Discipleship Quotes

“We should be more concerned with reaching the lost than pampering the saved.”
― David McGee

“‎Those who aren't following Jesus aren't his followers. It's that simple. Followers follow, and those who don't follow aren't followers. To follow Jesus means to follow Jesus into a society where justice rules, where love shapes everything. To follow Jesus means to take up his dream and work for it.”
― Scot McKnight, One.Life: Jesus Calls, We Follow

“Whatever the misery, he could not regain contentment with a world which, once doubted, became absurd.”
― Sinclair Lewis, Babbitt

“The best measure of a spiritual life is not its ecstasies but its obedience.”
― Oswald Chambers

“The only humility that is really ours is not that which we try to show before God in prayer, but that which we carry with us, and carry out, in our ordinary conduct; the insignficances of daily life are the importances and the tests of eternity, because they prove what really is the spirit that possesses us.”
― Andrew Murray, Humility: The Journey Toward Holiness

“Most people in America, when they are exposed to the Christian faith, are not being transformed. They take one step into the door, and the journey ends. They are not being allowed, encouraged, or equipped to love or to think like Christ. Yet in many ways a focus on spiritual formation fits what a new generation is really seeking. Transformation is a process, a journey, not a one-time decision.”
― David Kinnaman, unChristian: What a New Generation Really Thinks about Christianity... and Why It Matters

“Why do so many today want to wander off to South Africa or Kenya or India or Russia or Honduras or Costa Rica or Peru to help with justice issues but not spend the same effort in their own neighborhood or community or state? Why do young suburbanites, say in Chicago, want to go to Kentucky or Tennessee to help people but not want to spend that same time to go to the inner city in their own area to help with justice issues? I asked this question to a mature student in my office one day, and he thought he had a partial explanation: 'Because my generation is searching for experiences, and the more exotic and extreme the better. Going down the street to help at a food shelter is good and it is just and some of us are doing that, but it's not an experience. We want experiences.”
― Scot McKnight

“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

“Beginning to sense his call to preach boldly in dangerous situations even though he was young and slight, the author agreed to go only if God would give him a particular sense of His presence. The next morning, the author says it was as if God took out his human eyes and replaced them with God's own because he saw other people so much more vividly.”
― K.P. Yohannan, Revolution in World Missions

“Everything in Scripture is either preparation for the Gospel, presentation of the Gospel, or participation in the Gospel.”
― Dave Harvey

“Unless a person can give reasons, there is, literally, no reason why anyone else should take that person seriously. But without reasons, all we are left with is emotional blackmail. We sometimes call it 'moral blackmail,' but it has nothing to do with morals, only with the implied juvenile threat of having a tantrum unless everyone else gives in.”
― N.T. Wright

“God in His sovereign goodness often uses the painful and at times debilitating injury of a spear thrower to make us readier for His service. ... One thing you discover about spear throwers is that though it’s not necessary for them to be good, it’s essential for them to appear good.”
― Erwin W. Lutzer, When You've Been Wronged: Moving From Bitterness to Forgiveness

“When in situations of stress, we wonder if there is any more in us to give, we can be comforted to know that God, who knows our capabilities perfectly, placed us here to succeed. No one was foreordained to fail or to be wicked. When we have been weighed and found wanting, let us remember that we were measured before and were found equal to our tasks; and therefore, let us continue but with a more determined discipleship." (Ensign, Feb. 1979, 73.)”
― Neal Maxwell

“We need to shed our unearthly and nonsocial and idealistic and romantic and uber-spiritual visions of kingdom and get back to what Jesus meant. By kingdom, Jesus means: God's Dream Society on earth, spreading out from the land of Israel to encompass the whole world.”
― Scot McKnight, One.Life: Jesus Calls, We Follow

“It is important not only to read God's Word but to interpret God's world in the light of the Word.”
― Cindy Jacobs, The Reformation Manifesto: Your Part in God's Plan to Change Nations Today

“[Jesus] plan called for action, and how He expressed it predicted its success. He didn't say "you *might* be my witnesses," or "you *could* be my witnesses," or even "you *should* be my witnesses." He said "you *will* be my witnesses.”
― Swindoll Charles R.

“A Christian understanding of the world sees a child's character not as genetically determined but as shaped to a significant degree by parental discipleship and discipline.”
― Russell D. Moore, Adopted for Life: The Priority of Adoption for Christian Families and Churches

“It is the tendency of deep feeling to subdue the manner rather than to render it too energetic.”
― Charles Haddon Spurgeon, Lectures to My Students

“One of the consequences of sin is that it makes the sinner pity himself instead of causing him to turn to God. One of the first signs of new life is that the individual takes sides with God against himself.”
― Donald Barnhouse

“Cheap grace is the mortal enemy of the church”
― Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship

“A whole nation cannot rise above itself.”
― Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America

“Prison does not silence ideas whose time has come.”
― Barbara W. Tuchman, The March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam

“Never go into venture capital if you want a peaceful life.”
― Georges F. Doriot

“The Christian life does not just evolve. It also requires specific decisions and public commitments to deepen our faith and obedience.”
― Mark Galli, Chaos and Grace: Discovering the Liberating Work of the Holy Spirit

“If the world despises one of the brethren, the Christian will love and serve him. If the world does him violence, the Christian will succor and comfort him. If the world dishonours and insults him, the Christian will sacrifice his own honour to cover his brother's shame. Where the world seeks gain, the Christian will renounce it. Where the world exploits, he will dispossess himself, and where the world oppresses, he will stoop down and raise up the oppressed. If the world refuses justice, the Christian will pursue mercy, and if the world takes refuge in lies, he will open his mouth of the dumb, and bear testimony to the truth. For the sake of his brother, be he Jew or Greek, bond or free, strong or weak, noble or base, he will renounce all fellowship with the world. For the Christian serves the fellowship of the Body of Christ, and he cannot hide it from the world. He is called out of the world to follow Christ.”
― Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship

“Today, it is predicted that nationwide one in three black males and one in six Hispanic males will be incarcerated in their lifetime. We have come to accept this as natural. But why doesn’t our discipleship inspire us to interrogate this belief?”
― Dominique DuBois Gilliard, Rethinking Incarceration: Advocating for Justice That Restores

“We must say yes to the gospel, and that yes is manifested in life as lived daily; or we can say no even by our inactivity.”
― Jacquelyn Grant

“If we buy into the church culture of celebrity, we drift away from following Jesus faithfully.”
― Christopher Ash, Zeal Without Burnout: Seven Keys to a Lifelong Ministry of Sustainable Sacrifice

“Имаше един ден, в който Георг Мюлер умря; мненията му и предпочитанията му, вкуса и волята му - беше мъртъв за света, одобренията му или критиките му. Бях мъртъв за одобрението или обвинението дори на братя или приятели, и оттогава се стремя само да се покажа одобрен от Бога.”
― George Muller

“The lamp and the salt have a power to transform, an ability to change the obvious into the wonderful. That’s the task of the disciple: to turn the ordinary, the bland, and the dark into an extraordinary occasion that gives glory to God.”
― J. Philip Horrigan, Daily Prayer 2020