Philip Yancey Quotes - Page 10

The world is not against you, but the world is a place where bad things happen. It's just true. Airlines crash, people do evil things. A lot of bad things happen and it causes pain.

Homeless people bear God's image too.

Misunderstanding must be nakedly exposed before true understanding can begin to flourish.

Thanks to the scientific method, most people in "developed" countries have an outlook of mild deism. We assume things like weather and disease operate according to fixed natural laws. Every so often, though, problems impinge on us so directly that we stretch beyond that mildly deistic stance and ask God to intervene. When a drought drags on too long, we pray for rain. When a young mother gets a diagnosis of cervical cancer, we solicit prayers for her healing. We beseech God as if trying to talk God into something God otherwise might not want to do.

I think God isn't interested in intervening every time some little bad thing happens. God is interested in getting the message of good news and love and comfort and hope across through people like us, ordinary people, or extraordinary people like Bono.

The promise of pleasures so alluring that we may devote our lives to their pursuit, and then the haunting realization that these pleasures ultimately do not satisfy.

I begin with confession not in order to feel miserable, rather to call to mind a reality I often ignore. When I acknowledge where I stand before a perfect God, it restores the true state of the universe. Confession simply establishes the proper ground rules of creatures relating to their creator.

Be still. In that focus, all else comes into focus. In that rift in my routine, the universe falls into alignment.

People want to go back to those old days, but it's probably not going to happen.

Release what is good.

... the approach of admitting our errors, besides being most true to a gospel of grace, is also most effective at expressing who we are. Propaganda turns people off; humbly admitting mistakes disarms.

The things, good Lord, that we pray for, give us the grace to labour for', as Sir Thomas More expressed it. The inner voice of prayer expresses itself naturally in action, just as the inner voice of my brain guides all my bodily actions.

Christianity is not a purely intellectual, internal faith. It can only be lived in community.

Life with God is an individual matter, and general formulas do not easily apply.

When we ignore the world outside the walls we suffer-as does it.

The camera follows a young woman as she makes her way through the stands to an area set aside for repentance and conversion. But Jesus' stories imply that far more may be going on out there: beyond that stadium scene, in a place concealed from all camera lenses, a great party has erupted, a gigantic celebration in the unseen world.

God must love art because most of the Bible is expressed in the form of story or poetry.

Pleasure represents a great good but also a grave danger.

God formed an alliance based on the world as it is, full of flaws, whereas prayer calls God to account for the world as it should be.

Most observers understand the difference between a committed Christian who accepts Jesus as a model for living and a 'cultural Christian' who happens to live in a nation with a Christian heritage. Most Muslims do not.

One Harlem preacher likens us to the pink plastic spoons at Baskin Robbins: we give the world a foretaste of what lies ahead, the vision of the Biblical prophets. In a world gone astray we should be activity demonstrating here and now God's will for the planet.

If I just think of the churches in my little town here because I've been to every one of them, there are 27, there aren't that many where you walk in and say wow, people are excited about their faith. A lot of them, it's just what you do on Sunday at 10:00 or 11:00 and that's not true in other countries. In some other countries, it's still a very lively, vibrant experience.

When I don't know the answer to something, I write a book about it because it gives me a chance to explore it and go to some people who do have the answers.

If God consistently sent lightning bolts in response to bad doctrine, our planet would sparkle nightly like a Christmas tree.

I fell in love. It felt exactly like a fall, a head-over-heels tumble into a state of unbearable lightness. The earth tilted on its axis. I did not believe in romantic love at the time, thinking it a human construct, an invention of fourteenth century Italian poets. I was as unprepared for love as I had been for goodness and beauty. Suddenly, my heart seemed swollen, too large for my chest.