Marshall > Marshall's Quotes

“On earth, however, God doesn’t prescribe a happy life. Look at some of the Psalms. They are written by people of great faith, yet they run the emotional gamut. One even ends with “darkness is my closest friend” (Ps. 88:18). When your emotions feel muted or always low, when you are unable to experience the highs and lows you once did, the important question is not “How can I figure out what I have done wrong?” but it is, “Where do I turn—or, to whom do I turn—when I am depressed?”
― Edward T. Welch, Depression: Looking Up from the Stubborn Darkness

“It is much easier for me to imagine a praying murderer, a praying prostitute, than a vain person praying. Nothing is so at odds with prayer as vanity.”
― Eric Metaxas, Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy

“Christianity preaches the infinite worth of that which is seemingly worthless and the infinite worthlessness of that which is seemingly so valued.”
― Eric Metaxas, Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy

“We tell ourselves, “Strong Christians pray a lot. If I were a stronger Christian, I’d pray more.” Strong Christians do pray more, but they pray more because they realize how weak they are. They don’t try to hide it from themselves. Weakness is the channel that allows them to access grace.”
― Paul E. Miller, A Praying Life: Connecting With God In A Distracting World

“simply—I believe that the Bible alone is the answer to all our questions, and that we need only to ask repeatedly and a little humbly, in order to receive this answer. One cannot simply read the Bible, like other books. One must be prepared really to enquire of it. Only thus will it reveal itself. Only if we expect from it the ultimate answer, shall we receive it. That is because in the Bible God speaks to us. And one cannot simply think about God in one’s own strength, one has to enquire of him. Only if we seek him, will he answer us. Of course it is also possible to read the Bible like any other book, that is to say from the point of view of textual criticism, etc.; there is nothing to be said against that. Only that that is not the method which will reveal to us the heart of the Bible, but only the surface, just as we do not grasp the words of someone we love by taking them to bits, but by simply receiving them, so that for days they go on lingering in our minds, simply because they are the words of a person we love; and just as these words reveal more and more of the person who said them as we go on, like Mary, “pondering them in our heart,” so it will be with the words of the Bible.”
― Eric Metaxas, Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy

“It’s been our misfortune to have the wrong religion. Why didn’t we have the religion of the Japanese, who regard sacrifice for the Fatherland as the highest good? The Mohammedan religion too would have been much more compatible to us than Christianity. Why did it have to be Christianity with its meekness and flabbiness? —ADOLF HITLER”
― Eric Metaxas, Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy

“If you board the wrong train it is no use running along the corridor in the opposite direction. —DIETRICH BONHOEFFER”
― Eric Metaxas, Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy

“Bethge remembered some of Bonhoeffer’s advice: “Write your sermon in daylight; do not write it all at once; ‘in Christ’ there is no room for conditional clauses; the first minutes on the pulpit are the most favorable, so do not waste them with generalities but confront the congregation straight off with the core of the matter; extemporaneous preaching can be done by anyone who really knows the Bible.”
― Eric Metaxas, Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy

“This was how Bonhoeffer saw what he was doing. He had theologically redefined the Christian life as something active, not reactive. It had nothing to do with avoiding sin or with merely talking or teaching or believing theological notions or principles or rules or tenets. It had everything to do with living one’s whole life in obedience to God’s call through action. It did not merely require a mind, but a body too. It was God’s call to be fully human, to live as human beings obedient to the one who had made us, which was the fulfillment of our destiny. It was not a cramped, compromised, circumspect life, but a life lived in a kind of wild, joyful, full-throated freedom—that was what it was to obey God. Whether Dohnanyi or Oster understood all of this as Bethge would have is doubtful, but they were brilliant men who surely understood enough of it to seek Bonhoeffer’s counsel and participation in what they were doing.”
― Eric Metaxas, Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy

“God created an awesome world. God intentionally loaded the world with amazing things to leave you astounded. The carefully air-conditioned termite mound in Africa, the tart crunchiness of an apple, the explosion of thunder, the beauty of an orchid, the interdependent systems of the human body, the inexhaustible pounding of the ocean waves, and thousands of other created sights, sounds, touches, and tastes—God designed all to be awesome. And he intended you to be daily amazed.”
― Paul David Tripp, Awe: Why It Matters for Everything We Think, Say, and Do

“Developing leaders is not just downloading theological knowledge and ministry skill, but calling people to lead with hearts captured by the awe of God.”
― Paul David Tripp, Awe: Why It Matters for Everything We Think, Say, and Do

“This is what sin does to us all. At a deep and often unnoticed level, sin replaces worship of God with worship of self. It replaces submission with self-rule. It replaces gratitude with demands for more. It replaces faith with self-reliance. It replaces vertical joy with horizontal envy. It replaces a rest in God’s sovereignty with a quest for personal control. We live for our glory. We set up our rules. We ask others to serve our agenda.”
― Paul David Tripp, Awe: Why It Matters for Everything We Think, Say, and Do

“Here’s the reality: most people who are angry with God are angry with him for being God. They’re not angry because he has failed to deliver what he promised. They’re angry because he has failed to deliver what they have craved, expected, or demanded. When awe of self replaces awe of God, God ceases to be your Lord and is reduced to being your indentured servant.”
― Paul David Tripp, Awe: Why It Matters for Everything We Think, Say, and Do

“Do you know why few of us like to wait? We don’t like to wait because waiting immediately reminds us that we are not in charge. Nothing more quickly offends our delusions of self-sovereignty than being forced to step out of our own schedules and wait for another. Think about it. You have never gotten angry because you have had to wait for you! Only when my heart is progressively in awe of the agenda of One vastly greater and wiser than me will I surrender my schedule to him and be willing to wait for others.”
― Paul David Tripp, Awe: Why It Matters for Everything We Think, Say, and Do

“For Satan, as for Marx, religion was an impediment to the grand design of transforming humanity from a collection of free-willed, autonomous individuals into a mass of self-corralling slaves who mistake security for liberty and try to keep the cognitive dissonance to a minimum in order to function.”
― Michael Walsh, The Devil's Pleasure Palace: The Cult of Critical Theory and the Subversion of the West

“As Orwell predicted in 1984, sloganeering eventually must replace free inquiry if the System is to survive and prosper; there can be not even a single ray of light in the darkness, lest the people glimpse the truth.”
― Michael Walsh, The Devil's Pleasure Palace: The Cult of Critical Theory and the Subversion of the West

“Living in regret robs you of your confidence. Living in regret renders you timid. Living in regret kidnaps your courage. Living in regret weakens or steals your hope. Living in regret drags the past into the present. Living in regret even drags the past into the future. And for all of its remembering, regret can be tragically forgetful. What is it that regret tends to forget? Regret tends to forget the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ. On the cross, Jesus bore the entire burden of our guilt and our shame. On the cross, Jesus purchased, by the shedding of his blood, our complete forgiveness: past, present, and future. This means that we can boldly come to him in our failure, receive his forgiveness, deposit our regret at his feet, and move on to new and better ways of doing what he has called us to do as parents.”
― Paul David Tripp, Parenting: 14 Gospel Principles That Can Radically Change Your Family

“The natural tendency is to put giving off until you feel able to give. Such thinking keeps many from ever giving. A preacher came to see a farmer and asked him, “If you had $200, would you give $100 of it to the Lord?” “I would.” “If you had two cows, would you give one of them to the Lord?” “Sure.” “If you had two pigs, would you give one of them to the Lord?” The farmer said, “Now that isn’t fair! You know I have two pigs.”
― R. Kent Hughes, Disciplines of a Godly Man

“The postmodern approach to ethically driven social critique is intangible and unfalsifiable. As the idea of radical skepticism shows, postmodern thought relies upon Theoretical principles and ways of seeing the world, rather than truth claims. Because of its rejection of objective truth and reason, postmodernism refuses to substantiate itself and cannot, therefore, be argued with. The postmodern perception, Lyotard writes, makes no claim to be true: “Our hypotheses, therefore, should not be accorded predictive value in relation to reality, but strategic value in relation to the question raised.”33 In other words, postmodern Theory seeks not to be factually true but to be strategically useful: in order to bring about its own aims, morally virtuous and politically useful by its own definitions.”
― Helen Pluckrose, Cynical Theories: How Activist Scholarship Made Everything about Race, Gender, and Identity—and Why This Harms Everybody

“Faith has a cumulative quality to it. We amass and garner it. We grow it and lay it in store for future times. Our faith grows stronger through the seasons of life.”
― Robert J. Morgan, The Red Sea Rules: 10 God-Given Strategies for Difficult Times

“The daily provision of manna created a vital lesson. It appears in the New Testament in the Lord’s Prayer: “Give us this day our daily bread” (Matt. 6:11). The idea is simple and yet profound: God provides what we need on his timeline. He gives daily bread. He provides daily grace. You can’t buy manna in bulk.”
― Mark Vroegop, Waiting Isn't a Waste: The Surprising Comfort of Trusting God in the Uncertainties of Life