How to Stay Christian in Seminary Quotes

“You should marvel that no matter how remarkable your giftings or how simple your understanding, the message you proclaim is sheer stupidity to the world. Intellectual proficiency takes a back seat when your only hope is in what some call offensive and others call folly. Therefore, determine to be known less for your strengths in academic rigor and more for how that rigor helps you grasp what it means that the God-man was crucified to save the world. Embrace your weakness. Bring it all back to grace.”
― David Mathis, How to Stay Christian in Seminary

“I fear many imagine God as far too small. Even if you say the right words and articulate good doctrine, if you are not somehow unsettled by God’s mystery, somehow overcome by his greatness, it’s probably because you have domesticated him. Accessibility to information about him has inoculated you to his grandeur.”
― David Mathis, How to Stay Christian in Seminary

“God, keep me warm to your grace. Help me to be endlessly astounded that in Jesus you’ve shown such amazing favor to such an undeserving rebel as me.”
― David Mathis, How to Stay Christian in Seminary

“There are things you cannot know without suffering. God has special tutorials in tribulation for his shepherds. Do not begrudge the seminars of suffering. His aim is to make you, like Jesus, a sympathetic shepherd. It’s scary. Paul prayed that he would share Christ’s sufferings and become like him in his death (Phil. 3:10). God answered him. He was forsaken at his last trial (2 Tim. 4:16), and the Romans took him out. We are not playing games.”
― David Mathis, How to Stay Christian in Seminary

“The message of the gospel is not meant to be something you “get,” carve into canned lines, and tell yourself over and over for a lifetime as some sort of magic mantra to fight sin. God means for you to be regularly pushed and formed, hurt and healed, challenged and encouraged by passages you’ve never heard before, haven’t given enough attention to, or haven’t considered in a while.”
― David Mathis, How to Stay Christian in Seminary

“Prayer is where we agree with God that he is who he says he is and we are who he says we are.”
― David Mathis, How to Stay Christian in Seminary

“The very fact that we know that God is incomprehensible is itself an evidence of what he has graciously let us comprehend.”
― David Mathis, How to Stay Christian in Seminary

“An otherwise impressive theology degree is utterly unimpressive if your soul has shriveled in the course of study.”
― David Mathis, How to Stay Christian in Seminary

“There were afternoons I put my elbows on my desk, face in my hands, and wept over the theological confusion in my head. I think that is the price of dismantling joy-defeating doctrines. It is ironic that so many tears should be shed on the way to the fullness of joy. But that’s the way it is. Truth must make room for itself. And that may mean demolishing the mental tenements where you have lived comfortably for a long time.”
― David Mathis, How to Stay Christian in Seminary

“Therefore, the “one great business of a Christian’s life,” claims Flavel, is to do heart-work, which he later explains as preserving the soul from sin and maintaining sweet communion with God.”
― David Mathis, How to Stay Christian in Seminary

“The purpose of God’s revelation is not that we stand over it and observe, but that we be drawn in and enjoy him. The goal of revelation is fellowship.”
― David Mathis, How to Stay Christian in Seminary

“Displace the gospel from the center, and studiousness in the Scriptures soon becomes a massive self-salvation project.”
― David Mathis, How to Stay Christian in Seminary

“Don’t be under the delusion that seminary automatically makes you grow in grace (2 Pet. 3:18). In fact, it can have quite the opposite effect. Beware lest frequent handling of holy things, such as the Scriptures, good doctrine, and the gospel itself, causes you to lose your wonder about them. And especially don’t be flippant with grace. For God’s sake, your own sake, and the sake of the people you’ll one day serve, never take grace for granted.”
― David Mathis, How to Stay Christian in Seminary

“For Christians, boasting is excluded, both in our salvation and in everything we do—seminary work included: “What do you have that you did not receive? If then you received it, why do you boast as if you did not receive it?” (1 Cor. 4:7).”
― David Mathis, How to Stay Christian in Seminary

“You are about the glory of God. You exist for Jesus Christ to be displayed and delighted in through your life, and don’t you forget it. Know your value of values.”
― David Mathis, How to Stay Christian in Seminary

“The anchor that can keep our hearts steady amid all the studying is the resolve that Jesus must be tasted and treasured by us and through us.”
― David Mathis, How to Stay Christian in Seminary

“God’s glory is the proclamation of his name, the shining forth of his ways. Therefore, for us to say that we are about the glory of God means that we are about God being seen for who he is.”
― David Mathis, How to Stay Christian in Seminary

“God glorifies himself in communicating himself, and he communicates himself in glorifying himself.”
― David Mathis, How to Stay Christian in Seminary

“The great foundation and goal of the universe is the glory of God. The foundation and goal of your studies and ministry should be no different.”
― David Mathis, How to Stay Christian in Seminary