious and he has provided a means of reconciliation through the work of his Son. So sin itself doesn’t prevent us enjoying God. The problem is either: I keep my distance from God because I’m choosing sin over God, or I keep my distance from God because I feel ashamed.”
― Tim Chester, Enjoying God: Experience the power and love of God in everyday

“We have become outsiders just as Jesus was an outsider. We are marginal in our culture because Jesus is marginal. The cross is the ultimate expression of marginalization and to follow him is to take up our cross daily. It is daily to experience marginalization and hostility. Being on the margins is normal Christian experience. Christendom was the aberration. Rather than assume we should have a voice in the media or on Main Street, we need to regain the sense that anything other than persecution is an unexpected”
― Tim Chester, Everyday Church: Gospel Communities on Mission

“This means if you want to receive God’s blessing, you do not need to go looking for some dramatic new experience. The place to be is your local church, where the word is proclaimed and the sacraments are administered. You simply need to read your Bible, listen to expository preaching week by week, and participate in the Lord’s Supper. This is where God’s grace to us in Christ is found.”
― Tim Chester, Truth We Can Touch: How Baptism and Communion Shape Our Lives

“Look to Jesus to be enough for you, and there will never, ever come a day when he is not enough.”
― Tim Chester, Exodus For You: Thrilling you with the liberating love of God

“We need to shift our focus from putting on attractional events to creating attractional communities.”
― Tim Chester, Everyday Church: Gospel Communities on Mission

“All too often we think of holiness as giving up the pleasures of sin for some worthy but drab life. But holiness means recognizing that the pleasures of sin are empty and temporary, while God is inviting us to magnificent, true, full, and rich pleasures that last forever.”
― Tim Chester, You Can Change: God's Transforming Power for Our Sinful Behavior and Negative Emotions

“The secret of gospel change is being convinced that Jesus is the good life and the fountain of joy. Any alternative we might choose would be the letdown.”
― Tim Chester, You Can Change: God's Transforming Power for Our Sinful Behavior and Negative Emotions

“Friendship evangelism is great, but it does not enable the gospel to travel beyond our social networks, unless there are intentional attempts to build friendships with people who are not like us. John Mark Hobbins of London City Mission says, ‘Many people live in networks which take precedence over their address, and many churches have grown because of this. But the reality for many people living in social housing or in cheaper housing is that their address is very likely to define their daily life.”
― Tim Chester, Unreached: Growing Churches In Working-Class And Deprived Areas

“The word “companion” comes from the Latin “cum” (“together”) and “panis” (“bread”).”
― Tim Chester, A Meal with Jesus: Discovering Grace, Community, and Mission around the Table

“We don’t do good works so we can be saved; we are saved so we can do good works.”
― Tim Chester, You Can Change: God's Transforming Power for Our Sinful Behavior and Negative Emotions

“Wright talks about how, in his role as chaplain, he would talk with students about their beliefs. Many would defiantly announce to him that they did not believe in God. So he would ask them to describe the "God" they did not believe in. Usually, they described a remote, deistic "God". "I don't believe in that 'God' either," he would reply. And then he would begin to talk about Jesus Christ.”
― Tim Chester, Delighting in the Trinity : Just Why Are Father, Son and Spirit Such Good News?

“There is nothing that God expects you to do that you cannot do. The sin that defeats you need not defeat you. The fears that consume you need not consume you. The people who terrify you need not terrify you. You have the Spirit of life within you empowering you to know God and follow Christ.”
― Tim Chester, Enjoying God: Experience the power and love of God in everyday

“The gospel is good news—a message to be proclaimed, a truth to be taught, a word to be spoken, and a story to be told.”
― Tim Chester, Total Church: A Radical Reshaping around Gospel and Community