Quotes by Phillip Yancey
The proof of spiritual maturity is not how pure you are but awareness of your impurity. That very awareness opens the door to grace. (What’s So Amazing About Grace)
At first glance legalism seems hard, but actually freedom in Christ is the harder way. It is relatively easy not to murder, hard to reach out in love; easy to avoid a neighbor’s bed, hard to keep a marriage alive and passionate, easy to pay taxes, hard to serve the poor. (What’s So Amazing About Grace)
It should not surprise us that a sovereign God uses bad things as the raw material for fashioning good. The symbol of our faith is a Roman execution device. (Reaching for the Invisible God)
Whenever faith seems an entitlement or a measuring rod, we cast our lot with the Pharisees and grace softly slips away. (Soul Survivor)
God seems to value character more than comfort, often using the very elements that cause us most discomfort as his tools in fashioning that character. (Reaching for the Invisible God)
The Bible tells of a murderer and adulterer who gained a reputation as the greatest king of the Old Testament, a man after God’s own heart. And of a church being led by a disciple who cursed and swore that he had never known Jesus. And of a missionary being recruited from the ranks of the Christian torturers. I get mailings from Amnesty International, and as I look at their photos of men and women who have been beaten and cattle prodded and jabbed and spit on and electrocuted, I ask myself, "What kind of human being could do that to another human being?" Then I read the book of Acts and meet the kind of person who could do such a thing—now an apostle of grace, a servant of Jesus Christ, the greatest missionary history has ever known. If God can love that kind of person, maybe, just maybe, he can love the likes of me. (What’s So Amazing About Grace)
Grace Abuse: Why be good if you know in advance you will be forgiven? This is the wrong question, the right question is…Why Love? Do you ask your wife, "How far can I go with other women? (What’s So Amazing About Grace)
Legalism is a subtle danger because no one thinks of himself as a legalist. My own rules seem necessary, other people’s rules seem excessively strict. (What’s So Amazing About Grace)
The Bible contains 365 commands to "fear not"—the most reiterated command in the Bible—as if to remind us daily that we will face difficulties that might naturally provoke fear. (Reaching for the Invisible God)
In an odd sort of way, human beings need problems more than we need solutions. Problems stretch us and press us toward dependence on God. (Reaching for the Invisible God)
A relationship with God does not promise supernatural deliverance from hardship, but rather a supernatural use of it. (Reaching for the Invisible God)
When God sent his own son—sinless, non-coercive, full of grace and healing—we killed him. God himself allows what he does not prefer, in order to achieve some greater goal. (Reaching for the Invisible God)
Legalism--The Church has spent so much time inculcating in us fear of making mistakes that she has made us like ill taught piano students: we play our songs, but we never really hear them because our main concern is not to make music but to avoid some flub that will get us in trouble. (What’s So Amazing About Grace)
Message for Christians fighting battles: Be careful, lest in fighting the dragon we become the dragon…we often show a lot of un-grace in fighting abortion, homosexuality, etc. (What’s So Amazing About Grace)
Historians of the future will look back at us and say, "They fought bravely on the moral fronts of abortion and homosexual rights, while at the same time reporting that we did little to fulfill the Great Commission and we did little to spread the aroma of grace in the world. (What’s So Amazing About Grace)
3 things you can count on: Life is difficult. God is merciful. Heaven is sure. (Reaching for the Invisible God)
Evil’s greatest triumph may be its success in portraying religion as an enemy of pleasure when in fact it accounts for its source. Everything we enjoy is an invention of a lavish Creator who lavished gifts on the world. (Soul Survivor)
If Jesus came to reveal God to us, then what do I learn about God from that first Christmas? Humble, Approachable, Underdog, Courageous—those hardly seem appropriate words to apply to deity. (The Jesus I Never Knew)
Jesus himself, who, when he came to earth could have chosen any set of "raw materials" and deliberately settled on poverty, family shame, suffering and rejection. (Reaching for the Invisible God)
God is closer to sinners than to "saints" (by saints I mean those people renowned for their piety—true saints never lose sight of their sinfulness.) (What’s So Amazing About Grace)
Whatever makes us feel superior to other people, whatever tempts us to convey a sense of superiority, that is the gravity of our sinful nature, not grace. (What’s So Amazing About Grace)
Faith is ambidextrous because it welcomes pleasures with the right hand and afflictions with the left, convinced that both serve God’s design. (Reaching for the Invisible God)
From the beginning Jesus took the side of the underdog: the poor, the oppressed, the sick, the marginalized. Indeed his infancy as a refugee, lived in a minority race under harsh regime, and died a prisoner, unjustly accused. (Reaching for the Invisible God)
I can worry myself into a state of spiritual indigestion over questions like; "What good does it do to pray if God already knows everything?" Jesus silences such questions; If Jesus saw the need to pray, sometimes so urgently that he spent all night doing it, so should I. (Reaching for the Invisible God)
God took a great risk by announcing forgiveness in advance, and the scandal of grace involves a transfer of that risk to us. (What’s So Amazing About Grace)
More amazing is Christ’s refusal to perform and overwhelm. God’s insistence on human freedom is so absolute that he granted us the power to live as though he did not exist, to spit in his face, to crucify him. Jesus showed an incredible respect for human freedom. (The Jesus I Never Knew)
