Philip Yancey Quotes - Page 8

Power can do everything but the most important thing: it cannot control love.

Whatever else we may say about it, the atonement fulfills the Jewish principle that only one who has been hurt can forgive. At Calvary, God chose to be hurt.

What a nation needs more than anything else is not a Christian ruler in the palace but a Christian prophet within earshot.

... learning humility is a prerequisite for grace.

We grow up hungry for love, and in ways so deep as to remain unexpressed we long for our Maker to love us.

Sometimes I feel like the most liberal person among conservatives, and sometimes like the most conservative among liberals.

The Cross of Christ may have overcome evil, but it did not overcome unfairness. For that, Easter is required.

At Calvary, God accepted his own unbreakable terms of justice.

Augustine started from God's grace and got it right, Pelagius started from human effort and got it wrong. Augustine passionately pursued God; Pelagius methodically worked to please God.

In no other arena is the church at greater risk of losing its calling than in the public square

True faith does not so much attempt to manipulate God to do our will as it does to position us to do his will.

If Jesus had never lived, we would not have been able to invent him.

We tend to think, 'Life should be fair because God is fair.' But God is not life. And if I confuse God with the physical reality of life- by expecting constant good health for example- then I set myself up for crashing disappointment.

Prayer is - not just bowing your head a few times a day, it pervades all of life.

A God wise enough to create me and the world I live in is wise enough to watch out for me.

If your church conveys that spirit of condescension or judgment, it's likely not a place where grace is on tap.

Prayer enters the pool of God's love and widens outward.

And perhaps, exhibiting the fruit of the Spirit may be our very best defense against a materialist view of mankind here on earth.

I have yet to find any support in the Bible for an attitude of smugness: Ah, they deserve their punishment; watch them squirm.

Prayer unfolds in the stillness of the soul.

As the books of Job, Jeremiah, and Habakkuk clearly show, God has a high threshold of tolerance for what appropriate to say in a prayer. God can "handle" my unsuppressed rage. I may well find that my vindictive feelings need God's correction - but only by taking those feelings to God will I have the opportunity for correction and healing.

True healing, of deep connective tissue, takes place in community. Where is God when it hurts? Where God's people are.

I never see God. I seldom run into visual clues that remind me of God unless I am looking. The act of looking, the pursuit itself, makes possible the encounter. For this reason, Christianity has always insisted that trust and obedience come first, and knowledge follows.

In the move The Last Emperor, the young child anointed as the last emperor of China lives a magical life of luxury with a thousand eunuch servants at his command. "What happens when you do wrong?" his brother asks. "When I do wrong, someone else is punished," the boy emperor replies. To demonstrate, he breaks a jar, and one of the servants is beaten. In Christian theology, Jesus reversed that ancient pattern: when the servants erred, the King was punished. Grace is free only because the giver himself has borned the cost.

The Christian sees the world as a transitional home badly in need of rehab, and we are active agents in that project.