Vance Havner Quotes - Page 4

Too much preaching nowadays pats the back and tickles the ear, but does not get under the skin. There is no conviction and therefore no conversion. I am thinking not only of the ministry of reproof and rebuke but also of the message of inspiration, of encouragement, of comfort. People go out of church at noon with the depths unstirred, the heart untouched, the conscience unpricked.

If you stand on the Word, you do not stand with the world.

People get so used to the dark that they think it is growing brighter.

It is one of the ironies of the ministry that the very man who works in God's name is often hardest put to find time for God. The parents of Jesus lost Him at church, and they were not the last ones to lose Him there.

A mortician can make a dead man look better than he ever did when he was alive. So churches like Sardis may appear very much alive when they are dead in the sight of the Lord. God knows the difference.

Too many church services start at eleven sharp and end at twelve dull.

Adam tried to hide behind the trees in the garden. There is only one tree that can hide us from Him and that is the tree of the cross.

Nothing is needed so much as a holy indignation against sin. It is true that there is not enough love for God, and one sign of it is that there is not enough hatred for sin.

We may never be martyrs but we can die to self, to sin, to the world, to our plans and ambitions. That is the significance of baptism; we died with Christ and rose to new life.

Real revival does not begin with joyous singing. It begins with conviction and repentance on the part of Christians.

It is one thing to say Jesus is all you want; until He is all you have and you discover He is all you ever needed.

We justify ourselves when we should judge ourselves. If we learned humility, it might spare us the humiliation.

Civilization today reminds me of an ape with a blowtorch playing in a room full of dynamite. It looks like the monkeys are about to operate the zoo, and the inmates are taking over the asylum.

If you can't pray as you want to, pray as you can. God knows what you mean.

We've learned how to lengthen life, but we don't know how to deepen it.

The preacher who jests and jokes with his people all week will soon find that he cannot stand in his pulpit on Sunday with power to reprove, rebuke and exhort. He may be the life of the party but it will be the death of the prophet.

What our Lord said about cross-bearing and obedience is not in fine type. It is in bold print on the face of the contract.

If you lack knowledge, go to school. If you lack wisdom, get on your knees.

I would just as soon listen to a gangster lecture on honesty as watch Hollywood portray the Bible.

Worse than blind leaders of the blind are bland leaders of the bland.

I preach on specific sins because people are not convicted by sermons on sin in general. It was when our Lord said to the Samaritan woman, 'Go call thy husband...' (John 4:16), that she really faced up to her sinfulness.

Many people are in a rut and a rut is nothing but a grave-with both ends kicked out.

To some Christianity is an argument. To many it is a performance. To a few, it is experience.

The real test of your Christianity is not how pious you look at the Lord's table on Sunday, but how you act at the breakfast table at home. If it takes two cups of coffee to make you fit to live with, you had better go to the mourner's bench.

Faith doesn't wait until it understands; in that case it wouldn't be faith.