Matt > Matt's Quotes

“Give me all of you!!! I don’t want so much of your time, so much of your talents and money, and so much of your work. I want YOU!!! ALL OF YOU!! I have not come to torment or frustrate the natural man or woman, but to KILL IT! No half measures will do. I don’t want to only prune a branch here and a branch there; rather I want the whole tree out! Hand it over to me, the whole outfit, all of your desires, all of your wants and wishes and dreams. Turn them ALL over to me, give yourself to me and I will make of you a new self---in my image. Give me yourself and in exchange I will give you Myself. My will, shall become your will. My heart, shall become your heart.”
― C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

“Those who love their dream of a Christian community more than they love the Christian community itself become destroyers of that Christian community even though their personal intentions may be ever so honest, earnest and sacrificial. God hates this wishful dreaming because it makes the dreamer proud and pretentious. Those who dream of this idolized community demand that it be fulfilled by God, by others and by themselves. They enter the community of Christians with their demands set up by their own law, and judge one another and God accordingly. It is not we who build. Christ builds the church. Whoever is mindful to build the church is surely well on the way to destroying it, for he will build a temple to idols without wishing or knowing it. We must confess he builds. We must proclaim, he builds. We must pray to him, and he will build. We do not know his plan. We cannot see whether he is building or pulling down. It may be that the times which by human standards are the times of collapse are for him the great times of construction. It may be that the times which from a human point are great times for the church are times when it's pulled down. It is a great comfort which Jesus gives to his church. You confess, preach, bear witness to me, and I alone will build where it pleases me. Do not meddle in what is not your providence. Do what is given to you, and do it well, and you will have done enough.... Live together in the forgiveness of your sins. Forgive each other every day from the bottom of your hearts.”
― Dietrich Bonhoeffer

“Leadership and learning are indispensable to each other.

[Undelivered remarks for Dallas Trade Mart, November 22 1963]”
― John F. Kennedy

“The greatest leader is not necessarily the one who does the greatest things. He is the one that gets the people to do the greatest things.”
― Ronald Reagan

“Jesus said several times, “Come, follow me.” His was a program of “do what I do,” rather than “do what I say.” His innate brilliance would have permitted him to put on a dazzling display, but that would have left his followers far behind. He walked and worked with those he was to serve. His was not a long-distance leadership. He was not afraid of close friendships; he was not afraid that proximity to him would disappoint his followers. The leaven of true leadership cannot lift others unless we are with and serve those to be led.”
― Spencer W. Kimball

“A true and safe leader is likely to be one who has no desire to lead, but is forced into a position of leadership by the inward pressure of the Holy Spirit and the press of the external situation. Such were Moses and David and the Old Testament prophets. I think there was hardly a great leader from Paul to the present day but that was drafted by the Holy Spirit for the task, and commissioned by the Lord of the Church to fill a position he had little heart for. I believe it might be accepted as a fairly reliable rule of thumb that the man who is ambitious to lead is disqualified as a leader. The true leader will have no desire to lord it over God's heritage, but will be humble, gentle, self-sacrificing, and altogether as ready to follow as to lead, when the Spirit makes it clear that a wiser and more gifted man than himself has appeared.”
― A.W. Tozer

“The Bible tells us to love our neighbors, and also to love our enemies; probably because generally they are the same people.”
― G.K. Chesterton

“There are far, far better things ahead than any we leave behind.”
― C.S. Lewis

“Faith is not the absence of doubt; it is continuing to follow Jesus in the midst of doubt.”
― J.D. Greear, Stop Asking Jesus Into Your Heart: How to Know for Sure You Are Saved

“It would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory, and Other Addresses

“Hope is one of the Theological virtues. This means that a continual looking forward to the eternal world is not (as some modern people think) a form of escapism or wishful thinking, but one of the things a Christian is meant to do. It does not mean that we are to leave the present world as it is. If you read history you will find that the Christians who did most for the present world were just those who thought most of the next.”
― C.S. Lewis

“We tend to use prayer as a last resort, but God wants it to be our first line of defense. We pray when there's nothing else we can do, but God wants us to pray before we do anything at all.

Most of us would prefer, however, to spend our time doing something that will get immediate results. We don't want to wait for God to resolve matters in His good time because His idea of 'good time' is seldom in sync with ours.”
― Oswald Chambers

“We aren’t really motivated by abstract ideas or pushed by rules and duties. Instead some panoramic tableau of what looks like flourishing has an alluring power that attracts”
― James K.A. Smith, You Are What You Love: The Spiritual Power of Habit

“Your deepest desire,” he observes, “is the one manifested by your daily life and habits.”6 This is because our action—our doing—bubbles up from our loves, which, as we’ve observed, are habits we’ve acquired through the practices we’re immersed in. That means the formation of my loves and desires can be happening “under the hood” of consciousness. I might be learning to love a telos that I’m not even aware of and that nonetheless governs my life in unconscious ways.”
― James K.A. Smith, You Are What You Love: The Spiritual Power of Habit

“I just follow God's lead. One step, one day and one opportunity at a time. The hardest part is not becoming distracted.”
― Carlos Wallace, The Other 99 T.Y.M.E.S: Train Your Mind to Enjoy Serenity

“The early church was strikingly different from the culture around it in this way -the pagan society was stingy with its money and promiscuous with its body. A pagan gave nobody their money and practically gave everybody their body. And the Christians came along and gave practically nobody their body and they gave practically everybody their money.”
― Jon Tyson, A Creative Minority: Influencing Culture Through Redemptive Participation

“God has warned us that curses will be unleashed on those who disobey commands inscribed in his Word. The evidence that they are being unleashed on our world today is too compelling to deny.”
― Robert Petterson, The One Year Book of Amazing Stories: 365 Days of Seeing God’s Hand in Unlikely Places

“It is not good for us to be alone. If we, God’s image-bearers, are content with shallow relationships, we imply that He is a shallow God.”
― Megan Marshman, SelfLess: Living Your Part in the Big Story of God

“The Bible is not a story of people seeking God. This is the story of a perfect God who pursues imperfect people.”
― Megan Marshman, SelfLess: Living Your Part in the Big Story of God

“Or there is James 1:19—a verse that, if heeded, would prevent all manner of grief in today’s world (but would also probably put social media out of business): “Let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger.”
― Brett McCracken, The Wisdom Pyramid: Feeding Your Soul in a Post-Truth World

“The consequences of an ungrateful spirit are not as readily seen as, say, those of a contagious disease. But they are no less deadly. Western civilization has fallen prey to an epidemic of ingratitude. Like a poisonous vapor, this subtle sin is polluting our lives, our homes, our churches, and our culture.”
― Nancy Leigh DeMoss, Choosing Gratitude: Your Journey to Joy

“It is rather revealing that we feel the need to offer special programs (and hire special staff) for single adult ministry in our churches. We struggle somehow to fit single adults into a kingdom plan that we have designed primarily for married folks. Perhaps the problem is with how we have framed the plan. Paul's concern in 1 Corinthians 7 was not to ask how singleness fits into God's kingdom plan. Paul was addressing the issue of how marriage fits into His kingdom plan. Single people are already with the program. They are "concerned about the things of the Lord" (v. 32). Married people are the ones who need help sorting out their priorities.”
― Joseph H. Hellerman, When the Church Was a Family: Recapturing Jesus' Vision for Authentic Christian Community

“Long-term interpersonal relationships are the crucible of genuine progress in the Christian life. People who stay also grow. People who leave do not grow. We all know people who are consumed with spiritual wanderlust. But we never get to know them very well because they cannot seem to stay put. They move along from church to church, ever searching for a congregation that will better satisfy their felt needs. Like trees repeatedly transplanted from soil to soil, these spiritual nomads fail to put down roots and seldom experience lasting and fruitful growth in their Christian lives.”
― Joseph H. Hellerman, When the Church Was a Family: Recapturing Jesus' Vision for Authentic Christian Community

“They call it radical individualism. What this amounts to is simple enough. We in America have been socialized to believe that our own dreams, goals, and personal fulfillment ought to take precedence over the well-being of any group—our church or our family, for example—to which we belong. The immediate needs of the individual are more important than the long-term health of the group. So we leave and withdraw, rather than stay and grow up, when the going gets rough in the church or in the home.”
― Joseph H. Hellerman, When the Church Was a Family: Recapturing Jesus' Vision for Authentic Christian Community

“As church-going Americans, we have been socialized to believe that our individual fulfillment and our personal relationship with God are more important than any connection we might have with our fellow human beings, whether in the home or in the church. We have, in a most subtle and insidious way, been conformed to this world.”
― Joseph H. Hellerman, When the Church Was a Family: Recapturing Jesus' Vision for Authentic Christian Community

“The “let us meet your needs” approach to marketing the church, which became so popular among baby boomers in the 1980s and 1990s, has only served further to socialize our people to “prefer a variety of church experiences, rather than getting the most out of all that a single church has to offer”
― Joseph H. Hellerman, When the Church Was a Family: Recapturing Jesus' Vision for Authentic Christian Community

“Neither Paul nor Jesus can be cited in support of a life-priority list that generates a false dichotomy between commitment to God and commitment to His group in order to stick natural family relations somewhere in between: (1st) God — (2nd) Family — (3rd) Church — (4th) Others For both Jesus and Paul, commitment to God was commitment to God's group. Such an outlook generates a rather different list of priorities, one that more accurately reflects the strong-group perspective of the early Christians: (1st) God's Family — (2nd) My Family — (3rd) Others”
― Joseph H. Hellerman, When the Church Was a Family: Recapturing Jesus' Vision for Authentic Christian Community

“Autonomous Christianity never works, because our spiritual life was designed by God to be a community project.”
― Paul David Tripp, Dangerous Calling: Confronting the Unique Challenges of Pastoral Ministry

“We were not designed to settle for personal survival, temporal happiness, or individual success. We were created to find our meaning, identity, and purpose in the existence, character, and plan of God.”
― Paul David Tripp, A Quest for More: Living for Something Bigger than You

“God-contoured living means that God’s purposes become our functional life goals, that things God says are valuable become the real-life treasures we seek, and that God’s will provides the fences within which we live. The “more” we live for is his plan for us and for all things.”
― Paul David Tripp, A Quest for More: Living for Something Bigger than You