A Place for Weakness Quotes

“the gospel is good news for losers, that in fact we are all losers if we measure ourselves by God’s interpretation of reality rather than our own. The demand for glory, power, comfort, autonomy, health, and wealth creates a vicious cycle of craving and disillusionment. It even creates its own industry of therapists and exercise, style, and self-esteem gurus—and churches—to massage the egos wounded by this hedonism. When crisis hits, the soul is too effete to respond appropriately. We become prisoners of our own felt needs, which were inculcated in us in the first place by the very marketplace that promises a “fix.” We become victims of our own shallow hopes. We are too easily disappointed because we are too easily persuaded that the marketplace always has something that can make us happy.”
― Michael S. Horton, A Place for Weakness: Preparing Yourself for Suffering

“God does not exist for us; we exist for God.”
― Michael S. Horton, A Place for Weakness: Preparing Yourself for Suffering

“Sometimes we suffer for righteousness’ sake, other times for our own folly, and quite often, simply as a result of belonging to a fallen creation in which suffering and death are inevitable.”
― Michael S. Horton, A Place for Weakness: Preparing Yourself for Suffering

“Even when they use the psalms, our contemporary praise choruses pick out the upbeat notes but don’t know what to do with that blue note. Imagine singing one of these psalms in church next Sunday: My soul refuses to be comforted. When I remember God, I moan; when I meditate, my spirit faints. You hold my eyelids open; I am so troubled that I cannot speak. I consider the days of old, the years long ago… “Will the Lord spurn forever, and never again be favorable? Has his steadfast love forever ceased? Are his promises at an end for all time? Has God forgotten to be gracious? Has he in anger shut up his compassion?”
― Michael S. Horton, A Place for Weakness: Preparing Yourself for Suffering

“We rise up to God in pride, while God descends to us in humility.”
― Michael S. Horton, A Place for Weakness: Preparing Yourself for Suffering

“As C. S. Lewis pointed out, it is not that our desires are too strong (as Stoicism would have it), but that they are too weak. 3 The irony of our lives is that we demand the ephemeral, momentary glories of this fading age, too easily amused and seduced by the trivial, when ultimate joy is held out to us.”
― Michael S. Horton, A Place for Weakness: Preparing Yourself for Suffering

“There is no place for suffering in a life whose goals are determined by a hedonistic culture,”
― Michael S. Horton, A Place for Weakness: Preparing Yourself for Suffering

“He lived for nearly a year, however, almost paralyzed from head to toe. Since even his face had lost muscular control, his eyelids drooped, exposing their red interior. It was as if his whole face had melted like wax, and we could hardly recognize him—except for the eyes, which were always filled with emotion, usually unspeakable pain. But occasionally, and more frequently toward the end, they evidenced hope and a confidence that came from another place.”
― Michael S. Horton, A Place for Weakness: Preparing Yourself for Suffering

“life is both a tragedy and a comedy, often at the same time.”
― Michael S. Horton, Too Good to Be True: Finding Hope in a World of Hype

“a religion of human goodness will never sustain a people in times of disaster and threat.”
― Michael S. Horton, A Place for Weakness: Preparing Yourself for Suffering

“The goal of life is not to be happy, but to be holy; not to make ourselves acceptable to ourselves and others, but to be made acceptable to God by God; not to be gathered together with all of the successful people in the prime of our life, but to be gathered unto our fathers and mothers in the faith.”
― Michael S. Horton, A Place for Weakness: Preparing Yourself for Suffering

“The essence of idolatry is the fear of dealing with the true God, whose holiness fills us with fear because of our own sinfulness.”
― Michael S. Horton, A Place for Weakness: Preparing Yourself for Suffering

“The God who comes to us in revelation is not a projection, but a person. He wrestles us to the ground, takes away our pride, and leaves us walking away from the match with a limp so that we will never forget the encounter.”
― Michael S. Horton, A Place for Weakness: Preparing Yourself for Suffering

“God is truly to be found in the weak things of the world.”
― Michael S. Horton, A Place for Weakness: Preparing Yourself for Suffering

“The demand for glory, power, comfort, autonomy, health, and wealth creates a vicious cycle of craving and disillusionment.”
― Michael S. Horton, A Place for Weakness: Preparing Yourself for Suffering

“Nietzsche may have been accurately describing the feeble pietism that surrounded him, the saccharine portraits of Jesus from childhood, but he could not have been more incorrect in his analysis that as a religion of the “sick soul,” the preaching of Christ was simply a message of resignation to the powers and principalities. On the contrary, it was the most radical renunciation of the herd mentality that keeps us addicted to the power brokers of this age.”
― Michael S. Horton, A Place for Weakness: Preparing Yourself for Suffering

“Contrast the upbeat contemporary perspective with that of theologian Karl Barth, who was a prominent figure in the church’s resistance to Nazism (one of the offspring of Nietzsche’s philosophy). Each Sunday, notes Barth, the church bell is rung to announce to the village that God’s word is to be proclaimed: “And if none of these things help, will not the crosses in the churchyard which quietly look in through the windows tell you unambiguously what is relevant here and what is not?”5 The sanctuary did not see the world through rose-colored windows but through clear glass that brought reality home. But that was when we had graveyards on church grounds. Today, we have conveniently removed death, and with it the communion of the saints, and relegated it to nondescript secular cemeteries with euphemistic names like “Forest Lawn.” The average person today is about as likely to come in contact with the dead and dying as with the sources of daily bread. We now have supermarkets for everything, with cheerful music soothing any inconvenient questions, doubts, or fears about how we are dealing with life and death. Even our churches can exhibit this tendency.”
― Michael S. Horton, A Place for Weakness: Preparing Yourself for Suffering

“the theology of the cross sees God only where God has revealed himself, particularly in the weakness and mercy of the suffering. Only when we learn to despair of ourselves, to suffer our own nakedness in God’s holy presence, to renounce our righteousness and listen only to God’s Word, are we enabled to recognize God as our Savior rather than our just judge and holy enemy. We rise up to God in pride, while God descends to us in humility.”
― Michael S. Horton, A Place for Weakness: Preparing Yourself for Suffering