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#1

“Certainly we struggle as victims of other people’s unkindness. We have been sinned against. But we cannot excuse our sinful responses to others on the grounds of their mistreatment of us. We are responsible for what we do. We are both strugglers and sinners, victims and agents, people who hurt and people who harm.”
― Larry Crabb, Inside Out

tags: hurt, response, sin, unkindness, victim, victimization

19 likes

#2

“Change from the inside out involves a steadfast gaze upon our Lord that's life changing because it reflects a deep turning from a commitment to self-sufficiency. Without repentance, a look at Christ provides only the illusion of comfort.”
― Larry Crabb, Inside Out

tags: change, christ, comfort, repentance, self, sufficiency, turning

10 likes

#3

“We must admit that simply knowing the contents of the Bible is not a sure route to spiritual growth. There is an aweful assumption in evangelical churches that if we can just get the Word of God into people's heads, then the Spirit of God will apply it to their hearts. That assumption is aweful, not because the Spirit never does what the assumption supposes, but because it excused pastors and leaders from the responsibility to tangle with people's lives. Many remain safely hidden behind pulpits, hopelessly out of touch with the struggles of their congregations, proclaiming the Scriptures with a pompous accuracy that touches no one. Pulpits should provide bridges, not barriers, to life-changing relationships.”
― Larry Crabb, Inside Out

tags: bible, knowledge, learning, pastors, pulpits, relationships

17 likes

#4

“We must come to the Bible with the purpose of self-exposure consciously in mind. I suspect not many people make more than a token stab in that direction. It's extremely hard work. It makes Bible study alternately convicting and reassuring, painful and soothing, puzzling and calming, and sometimes dull - but not for long if our purpose is to see ourselves better.”
― Larry Crabb , Inside Out

tags: bible, convicting, self-exposure, study

5 likes

#5

“Evangelicals sometimes expect too much or, to put it more precisely, we look for a kind of change God hasn't promised. It's possible to expect too little, but under-expectation is usually a cynical reaction to dashed hopes for too much. We manage to interpret biblical teaching to support our longing for perfection. As a result, we measure our progress by standards we will never meet until heaven.”
― Larry Crabb, Inside Out

tags: change, expectation, god, perfection, standards

7 likes

#6

“Most of the church landscape in my lifetime has been heavily invested in trying to do something for Jerry or Sherri or some other icon of unchurchness. The problem is that they have been only about themselves from the moment they could wail for their mothers, and the decision to give them at church what they can find in any self-help book appears now as a choice to abandon the One in whose honor the church gathers. What they need is to be set free from themselves with finality and to be lost in the awesome wonder of the manifest presence of God. It was never God’s desire that He would sit on the sideline and watch us frantically devise impressive ways to reach people or simply hold the line on orthodoxy as though faithfulness can exist in a vacuum apart from fruitfulness. God is the Matter of first importance! Can you say that about your current weekly encounter with church?”
― James MacDonald, Vertical Church: What Every Heart Longs for. What Every Church Can Be.

tags: church, encounter, focus, god, task, vision, worship

4 likes

#7

“Let God Himself be the main attraction at church again, and let us be tireless in our insistence that church is for God, about God, through God, and to the glory of His great Son.”
― James MacDonald, Vertical Church: What Every Heart Longs for. What Every Church Can Be.

tags: attraction, church, glory, god, worship

9 likes

#8

“Church leaders raised on rationalism lead ministries where the supernatural, the Vertical, is suppressed and where God Himself is at best an observer and certainly seldom, if ever, and obvious participant in church.”
― James MacDonald, Vertical Church: What Every Heart Longs for. What Every Church Can Be.

tags: church, leaders, leadership, rationalism, suppress

5 likes

#9

“In a society where rationality has ruled so long, the church frequently fails to see that in forsaking the weekly pursuit of the transcendent, we have given up the only ground that was uniquely ours in this world. In attempting to make the church something that can attract and add value to secular mind-sets, we have turned our backs on our one true proposition - transcendence.”
― James MacDonald, Vertical Church: What Every Heart Longs for. What Every Church Can Be.

tags: church, rationality, transcendence, worship

4 likes

#10

“The entity God created to traffic His transcendence has fallen far from its mission when it chooses instead to traffic what can be found on any street corner or at the local mall. You may ask, "But how has the church done that?"

* By offering secularists what they find mildly interesting and calling it church.
*By submitting to self-help sermons where encounter with God is not even on the agenda.
* By letting the horizontal excellence of the show stand in for Vertical impact.
*By substituting the surprise or shock of superficial entertainment for the supernatural.

Church was designed to deliver what we were created to long for. Church must again be about a Vertical encounter that interrupts and alters everything.”
― James MacDonald, Vertical Church: What Every Heart Longs for. What Every Church Can Be.

tags: church, purpose, secularists, transcendence, vertical, world, worship

5 likes

#11

“Many people are caught up with the toys of contemporary society. Because of great advancements in our culture, some have cultivated an attitude of “comfortability.” They may be going to hell, but it is going to be a comfortable ride for them.”
― A.W. Tozer, And He Dwelt Among Us: Teachings from the Gospel of John

tags: comfortable, contemporary, hell, toys

27 likes

#12

“Your poor heart, in which God put appreciation for everlastingness, will not take electronic gadgets in lieu of eternal life. Something inside of you is too big for that, too terrible, too wonderful. God has set everlastingness in your heart. All the things of this world are here for but a moment and then are gone. None can satisfy the longing for that eternal ragging in the soul of every man.”
― A.W. Tozer, And He Dwelt Among Us: Teachings from the Gospel of John

tags: among, dwelt, everlasting, everlastingness, fleeting, god, heart, life, us

13 likes

#13

“Whenever you see confusion, you can be sure that something is wrong. Disorder in the world implies that something is out of place. Usually, at the heart of all disorder you will find man in rebellion against God. It began in the Garden of Eden and continues to this day.”
― A.W. Tozer, And He Dwelt Among Us: Teachings from the Gospel of John

tags: confusion, disorder, god, mankind, world, wrong

24 likes

#14

“All nature has come to expect from God a sense of orderliness. Whatever God does carries with it His fingerprint. And in the world around us His fingerprint of orderliness is evident to anybody who is honest with the facts. If you look at nature, you will discover a mathematical exactness. Without this precision, the entire world would be in utter confusion. One plus one always equals two no matter what part of the universe you happen to be in. And the laws of nature operate in beautiful harmony, a harmony that is ordered by God Himself.”
― A.W. Tozer, And He Dwelt Among Us: Teachings from the Gospel of John

tags: exactness, fingerprint, god, harmony, nature, precision

14 likes

#15

“Only the redeemed have the ability to like what God likes and to be pleased with what pleases God.”
― A.W. Tozer, And He Dwelt Among Us: Teachings from the Gospel of John

tags: god, pleases, redeemed

17 likes

#16

“Everything God does has purpose and intention behind that design. It is a master design, and every little thing has its proper place and function.”
― A.W. Tozer, And He Dwelt Among Us: Teachings from the Gospel of John

tags: creation, god, purpose, work

6 likes

#17

“Jesus Christ came not to condemn you but to save you, knowing your name, knowing all about you, knowing your weight right now, knowing your age, knowing what you do, knowing where you live, knowing what you ate for supper and what you will eat for breakfast, where you will sleep tonight, how much your clothing cost, who your parents were. He knows you individually as though there were not another person in the entire world. He died for you as certainly as if you had been the only lost one. He knows the worst about you and is the One who loves you the most.
If you are out of the fold and away from God, put your name in the words of John 3:16 and say, “Lord, it is I. I’m the cause and reason why Thou didst on earth come to die.” That kind of positive, personal faith and a personal Redeemer is what saves you. If you will just rush in there, you do not have to know all the theology and all the right words. You can say, “I am the one He came to die for.” Write it down in your heart and say, “Jesus, this is me—Thee and me,” as though there were no others. Have that kind of personalized belief in a personal Lord and Savior.”
― A.W. Tozer, And He Dwelt Among Us: Teachings from the Gospel of John

tags: die, god, gospel, jesus, john-3-16, knowing, lost, personal, redeem, salvation

74 likes

#18

“Unfortunately, the ten-cent-store Jesus being preached now by many men is not the Jesus that will come to judge the world. This plastic, painted Christ who has no spine and no justice, but is a soft and pliant friend to everybody, if He is the only Christ, then we might as well close our books, bar our doors and make a bakery or garage out of our church buildings. The popular Christ being preached now is not the Christ of God nor the Christ of the Bible nor the Christ we must deal with finally. For the Christ that we deal with has eyes as a flame of fire. And His feet are like burnished brass; and out of His mouth cometh a sharp two-edged sword (see Rev. 1:14-16). He will be the judge of humanity. You can leave your loved ones in His hands knowing that He Himself suffered, knowing that He knows all, no mistakes can be made, there can be no miscarriage of justice, because He knows all that can be known... Jesus Christ our Lord, the judge with the flaming eyes, is the one with whom we must deal. We cannot escape it.”
― A.W. Tozer, And He Dwelt Among Us: Teachings from the Gospel of John

tags: christ, god, hell, jesus, judge, justice, savior, saviour, true

13 likes

#19

“Who do people say the Son of Man is? ...But what about you? Who do you say I am?' (Mt 16:13,15). In the end, people's answer to this question will be the only thing that matters; it alone will determine people's eternal destiny.”
― Andreas J. Kostenberger, Encountering John: The Gospel in Historical, Literary, and Theological Perspective

tags: destiny, eternal, heaven, hell, life, question, son-of-man

7 likes

#20

“There are no unique postures and times and limitations that restrict our access to God. My relationship with God is intimate and personal. The Christian does not go to the temple to worship. The Christian takes the temple with him or her. Jesus lifts us beyond the building and pays the human body the highest compliment by making it His dwelling place, the place where He meets with us. Even today He would overturn the tables of those who make it a marketplace for their own lust, greed and wealth.”
― Ravi Zacharias, Jesus Among Other Gods: The Absolute Claims of the Christian Message

tags: body, christian, dwelling, god, greed, jesus, lust, restrictions, temple, wealth, worship

17 likes

#21

“Evangelical Christians need to notice..., that the Reformation said 'Scripture Alone' and not 'the Revelation of God in Christ Alone'. If you do not have the view of the Scriptures that the Reformers had, you really have no content in the word 'Christ' - and this is the modern drift in theology. Modern theology uses the word without content because 'Christ' is cut away from the Scriptures. The Reformation followed the teaching of Christ Himself in linking the revelation Christ gave of God to the revelation of the written Scriptures.”
― Francis A. Schaeffer, Escape from Reason

tags: bible, christ, christians, evangelical, modern, reformation, scripture, theology

11 likes

#22

“We cannot deal with people like human beings, we cannot deal with them on the high level of true humanity, unless we really know their origin-who they are. God tells man who he is. God tells us that He created man in His image. So man is something wonderful.”
― Francis A. Schaeffer, Escape from Reason

tags: god, human, humanity, origin, reason, worth

12 likes

#23

“You can give without loving, but you can never love without giving.”
― Robert Louis Stevenson

tags: giving, love

233 likes

#24

“The existence of a limit to science is, however, made clear by its inability to answer childlike elementary questions having to do with first and last things – questions such as “How did everything begin?” “What are we all here for?” “What is the point of living?”
― Sir Peter Medawar

tags: anwser, evolution, god, science, science-vs-religion, theism

4 likes

#25

“Unless some people are commissioned for the task, there will be no gospel preachers; unless the gospel is preached, sinners will not hear Christ’s message and voice; unless they hear him, they will not believe the truths of his death and resurrection; unless they believe these truths, they will not call on him; and unless they call on his name, they will not be saved.”
― John Stott

tags: believe, commission, death, gospel, great, hear, preach, proclamation, resurrection, romans, romans-10, saved, sinners, truth

1 likes

#26

“God is not an alternative to science as an explanation, he is not to be understood merely as a God of the gaps, he is the ground of all explanation: it is his existence which gives rise to the very possibility of explanation, scientific or otherwise. It is important to stress this because influential authors such as Richard Dawkins will insist on conceiving of God as an explanatory alternative to science – an idea that is nowhere to be found in theological reflection of any depth. Dawkins is therefore tilting at a windmill - dismissing a concept of God that no serious thinker believes in anyway. Such activity is not necessarily to be regarded as a mark of intellectual sophistication.”
― John Lennox, God's Undertaker: Has Science Buried God?

tags: alternative, dawkins, evolution, existence, explanation, god, god-of-gaps, intellectual, lennox, science, scientific

18 likes

#27

“A miracle is a violation of the laws of nature; and as a firm and unalterable experience has established these laws, the proof against a miracle, from the very nature of the fact, is as entire as any argument from experience as can be imagined.”
― David Hume

tags: law, miracles, science

4 likes

#28

“Generations of Humeans have… been misled into offering analyses of causation and of natural law that have been far too weak because they had no basis for accepting the existence of either cause and effect or natural laws… Hume’s scepticism about cause and effect and his agnosticism about the external world are of course jettisoned the moment he leaves his study.”
― Anthony Flew

tags: god, hume, law, laws, miracles, philosophy, science

1 likes

#29

“The pain of aloneness and pointlessness is piercing. It demands relief. That single fact — that the pain of living apart from God is unbearable — exposes our sinfulness as horribly grotesque and foolish. We insist on finding relief without coming to God on His terms.”
― Larry Crabb

tags: aloneness, apart, god, pain, sinful, sinfulness

2 likes

#30

“Modern Christianity, in dramatic reversal of its biblical form, promises to relieve the pain of living in a fallen world. Then message, whether it’s from fundamentalists requiring us to live by a favored set of rules or from charismatics urging a deeper surrender to the Spirit’s power, is too often the same: The promise of bliss is for now! Complete satisfaction can be ours this side of heaven. Some speak of the joys of fellowship and obedience, others of a rich awareness of their value and worth. The language may be reassuringly biblical or it may reflect the influence of current psychological thought. Either way, the point of living the Christian life has shifted from knowing and serving Christ till He returns to soothing, or at least learning to ignore, the ache in our soul.”
― Larry Crabb

tags: ache, bible, christ, christianity, modern, pain, relief, soul

4 likes

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