Tim Challies > Quotes

“By giving us control, our new technologies tend to enhance existing idols in our lives. Instead of becoming more like Christ through the forming and shaping influence of the church community, we form, and shape, and personalize our community to make it more like us. We take control of things that are not ours to control. Could it be that our desire for control is short-circuiting the process of change and transformation God wants us to experience through the mess of real world, flesh and blood, face-to-face relationships?”
― Tim Challies, The Next Story: Life and Faith after the Digital Explosion

“We deliberately forget because forgetting is a blessing. On both an emotional level and a spiritual level, forgetting is a natural part of the human experience and a natural function of the human brain. It is a feature, not a bug, one that saves us from being owned by our memories. Can a world that never forgets be a world that truly forgives?”
― Tim Challies, The Next Story: Life and Faith after the Digital Explosion

“Productivity is effectively stewarding your gifts, talents, time, energy, and enthusiasm for the good of others and the glory of God.”
― Tim Challies, Do More Better: A Practical Guide to Productivity

“With discernment comes division. A person who seeks to be discerning must be willing to suffer the effects of this division. It will divide not only believer from unbeliever, but it may even divide a discerning believer from one who is undiscerning. It will separate the mature from the immature, the naïve from the prudent.”
― Tim Challies, The Discipline of Spiritual Discernment

“ Do you ever wonder why it is that many of history's titanic intellects managed to come to radically different conclusions? The answer is simple: If you begin your system of thought by refusing to acknowledge what you know to be true - if you start with a lie - the more brilliant and consistent you are in following that premise, the further from truth you will go. ”
― Tim Challies

“Technology presents us with a unique spiritual challenge. Because it is meant to serve us in fulfilling our created purpose, because it makes our lives easier, longer, and more comfortable, we are prone to assign to it something of a godlike status. We easily rely on technology to give our lives meaning, and we trust technology to provide an ultimate answer to the frustration of life in a fallen world. Because of this, technology is uniquely susceptible to becoming an idol, raising itself to the place of God in our lives.”
― Tim Challies, The Next Story: Life and Faith after the Digital Explosion

“The simple fact is, you are not the point of your life. You are not the star of your show. If you live for yourself, your own comfort, your own glory, your own fame, you will miss out on your very purpose. God created you to bring glory to him.”
― Tim Challies, Do More Better: A Practical Guide to Productivity

“You do not exist in this world to get things done. You exist to glorify God by doing good to others.”
― Tim Challies, Do More Better: A Practical Guide to Productivity

“Quentin Schultze says that we have become like tourists who are so enamored by our mode of transportation that we cruise through nation after nation largely indifferent to the people and the cultures around us. We have our passports filled with the little stamps telling people just how many places we’ve been, but what is the purpose of being in places if we have not experienced them? And what is the purpose of knowing people if we do not care to know them on anything more than a surface level? The trend today is toward these fleeting, surface-level interactions”
― Tim Challies, The Next Story: Life and Faith after the Digital Explosion

“God calls you to productivity, but he calls you to the right kind of productivity. He calls you to be productive for his sake, not your own.”
― Tim Challies, Do More Better: A Practical Guide to Productivity

“Though I will be scarred by Nick’s death, I will not be defined by it. Though it will always be part of my story, it will never become my identity. I will be forever thankful that God gave me a son and never resentful that he called him home. My joy in having loved Nick will be greater than my grief in having lost him. I will not waver in my faith, nor abandon my hope, nor revoke my love. I will not charge God with wrong.”
― Tim Challies, Seasons of Sorrow: The Pain of Loss and the Comfort of God

“To be productive, you need a system. You need to build it, use it, perfect it, and rely on it. Your system needs to gain your confidence so that you can trust it to remember what needs to be remembered, to alert you to what is urgent, to direct you to what is important, and to divert you away from what is distracting.”
― Tim Challies, Do More Better: A Practical Guide to Productivity

“As we seek after discernment, a good and godly desire, our sinful natures will fight against us. We will soon discover a part of ourselves that does not want to make clear distinctions between what is good and evil, and a part of ourselves that does not want to be committed to what is good and right and true. And so the first enemy we must overcome in our discipline of discernment is ourselves.”
― Tim Challies, The Discipline of Spiritual Discernment

“You haven’t begun to live a focused and productive life until you have said no to great opportunities that just do not fit your mission. There are many good things in this world that will go undone or that will have to be done by someone else.”
― Tim Challies, Do More Better: A Practical Guide to Productivity

“The key to a productive and contented life is “planned neglect”—knowing what not to do and being content with saying no to truly good, sometimes fantastic, opportunities. This happens only when you realize how truly limited you are, that you must steward your little life, and that of all the best things to do on the planet, God wants you to do only a miniscule number.”
― Tim Challies, Do More Better: A Practical Guide to Productivity

“Productivity is effectively stewarding your gifts, talents, time, energy, and enthusiasm for the good of others and the glory of God. You have limited amounts of gifting, talents, time, energy, and enthusiasm, but unlimited ways of allocating them. For this reason productivity involves making decisions about how to allocate these finite resources.”
― Tim Challies, Do More Better: A Practical Guide to Productivity

“You need to structure and organize your life so that you can do the maximum good for others and thus bring the maximum glory to God.”
― Tim Challies, Do More Better: A Practical Guide to Productivity

“There is no task in life that cannot be done for God’s glory.”
― Tim Challies, Do More Better: A Practical Guide to Productivity

“No amount of organization and time management will compensate for a lack of Christian character, not when it comes to this great calling of glory through good—bringing glory to God by doing good to others.”
― Tim Challies, Do More Better: A Practical Guide to Productivity

“Christian productivity is unique. Most productivity gurus will encourage you to be as selfish as you need to be, to get rid of anything that doesn’t interest or excite you. But as a Christian you know you can do things that do not perfectly fit your mission but still do them out of love for God and with a desire to glorify him.”
― Tim Challies, Do More Better: A Practical Guide to Productivity

“Productivity is not what will bring purpose to your life, but what will enable you to excel in living out your existing purpose.”
― Tim Challies, Do More Better: A Practical Guide to Productivity

“We may well find that if we are to fulfill God's mandate on earth, we will need to communicate less often so we can communicate more. We will need to forsake the ease and the pace of quantity for the reflective significance of quality.”
― Tim Challies, The Next Story: Life and Faith after the Digital Explosion

“...one of the hardest parts of my loss is that all my feelings of love remain, but there's no way to express them.”
― Tim Challies, Seasons of Sorrow: The Pain of Loss and the Comfort of God

“I would not summon Nick back to this world if I could, for that would be to rob him of the greatest of all gains and to force him to experience so much loss.”
― Tim Challies, Seasons of Sorrow: The Pain of Loss and the Comfort of God

“motivation gets you started, but habit keeps you going. You need to use those times of high motivation to build habits and to embed those habits in a system. That way, when motivation wanes, the system will keep you going.”
― Tim Challies, Do More Better: A Practical Guide to Productivity

“God’s goodness means that everything God is and everything God does is worthy of approval, for he himself is the very standard of goodness. Those things that are good are those things that God deems good, that God deems fitting, that God deems appropriate. For something to be good is for it to meet the approval of God, and for something to meet the approval of God is for it to be good.”
― Tim Challies, Seasons of Sorrow: The Pain of Loss and the Comfort of God

“When you cry out against a God who punishes people in a place like hell, you cry out against the God who has revealed Himself in the pages of Scripture. You cry out against His goodness, holiness, and justice; and all the while you minimize your own sinfulness or the sinfulness of others.”
― Tim Challies

“If you can bring glory to God in all areas, you should bring glory to God in all areas. There is no area of your life where you have no ability to do good to others and where you have no ability to bring glory to God.”
― Tim Challies, Do More Better: A Practical Guide to Productivity

“Being tempted to masturbate is probably the most common illegitimate physical expression of this spiritual battle. But that temptation will not end simply because you have a legitimate physical sexual outlet in the person of your wife. The physical battle is not the core issue. It’s an outward expression of how well you have been fighting the inner, spiritual battle.”
― Tim Challies, Sexual Detox: A Guide for Guys Who Are Sick of Porn

“God calls you to productivity, but he calls you to the right kind of productivity. He calls you to be productive for his sake, not your own. While this book will emphasize tools and systems and other important elements of productivity, nothing is more important than your own holiness and your own godliness. No amount of organization and time management will compensate for a lack of Christian character, not when it comes to this great calling of glory through good—bringing glory to God by doing good to others.”
― Tim Challies, Do More Better: A Practical Guide to Productivity