Glorious Ruin Quotes

“God is not interested in what you think you should be or feel. He is not interested in the narrative you construct for yourself, or that others construct for you. Rather, He is interested in you, the you who suffers, the you who inflicts suffering on others, the you who hides, the you who has bad days (and good ones). And He meets you where you are.”
― Tullian Tchividjian, Glorious Ruin: How Suffering Sets You Free

“Grief, of course, is not something that operates according to a specific time frame, and it seems cold to suggest otherwise. Yet when we do not grasp that God is present in pain, we eventually insist on victory or, worse, blame the sufferer for not "getting over it" fast enough. This is more than a failure to extend compassion; it's an exercise in cruelty.”
― Tullian Tchividjian, Glorious Ruin: How Suffering Sets You Free

“Information is seldom enough to heal a wounded heart.”
― Tullian Tchividjian, Glorious Ruin: How Suffering Sets You Free

“...this culture of mandatory happiness actually promotes dishonesty and more suffering.”
― Tullian Tchividjian, Glorious Ruin: How Suffering Sets You Free

“God is the one to be praised, not our transformation.”
― Tullian Tchividjian, Glorious Ruin: How Suffering Sets You Free

“A person with no arms trying to punch themselves until their arms grow back" may be the best description I've ever read of what it feels like for a depressed person to try to cheer herself up. Yet this description applies to any kind of suffering that resists our attempts to address it.”
― Tullian Tchividjian, Glorious Ruin: How Suffering Sets You Free

“Contrary to popular belief, Christianity is not about good people getting better. If anything, it is about bad people coping with their failure to be good.”
― Tullian Tchividjian, Glorious Ruin: How Suffering Sets You Free

“The cross [is] the ultimate statement of God's involvement in the world on this side of heaven.”
― Tullian Tchividjian, Glorious Ruin: How Suffering Sets You Free

“Moralism doesn't produce morality; it produces immorality.”
― Tullian Tchividjian, Glorious Ruin: How Suffering Sets You Free

“God’s chief concern in your suffering is to be with you and be Himself for you.”
― Tullian Tchividjian, Glorious Ruin: How Suffering Sets You Free

“A theology of the cross accepts the difficult thing rather than immediately trying to change it or use it. It looks directly into pain, and “calls a thing what it is” instead of calling evil good and good evil.”
― Tullian Tchividjian, Glorious Ruin: How Suffering Sets You Free

“Indeed, God intends to free us from more than our idolatry; He intends to free us from ourselves. He even wants to liberate us from our need to find a silver lining in suffering.”
― Tullian Tchividjian, Glorious Ruin: How Suffering Sets You Free

“People suffer more deeply and more frequently than they admit, even those who appear to be doing well.”
― Tullian Tchividjian, Glorious Ruin: How Suffering Sets You Free

“Idols are much more than statues that our ancestors bowed down to. Anything that we build our lives on, anything that we lean on for meaning or identity, anything that we hope will bring us freedom, can be an idol.”
― Tullian Tchividjian, Glorious Ruin: How Suffering Sets You Free

“Christianity is not first and foremost about our behavior, our obedience, our response, and our daily victory over sin. It is first and foremost about Jesus! It is about His person; His substitutionary work; His incarnation, life, death, resurrection, ascension, and promised return. We are justified—and sanctified—by grace alone through faith alone in the finished work of Christ alone. Even now, the banner under which Christians live reads, “It is finished.” Everything we need, and everything we look for in things smaller than Jesus, is already ours in Christ.”
― Tullian Tchividjian, Glorious Ruin: How Suffering Sets You Free

“What is that thing in your life that if God were to take it away, you’d feel like life was not worth living? When we’re able to answer that question, we will figure out what we are really worshipping, and what, by definition, might lie at the root of our suffering. It could be our children, our spouse, an ambition, or a dream of financial success. Those good gifts God gave us for our enjoyment that we have turned into idols. Suffering is often the process of these things being stripped away. Indeed, there is nothing like suffering to remind us how much we need God. What good news that His purpose and plan for our lives moves in a different direction from ours!”
― Tullian Tchividjian, Glorious Ruin: How Suffering Sets You Free

“Suffering has a way of stripping all resources away from us so that in the end, all that we have is the only thing that matters: the approval of God based on the accomplished work of Jesus.”
― Tullian Tchividjian, Glorious Ruin: How Suffering Sets You Free

“Pain and suffering loosen our grip on this temporal life. Deeper suffering can lead to deeper surrender.”
― Tullian Tchividjian, Glorious Ruin: How Suffering Sets You Free

“Sin isn’t only doing bad things, it is more fundamentally making good things into ultimate things. Sin is building your life and meaning on anything, even a very good thing, more than on God.”
― Tullian Tchividjian, Glorious Ruin: How Suffering Sets You Free

“God wants to free us from ourselves, and there’s nothing like suffering to show us that we need something bigger than our abilities and our strength and our explanations. There’s nothing like suffering to remind us how not in control we actually are, how little power we ultimately have, and how much we ultimately need God. In other words, suffering reveals to us the things that ultimately matter, which also happen to be the warp and woof of Christianity: who we are and who God is.”
― Tullian Tchividjian, Glorious Ruin: How Suffering Sets You Free

“those who are willing to struggle and despair may in actuality be those among us who best understand the realities of the Christian life.”
― Tullian Tchividjian, Glorious Ruin: How Suffering Sets You Free

“Our dreams are a window into our theology. We are a proud people, the inheritors of the American Dream—the pursuit of happiness is our inalienable right. Like bratty, self-involved little kids, we push past the Giver to grab for the gift. Can you see it? We use God for health, wealth, and emotional well-being, and in the process, we miss out on relationship with our heavenly Father.”
― Tullian Tchividjian, Glorious Ruin: How Suffering Sets You Free

“God is more concerned with our knowing Him than He is in our half-hearted pleasures of comfort, ambition, and success. So much so that He often allows pain and suffering into our lives to clear the clutter of mute, deaf, and unworthy idols that can never deliver on their promises, even when they’re ostensibly good things like health, family, career, success, and status.”
― Tullian Tchividjian, Glorious Ruin: How Suffering Sets You Free

“Christ on the cross meets us in our suffering and conflicts not in the promise to take them away. He is simply with us in all our times”
― Tullian Tchividjian, Glorious Ruin: How Suffering Sets You Free

“Think about it: How often have you heard the gospel equated with a positive change in a believer’s life? “I used to __________, but then I met Jesus and now I’m ___________.” It may be unintentional, but we make a serious mistake when we reduce the good news to its results, such as patience, sobriety, and compassion, in the lives of those who have heard it. These are beautiful developments, and they should be celebrated. But they should not be confused with the gospel itself. The gospel is not a means to an end, it is an end in itself.”
― Tullian Tchividjian, Glorious Ruin: How Suffering Sets You Free

“God intends to free us from more than our idolatry; He intends to free us from ourselves. He even wants to liberate us from our need to find a silver lining in suffering.”
― Tullian Tchividjian, Glorious Ruin: How Suffering Sets You Free

“And by the power of the Holy Spirit, we must pray that our eyes would be opened, that we would see the crucifixion for what it is, not looking away, or through, or past it.”
― Tullian Tchividjian, Glorious Ruin: How Suffering Sets You Free