Quotes of Note

"...man is distinguished from both animals and machines on the basis of his moral motions, his need for love, his fear of non-being and his longings for beauty and for meaning" (Francis Schaeffer, Death in the City, Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1969, p. 95).

"Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it" (C.S. Lewis).

"Christianity is both science and art. Science is to know; art is to do. What we know is incomplete until fulfilled in the act. The most practical of all religions is Christianity, because it demands that the act accompany the thought" (Richard Lynch).

"If Christianity is really true, then it involves the whole man, including his intellect and creativeness. Christianity is not just 'dogmatically' true or 'doctrinally' true. Rather, it is true to what is there, true in the whole area of the whole man in all of life" (Francis Schaeffer).

"The fine arts once divorcing themselves from truth are quite certain to fall mad, if they do not die" (Thomas Carlyle).

"All great art is the expression of man's delight in God's work, not his own" (John Ruskin).

"Beauty puts a face on God. When we gaze at nature, a loved one or a work of art, our soul immediately recognizes and is drawn to the face of God" (Margaret Brownley, Grieving God's Way).

"Everywhere I go, I'm asked if I think the universities stifle writers. My opinion is that they don't stifle enough of them. There's many a best seller that could have been prevented by a good teacher" (Flannery O'Connor).

"Gospel truth seeks no corners, because it fears no trials" (Matthew Henry).

"Expect great things from God; attempt great things for God" (William Carey).

"Give me one hundred preachers who fear nothing but sin and desire nothing but God, and I care not whether they be clergymen or laymen, they alone will shake the gates of Hell and set up the kingdom of Heaven upon Earth" (John Wesley).

"I am not afraid that the book will be controversial, I'm afraid it will not be controversial" (Flannery O'Connor).

"Christianity is a battle - not a dream" (Wendell Phillips ).

"It requires more courage to suffer than to die" (Napoleon Bonaparte).

"...in a post-Christian world and in an often post-Christian church it is imperative to point out with love where apostasy lies. We must openly discuss with all who will listen, treating all men as fellow men, but we must call apostasy, apostasy. If we do not do that, we are not ready for reformation, revival, and a revolutionary church in the power of the Holy Spirit. We are all too easily infiltrated with relativism and synthesis in our own day. We tend to lack antithesis" (Francis Schaeffer, Death in the City, Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1969, p. 39).

"Conviction without experience makes for harshness" (Flannery O'Connor).

"Character is what you are in the dark" (D.L. Moody).

"When wealth is lost, nothing is lost; when health is lost, something is lost; when character is lost, all is lost" (Billy Graham).

"The true index of a man's character is the health of his wife" (Cyril Connolly).

"God's agenda for our lives may be far different from our own. He cares more about our character than our convenience, comfort or cash" (Joseph M. Stowell).

"Happiness is not the end of life; character is" (Henry Ward Beecher).

Christian Living

"Christians remind me of children who want to look up the answers to their math problems in the back of the book without having to work through them" (Soren Kierkegaard).

"There are many people who speak to God in prayer, but hardly ever listen to Him, or else listen to Him only vaguely" (Paul Tournier).

"Everybody thinks of changing humanity and nobody thinks of changing himself. Our world is hungry for genuinely changed people" (Leo Tolstoy).

" 'I' makes a perfectly terrible center for the universe."

"The radical failure in so-called religion is that its way is from man to God. Starting with man, it seeks to rise to God; and there is no road that way" (J. Chapman).

"To hold a thing with the intellect, is not to believe it. A man's real belief is that which he lives by" (George MacDonald).

"When you cannot answer a skeptic, be content to wait for more light; but never forsake a great principle" (J.C. Ryle).

"Our peace and confidence are to be found not in our empirical holiness, not in our progress toward perfection, but in the alien righteousness of Jesus Christ that covers our sinfulness and alone makes us acceptable before a holy God" (Donald Bloesch).

"Can a mortal ask questions which God finds unanswerable? Quite easily, I should think. All nonsense questions are unanswerable" (C.S. Lewis).

"Worry does not empty tomorrow of its sorrow; it empties today of its strength" (Corrie ten Boom).

"Our twentieth century, far from being notable for scientific scepticism, is one of the most credulous eras in all history. It is not that people believe in nothing - which would be bad enough - but that they believe in anything - which is really terrible" (Malcolm Muggeridge).

"I believe, help thou my unbelief" (Mark 9).

"Faith which does not doubt is dead faith" (Miguel de Unamuno, The Agony of Christianity).

"Genuine doubt is the reverse side of genuine faith" (George Buttrick).

"Doubt is but another element of faith" (St. Augustine).

"When Apollos wanted to go to Achaia, the brothers encouraged him and wrote to the disciples there to welcome him. On arriving, he was a great help to those who by grace had believed. For he vigorously refuted the Jews in public debate, proving from the Scriptures that Jesus was the Christ" 9Acts 18:27-28).

"Now Thomas (called Didymus), one of the Twelve, was not with the disciples when Jesus came. So the other disciples told him, 'We have seen the Lord!' But he said to them, 'Unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my finger where the nails were, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe it.' A week later his disciples were in the house again, and Thomas was with them. Though the doors were locked, Jesus came and stood among them and said, 'Peace be with you!' Then he said to Thomas, 'Put your finger here; see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it into my side. Stop doubting and believe.' Thomas said to him, 'My Lord and my God!'" ((John 20:24-28, NIV).

"Faith which does not doubt is dead faith" (Miguel de Unamuno).

"I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use" (Galieo Galilei).

"You call for faith:/ I show you doubt, to prove that faith exists./ The more of doubt, the stronger faith, I say,/ If faith o'ercomes doubt" (Browning).

Death, Dying, and Grieving

"Tears are a tribute to our deceased friends. When the body is sown, it must be watered. But we must not sorrow as those that have no hope; for we have a good hope through grace both concerning them and concerning ourselves" (Matthew Henry).

"In times of bereavement present sorrow dims the prospect of future bliss; and when the imagination is overwrought, death, not life, is apt to seem the ultimate reality" (R.V.G. Tasker).

"A good conscience will save no man, wash away no sin, not lift us one hair's breadth towards heaven. Yet a good conscience will be found a pleasant visitor at our bedside in a dying hour" (J.C. Ryle).

"We all labor against our own cure, for death is the cure of all diseases" (Thomas Browne).

"I depart from life as from an inn, and not my home" (Cicero).

"This world is the land of the dying; the next is the land of the living" (Tryon Edwards).

"There is no better armor against the shafts of death than to be busied in God's service" (Thomas Fuller).

"Let the tent be struck" (Robert E. Lee).

"If sinners be dammed, at least let them leap to Hell over our bodies. If they will perish, let them perish with our arms about their knees. Let no one go there unwarned and unprayed for" (Charles Spurgeon).

Faith/Spiritual Eyes/Vision

"Man cannot discover new oceans until he has courage to lose sight of the shore."

"The ability to really see God is the ultimate sign of renewal, and to really see one's neighbor the penultimate sign."

"Never look to the ground for your next step, greatness comes to those who look to the horizon."

"The best way to get people to think out of the box is not to create the box in the first place."

"If your world does not allow you to dream, move to one where you can" (Steve Young).

"To the man of God, all nature will be but changeful reflections of the face of God" (George MacDonald).

God of All Comfort

"Our generation has nobody home in the universe, nobody at all. Eventually, let us understand this: only a personal comforter can comfort man who is personal, and only one Comforter is great enough, the infinite-personal God who exists, that is the God of Judeo-Christian Scripture. Only He is the sufficient Comforter" (Francis Schaeffer, Death in the City, Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1969, p. 27).

"The word which God has written on the brow of every man is hope" (Victor Hugo).

"All things are possible to him who believes, yet more to him who hopes, more still to him who loves, and most of all to him who practices and perseveres in all three virtues."

"The serious business of heaven is joy" (C. S. Lewis).

"I wonder how many Christians there are who so thoroughly believe God made them that they can laugh in God's name; who understand that God invented laughter and gave it to His children. The Lord of gladness delights in the laughter of a merry heart" (George MacDonald).

"It is the heart that is not yet sure of its God that is afraid to laugh in His presence" (George MacDonald).

"Our calling is to enjoy God as well as glorify Him. Real fulfillment relates to the purpose for which we were made, to be in reference to God, to be in personal relationship with Him, to be fulfilled by Him, and thus to have an affirmation of life. Christianity should never give any onlooker the right to conclude that Christianity believes in the negation of life. Christianity is able to make a real affirmation because we affirm that it is possible to be in personal relationship to the personal God who is there and who is the final environment of all He created. All else but God is dependent, but being in the image of God, man can be in personal relationship to that which is ultimate and has always been. We can be fulfilled in the highest level of our personality and in all the parts and portions of life... There is nothing Platonic in Christianity... The whole man is to be fulfilled; there is to be an affirmation of life that is filled with joy" (Francis Schaeffer, Death in the City, Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1969, p. 26).

"The ministerial work must be carried on purely for God and the salvation of souls, not for any private ends of our own...Hard studies, much knowledge, and excellent preaching, if the ends be not right is but more glorious hypocritical sinning" (Richard Baxter).

"So, if you are a Christian looking for an easy ministry in a post-Christian culture where Christians are a minority, you are unrealistic in your outlook. It was not to be so in Jeremiah's day, and it cannot be so in ours" (Francis Schaeffer, Death in the City, Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1969, p. 37).

"It is a palpable error of some ministers, who make such a disproportion between their preaching and their living; who study hard to preach exactly, and study little or not at all to live exactly" (Richard Baxter).

"This is our real 'Program': faith in Christ, fellowship with Christ, faithfulness to Christ, fruitfulness for Christ" (Vance Havner).

"He that serves God for money will serve the devil for better wages" (Roger L'Estrange).

The only music minister to whom the Lord will say, 'Well done, thy good and faithful servant,' is the one whose life proves what their lyrics are saying, and to whom music is the least important part of their life. Glorifying the only worthy One has to be a minister's most important goal!" (Keith Green).

"What you do in your house is worth as much as if you did it up in heaven for our Lord God. We should accustom ourselves to think of our position and work as sacred and well-pleasing to God, not on account of the position and work, but on account of the word and faith from which the obedience and the work flow" (Martin Luther).

"Those that are good ministers themselves wish that there were more good ministers, for there is work for more. It is common for tradesmen not to care how few there are of their own trade; but Christ would have the labourers in his vineyard reckon it a matter of complaint when the labourers are so few" (Matthew Henry).

"If God would but reform the ministry, and set them on their duties zealously and faithfully, the people would certainly be reformed" (Richard Baxter).

"If any minister can be satisfied without conversions, he shall have no conversions" (Charles Spurgeon).

"Teach in thy church, not to get the applause of the people, but to set in motion the groan; the tears of the hearers are thy praises" (Jerome).

"Will it not awaken us to compassion, to look on a languishing man, and to think that within a few days his soul will be in heaven or in hell? Surely it will try the faith and seriousness of ministers, to be much about dying men! They will thus have opportunity to discern whether they themselves are in good ernest about the matters of the life to come" (Richard Baxter).

"Many a church thinks it needs a new pastor when it needs the same pastor renewed" (Vance Havner).

"We complain today that ministers do not know how to preach; but is it not equally true that our congregations do not know how to hear?" (J.I. Packer).

"Every time we look upon our congregations, let us believingly remember that they are the purchase of Christ's blood, and therfore should be regarded by us with the deepest interest and the most tender affection" (Richard Baxter).

"When God's sheep are in danger, the shepherd must not gaze at the stars and meditate on 'inspirational' themes. He is morally obliged to grab his weapon and run to their defense" (A.W. Tozer).

"A holy calling will not save an unholy man" (Richard Baxter).

"The world is my parish" (John Wesley).

"If we fight the Lord's battles merely by duplicating the way the world does its work, we are like little boys playing with wooden swords pretending they are in the battle while their big brothers are away in some distant bloody land" (Francis Schaeffer, Death in the City, Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1969, p. 142).

"The modern intelligent mind, which has had its horizons widened in dozens of different ways, has got to be shocked afresh by the audacious central fact that as a sober matter of history, God become one of us" (J.B. Phillips).

"Night and day I pondered until I saw the connection between the justice of God and the statement that 'the just shall live by hisÝfaith.' Then I grasped that the justice of God is that righteousness by which through grace and sheer mercy God justifies us through faith. Thereupon I felt myself to be reborn and to have gone through open doors into paradise" (Martin Luther).

"Either sin is with you, lying on your shoulders, or it is lying on Christ, the Lamb of God. Now if it is lying on your back, you are lost; but if it is resting on Christ, you are free, and you will be saved" (Martin Luther).

"...what God has done in Christ exhausts all that God has to do for us" (R.C. Lucas).

"I must die or get somebody to die for me. If the Bible doesn't teach that, it doesn't teach anything. And that is where the atonement of Jesus Christ comes in" (Dwight L. Moody).

"When we think of the atonement we are apt to think only of what man gains. We must remember what it cost God and what it costs him now when men refuse his love" (Frank Fitt).

"Christ took our sins and the sins of the whole world as well as the Father's wrath on his shoulders, and he has drowned them both in himself so that we are thereby reconciled to God and become completely righteous" (Martin Luther).

"The permanence of God's character guarantees the fulfillment of his promises" (Arthur W. Pink).

Satan: The False Seducer

"The devil is a greater scholar than you, and a nimbler disputant..." (Richard Baxter).

"There are two equal and opposite errors into which our race can fall aboutthe devils. One is to disbelieve in their existence. The other is to believe,and to feel an excessive and unhealthy interest in them. They themselves are equally pleased by both errors, and hail a materialist or magician with the same delight" (C.S. Lewis).

"When a Christian shuns fellowship with other Christians, the devil smiles. When he stops studying the Bible, the devil laughs. When he stops praying, the devil shouts for joy" (Corrie ten Boom).

"We are evidently no friends of Satan. Like the kings of this world, he wars not against his own subjects. The very fact that he assaults us should fill our minds with hope" (J.C. Ryle).

"In contemporary society our Adversary majors in three things: noise, hurry, and crowds" (Richard J. Foster).

"But indeed the business of the universe is to make such a fool of you that you will know yourself for one, and so begin to be wise!" (George MacDonald).

"The man who was lord of fate, born in an ox's stall, was great because He was much too great to care about greatness at all" (George MacDonald).

"Use the gifts and talents that God gave you. For the woods would be very silent if no birds sang but the best" (Henry van Dyke).

"To be nobody but yourself, in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else means to fight the hardest battle that any human being can fight . . . and never stop fighting."

"If you yourself are at peace, then there is at least some peace in the world" (Thomas Merton).

"The things I know, anyone can know, but my heart is mine and mine alone" (Goethe).

"You wouldn't worry so much about what people thought of you if you knew how seldom they did."

Suffering, Sorrow, Pain, Perseverance, God's Purposes, and Spirituality

"Many men owe the grandeur of their lives to the difficulties they have suffered" (C.H. Spurgeon).

"Life is a mingled yarn, good and ill together" (Shakespeare).

"Those who have endured the stinging experiences are the choicest people God can use."

"Who God would use greatly, He will hurt deeply" (A. W. Tozer).

"Participate joyfully in the sorrows of life."

"Life does not have to be perfect to be wonderful" (Annette Funichello-former "Mouseketeer" suffering with debilitating MS).

"Life moves on, whether we act as cowards or heroes. Life has no other discipline to impose, if we would but realize it, than to accept life unquestioningly. Everything we shut our eyes to, everything we run away from, everything we deny, denigrate or despise, serves to defeat us in the end. What seems nasty, painful, evil, can become a source of beauty, joy, and strength, if faced with an open mind. Every moment is a golden one for him who has the vision to recognize it as such" (Henry Miller).

"You who perceive yourself as weak and frail, with futile hopes and devastated dreams, born but to die, to weep and suffer pain, hear this: all power is given unto you in earth and heaven. There is nothing you cannot do. The truth that many people never understand, until it is too late, is that the more you try to avoid suffering the more you suffer because smaller and more insignificant things begin to torture you in proportion to your fear of being hurt" (Thomas Merton).

"To give and not to count the cost; to fight and not to heed the wounds; to toil and not to seek for rest; to labor and not ask for any reward save that of knowing that we do Thy will" (St Ignatius Loyola).

"Sorrows are sickly things and die, while the joys are strong divine children and shall live forever" (George MacDonald).

"Spiritual darkness comes on horseback, and goes away on foot. It is upon us before we know that it is coming. It leaves us slowly, gradually, and not till after many days" (J.C. Ryle).

"Failures are finger posts on the road to achievement" (C.S. Lewis).

"Many times I say, 'I can't go up the hill once more. I can't do it again.' And what is God's answer? Well, first it is important to know that God doesn't scold a man when his tiredness comes from his battles and his tears from compassion (Francis Schaeffer, Death in the City, Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1969, p. 69).

"Amiable agnostics will talk cheerfully about 'man's search for God.' To me, as I then was, they might as well have talked about the mouse's search for the cat" (C.S. Lewis).

"A man can no more diminish God's glory by refusing to worship Him than a lunatic can put out the sun by scribbling the word, 'darkness' on the walls of his cell" (C.S. Lewis).

"The atheist has much to gain by his atheism. By his surgical removal of God from the universe, he has freed himself to act however he chooses at any time. He has removed divine authority and evaded responsibility for all his actions" (Hal E. Fulton).

"God grant me courage to change the things I can change; the serenity to accept those I cannot change; the wisdom to know the difference-but God grant me the courage not to give up what I think is right even though I think it hopeless" (Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, after Reinhold Niebuhr).