Reaching for the Invisible God Quotes

“The Bible contains 365 commands to “fear not” — the most reiterated command in the Bible — as if to remind us daily that we will face difficulties that might naturally provoke fear.”
― Philip Yancey, Reaching for the Invisible God: What Can We Expect to Find?

“I used to feel spiritually inferior because I had not experienced the more spectacular manifestations of the Spirit and could not point to any bona fide “miracles” in my life. Increasingly, though, I have come to see that what I value may differ greatly from what God values. Jesus, often reluctant to perform miracles, considered it progress when he departed earth and entrusted the mission to his flawed disciples. Like a proud parent, God seems to take more delight as a spectator of the bumbling achievements of stripling children than in any self-display of omnipotence.

From God’s perspective, if I may speculate, the great advance in human history may be what happened at Pentecost, which restored the direct correspondence of spirit to Spirit that had been lost in Eden. I want God to act in direct, impressive, irrefutable ways. God wants to “share power” with the likes of me, accomplishing his work through people, not despite them.”
― Philip Yancey, Reaching for the Invisible God

“It is incomprehensible that God should exist, and it is incomprehensible that He should not exist; that the soul should be joined to the body, and that we should have no soul; that the world should be created, and that it should not be created . . . BLAISE PASCAL1”
― Philip Yancey, Reaching for the Invisible God: What Can We Expect to Find?

“No one ever hated his own body, but he feeds and cares for it, just as Christ does the church--for we are members of his body,' Paul wrote the Ephesians, adding, 'This is a profound mystery,' as if he too had trouble believing the depth of God's intimacy with his people. I think of all that I do on my body's behalf: take vitamin pills; jog and exercise; cut hair, toenails, and fingernails; sleep; visit the doctor and dentist; eat; bandage scrapes and spread lotion over dry skin; keep room temperature comfortable. I am never not conscious of my body: right now as I write I sense the pressure on my fingertips. That is the kind of intimate relationship God has with his people on earth, for he has chosen our bodies as his own.”
― Philip Yancey, Reaching for the Invisible God

“In view of the mess we have made of crystal-clear commands--the unity of the church, love as a mark of Christians, racial and economic justice, the importance of personal purity, the dangers of wealth--I tremble to think what we would do if some of the ambiguous doctrines were less ambiguous.”
― Philip Yancey, Reaching for the Invisible God

“AS ANDREW GREELEY SAID, "If one wishes to eliminate uncertainty, tension, confusion and disorder from one's life, there is no point  in getting mixed up either with Yahweh or with Jesus of Nazareth."7-9 I grew up expecting that a relationship with God would bring order, certainty, and a calm rationality to life. Instead, I have discovered that living in faith involves much dynamic tension.”
― Philip Yancey, Reaching for the Invisible God: What Can We Expect to Find?

“I will never be able to reduce life with God to a formula for the same reason I cannot reduce my marriage to a formula. It is a living, growing relationship with another free being, very different from me and yet sharing much in common. No relationship has proved more challenging than marriage. I am tempted sometimes to wish for an "old-fashioned" marriage, in which roles and expectations are more clearly spelled out and need not always be negotiated. I sometimes yearn for an intervention from outside which would decisively change one of the characteristics that bring my wife and me pain. So far, that has not happened. We wake up each day and continue the journey on ground that grows incrementally more solid with each step. Love works that way, with partners visible or invisible.”
― Philip Yancey, Reaching for the Invisible God: What Can We Expect to Find?

“Nothing that is worth doing can be achieved in our lifetime; therefore we must be saved by hope. Nothing which is true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history; therefore we must be saved by faith. Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone; therefore we must be saved by love.7-22 REINHOLD NIEBUHR”
― Philip Yancey, Reaching for the Invisible God: What Can We Expect to Find?

“Suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope."7-19 He lists hope at the end, instead of where I would normally expect it, at the beginning, as the fuel that keeps a person going. No, hope emerges from the struggle, a byproduct of faithfulness.”
― Philip Yancey, Reaching for the Invisible God: What Can We Expect to Find?

“As a Jewish rabbi put it, "A man should carry two stones in his pocket. On one should be inscribed, ‘I am but dust and ashes.' On the other, ‘For my sake was the world created.' And he should use each stone as he needs it."7-11”
― Philip Yancey, Reaching for the Invisible God: What Can We Expect to Find?

“God loves each one of us as if there was only one of us to love," said Augustine.”
― Philip Yancey, Reaching for the Invisible God: What Can We Expect to Find?

“Doubt always coexists with faith, for in the presence of certainty who would need faith at all?”
― Philip Yancey, Reaching for the Invisible God

“Merton found the secret to true freedom: If we live to please God alone, we set ourselves free from the cares and worries that press in on us. So many of my own cares trace back to concern over other people: whether I measure up to their expectations, whether they find me desirable. Living for God alone involves a radical reorientation, a stripping away of anything that might lure me from the primary goal of pleasing God. Living in faith involves me pleasing God, far more than God pleasing me.”
― Philip Yancey, Reaching for the Invisible God: What Can We Expect to Find?

“We understand God best, Dorothy Sayers suggests, by thinking of God as a creative artist. Imagine God as an engineer or watchmaker or immovable force, and you will go astray. God's image shines through us most clearly in the act of creation-comprising the three stages of Idea, Expression, and Recognition-and by reproducing this act we may begin to grasp, by analogy, the Trinity.”
― Philip Yancey, Reaching for the Invisible God: What Can We Expect to Find?

“As Dennis Covington has written, "Mystery is not the absence of meaning, but the presence of more meaning than we can comprehend." 7-20”
― Philip Yancey, Reaching for the Invisible God: What Can We Expect to Find?

“I have found consolation, for example, in C. S. Lewis's depiction in The Great Divorce of hell as a place that people choose, and continue to choose even when they end up there. As Milton's Satan put it, "Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven.”
― Philip Yancey, Reaching for the Invisible God: What Can We Expect to Find?

“Dios no me envía a un aula vacía al fondo del pasillo cuando lo desobedezco. Al contrario. Los momentos en que me siento más apartado de Dios pueden producir una sensación de desespero que presenta un nuevo punto de partida para la gracia.”
― Philip Yancey, Alcanzando al Dios invisible: ¿Qué podemos esperar encontrar?

“Las palabras que [Dios] repite sin cesar en todos los detalles de su creación son: «Hoy pongo al cielo y a la tierra por testigos contra ti, de que te he dado a elegir entre la vida y la muerte, entre la bendición y la maldición. Elige, pues, la vida, para que vivan». Permanece tal como estás y saldrás mal; cambia, por doloroso que sea, y muévete hacia la vida. Cada vez que aprendo un poco más acerca del proceso de la creación, me vuelvo a asombrar de la increíble osadía del Espíritu Creador, que parece jugarse todas las ganancias del pasado en una nueva iniciativa, incitando a sus criaturas a una aventura tan loca y un riesgo tan grande.”
― Philip Yancey, Alcanzando al Dios invisible: ¿Qué podemos esperar encontrar?

“La Biblia no hace ninguna promesa color rosa acerca de vivir en una primavera eterna. Lo que hace es señalar hacia la fe que nos ayuda a prepararnos para las estaciones de sequía. Vendrán duros inviernos, seguidos por veranos ardientes. No obstante, si las raíces de la fe adquieren la suficiente profundidad para llegar hasta donde se halla el Agua Viva, podremos sobrevivir a los tiempos de sequía y florecer en los tiempos de abundancia.”
― Philip Yancey, Alcanzando al Dios invisible: ¿Qué podemos esperar encontrar?