"Quotes"

"God created us to live with a single passion: to joyfully display His supreme excellence in all the spheres of life. The wasted life is the life without this passion.  God calls us to pray and think and dream and plan and work not to be made much of, but to make much of Him in every part of our lives."

-John Piper

"If you should see a starving man standing with mouth open to the wind, inhaling draughts of air as if in hope of gratifying his hunger, you would think him a lunatic. But it is no less foolish to imagine that the soul can be satisfied with worldly things which only inflate it without feeding it."

-Bernard of Clairvaux (1090-1152)

"All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us."

-Gandalf (J.R.R. Tolkien)

"It would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak.  We are half hearted creatures, fooling around with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy in offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea.  We are far too easily pleased."

-C.S. Lewis

"I'm playing Gameboy in the middle of the Grand Canyon
I'm eating candy sitting at a gourmet feast
I'm wading in a puddle when I could be swimming in the ocean
Tell me what's the deal with me?"

-Steven Curtis Chapman

"If you had been there [at the cross], you would have thrown up.  You would have pulled on your hair.  You would have screamed and torn your clothing.  'No!  No!  No!  No!'  You would have cried and you would have run away and thrown yourself on the ground."

-John Piper

 "You don't really suppose, do you, that all your adventures and escapes were managed by mere luck, just for your sole benefit?  You are a fine person, Mr. Baggins, and I am very fond of you; but you are only quite a little fellow in a wide world after all!"

-Gandalf (J.R.R. Tolkien)

"The one who came from heaven to earth for us and died on that cruel cross of shame on Calvary's hill; who spared not himself; who endured the contradiction of sinners.  He who bore that agony in the garden and on the cross, He will look at us- and what He will look for is this: how we spent our time in this world after we realized what He had done for us.  It is the terror of love you see, not the fear of torment.  You will look into that beloved face and into those eyes and you will realize, as you have never done before, what He did for you.  Then you will realize with shame what you did not do for Him.  Oh, says Paul, buy up the opportunity, do not waste a second.  Keep that in the forefront of your mind."

-D. Martin Lloyd-Jones

"Let me no more my comfort draw
From my frail hold of Thee
In this alone rejoice with awe-
Thy mighty grasp of me"

-John Campbell Shairp

"Indeed, the safest road to hell is the gradual one- the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts."

-Screwtape  (in C.S. Lewis' Screwtape Letters)

"I think that gay marriage should be between a man and a woman."

-Arnold Schwartzenegger, Reader's Digest, April 2004

"Faith does not imply a closed, but an open mind.  Quite the opposite of blindness, faith appreciates the vast spiritual realities that materialists overlook by getting trapped in the purely physical."

-Sir. John Templeton

"In my opinion, America's greatest need is for husbands to begin guiding their families, rather than pouring every physical and emotional resource into the mere acquisition of money."

-James Dobson

"We scream at Jesus but want no answer that will add to the claims He has already made."

-Ravi Zacharias

"You can never come to Christ at all, unless you first see that He will not accept of you the more readily for any thing that you can do."

-Jonathan Edwards

"I, Ronald Reagan, President of the United States of America... do hereby proclaim and declare the unalienable personhood of every American, from the moment of conception until natural death . . ." 

-President Ronald Reagan, January 14, 1988

"Nearly all the wisdom we possess, that is to say, true and sound wisdom, consists in two parts: the knowledge of God and the knowledge of ourselves."

-John Calvin

"Science has 'explained' nothing; the more we know the more fantastic the world becomes, and the profounder the surrounding darkness."

-Aldous Huxley, atheist

"Truth, of course, must be stranger than fiction, for we have made fiction to suit ourselves."

-G.K. Chesterton

"It is our preference that decides against Christianity, not arguments."

-Nietzsche, atheist

"My grandma had kittens.”

-Stephanie Wingeier

"To try to explain truth to him who loves it not is but to give him more plentiful material for misinterpretation."

-George MacDonald

"Do your worst, I am a Christian.  Christ is my helper and supporter, and thus armed I will never serve your gods nor do I fear your authority or that of your master, the Emperor.  Commence your torments as soon as you please, and make use of every means that your malignity can invent, and you shall find in the end that I am not to be shaken from my resolution."

-Andronicus, 303 AD, Andronicus had been thrown in prison by the Roman Empire because he was unwilling to deny Christ.  He was whipped and his bleeding wounds were rubbed with salt.  He was brought out of prison, tortured again, thrown to the wild beasts in the arena, and then finally killed with the sword.

"We are more concerned about looking stupid (a fear of people) than we are about acting sinfully (fear of the Lord)."

-Edward Welch, When People are Big and God is Small

"The problem with Christianity is not that it has been tried and found wanting, but that it has been found difficult and left untried."

-G.K. Chesterton

"If I were the devil, one of my first aims would be to stop folk from digging into the Bible."

-J.I. Packer 

"[The Reformers] granted that personal experience is powerful because it is intense, but they insisted that we should not allow this power to delude us into thinking that experience is always right."

-David F. Wells, No Place for Truth

"[Biologists' investigation of DNA] has shown, by the almost unbelievable complexity of the arrangements which are needed to produce [life], that intelligence must have been involved."

-Antony Flew, Former Atheist

"The ancient man approached God (or even the gods) as the accused person approaches his judge.  For the modern man, the roles are reversed.  He is the judge: God is in the dock.  He is quite a kindly judge: if God should have a reasonable defense for being the god who permits war, poverty and disease, he is ready to listen.  The trial may even end in God's acquittal.  But the important thing is that Man is on the Bench and God in the Dock."

-C.S. Lewis, God in the Dock

"The reason we accepted Darwinism even without proof, is because we didn't want God to interfere with our sexual mores [desires]."

-Julian Huxley, Atheist

"Lord, I do not attempt to understand Your sublimity, because my intellect is not at all equal to such a task.  But I yearn to understand some measure of Your truth, which my heart believes and loves.  For I do not seek to understand in order to believe but I believe in order to understand.  For I believe even this: that I shall not understand unless I believe."

-Anselm of Canterbury

"To be transformed, our job is to 'behold'- to continually contemplate- God's glory, focusing our spiritual gaze not primarily on things like Christian duties or our unworthiness, but on God's spectacularness."

-Dwight Edwards, Revolution Within

“Yet, even in an eclipse we find it is painful and dangerous to look directly at the sun.  We are warned by the news media at such time not to make attempts to look directly at it, lest we do serious damage to our eyes.  If we cannot gaze directly at the sun during an eclipse, how much more severe would be the brilliance that literally outshines the sun?  The glory of God reaches a magnitude of brightness far beyond that of the sun shining at full strength.”

-R.C. Sproul, The Holiness of God

“Worship is... our response, both personal and corporate, to God- for who He is, and what He has done, expressed in and by the things we say and the way we live."

-Louie Giglio, The Air I Breath

“Whenever you find the Word of God central in an assembly of believers, you will find people coming to Christ, growing, nurtured, and being built up in their faith.  Whenever you move it out of the center, you will find confusion, constant controversy, and experience-centered discussions."

-David Jeremiah, God in You

“If you read history, you will find that the Christians who did the most for the present world were just those who thought most of the next."

-C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

“Soon you will read in the newspapers that I am dead.  Don't believe it for a moment.  I will be more alive than ever before."

-D.L. Moody

“When you mess with Powerman, you get the POW!"

-Powerman

“Satan need not convince us that Heaven doesn’t exist.  He need only convince us that Heaven is a place of boring, unearthly existence.”

-Randy Alcorn, Heaven

"Paul assures us that the two principles of grace and merit can no more mix together than fire and water; that if man is to be saved by the mercy of God; it must be by the mercy of God and not by works; but if a man is to be saved by works, it must be by works entirely and not by mercy mixed in, for mercy and works will not blend together."

-Charles Spurgeon, Grace: God's Unmerited Favor

"But I did not realize this, and rushed on headlong with such blindness that, among my friends, I was ashamed to be less shameless than they, when I heard them boasting of their shameful exploits- yes, and glorifying all the more the worse their baseness was."  

-Augustine, Confessions

 "When a willing victim who had committed no treachery was killed in a traitor's stead, the Table would crack and Death itself would start working backwards."  

-C.S. Lewis, The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe

"Love means acting for the true good of other persons, even when their hearts desire what poisons their souls and they can only hear the words of love as hate."  

-J. Budziszewski

  "For my own part I tend to find the doctrinal books often more helpful in devotion than the devotional books, and I rather suspect that the same experience may await many others. I believe that many who find that 'nothing happens' when they sit down, or kneel down, to a book of devotion, would find that the heart sings unbidden while they are working their way through a tough bit of theology with a pipe in their teeth and a pencil in their hand."

-C.S. Lewis

"I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else."  

-C.S. Lewis

  “First, Christian Hedonism as I use the term does not mean God becomes a means [tool] to help us get worldly pleasures.  The pleasure Christian Hedonism seeks is the pleasure which is in God Himself.  He is the end of our search, not the means to some further end [goal].  Our exceeding joy is He, the Lord, not the streets of gold, or the reunion with relatives or any blessing of heaven.  Christian Hedonism does not reduce God to a key that unlocks a treasure chest of gold and silver.  Rather it seeks to transform the heart so that ‘the Almighty will be your gold and choice silver to you’ (Job 22:25).”

 -John Piper, Desiring God

  "Crying is all right in its way while it lasts.  But you have to stop sooner or later, and then you still have to decide what to do."  

-C.S. Lewis, The Silver Chair  

"Oh, the havoc that is wrought, and the tragedy, the misery, and the wretchedness that are to be found in the world, simply because people do not know how to handle their own feelings!"  

-D. Martin Lloyd-Jones

"The solution for darkness is not a theory about light.  The only solution for darkness is light."  

-Paul David Tripp

"The better you believe yourself to be, the less grace you think you need... Not until we know how bad off we are will we appreciate how good God is."  

-Erwin Lutzer, How You Can Be Sure That You Will Spend Eternity with God

"We cannot stand, as it were, with one foot on grace and the other on our own works of merit.  If you are trusting to any degree in your own morality or religious attainments, or if you believe God will somehow recognize any of your good works as merit towards your salvation, you need to seriously consider if you are truly a Christian."  

-Jerry Bridges, Transforming Grace

"God doesn't want groupies.  He wants disciples."  

-David Bast (from AM service at Peace Reformed Church)

"Life is not fair.  Life will never be fair.  Life can't be fair.  But are we really all that concerned about it?  When people complain about something not being fair, it is almost always a smoke screen for the fact that they are not getting something they want.  Most of us walk around pretending to be the fairness police when, in fact, we usually play the fairness card when we are the ones being treated 'unfairly.'"  

-Andy Stanley, Am I Good Enough?

“Trust is not a passive state of mind.  It is a vigorous act of the soul by which we choose to lay hold on the promises of God and cling to them despite the adversity that at times seeks to overwhelm us.”

-Jerry Bridges, Is God Really in Control?

“It is often said that the divided condition of Christendom is an evil, and so it is.  But the evil consists in the existence of the errors which cause the divisions and not at all in the recognition of the errors when once they exist.”

-J. Gresham Machen, Christianity & Liberalism

“Worldliness is what makes sin look normal in any age and righteousness seem odd.”

-David Wells, God in the Wasteland

“We are to be picture frames in which Jesus Christ is to be seen.  God is not interested in its being a gold frame or a beautifully carved frame.  He is just interested in it being an empty frame, because He knows that when you come to Him with that, He can put Christ there.  And when people look at you, they will see Jesus.”

-James Boice, The Sermon on the Mount: An Expositional Commentary

“My high school science teacher once told me that much of Genesis is false.  But since my high school science teacher did not prove he was God by rising from the dead, I'm going to believe Jesus instead.”

-Andy Stanley

“If I profess with the loudest voice and clearest exposition every portion of the truth of God except precisely that little point which the world and the devil are at that moment attacking, I am not confessing Christ.  Where the battle rages there the loyalty of the soldier is proved, and to be steady on all the battlefields besides is mere flight and disgrace if he flinches at that point.”

-Martin Luther

“If you’ve never been tempted to be ashamed of the gospel, the reason is not that you are such an exceptionally godly Christian, but rather that your understanding of the Gospel is inadequate.”  

-John MacArthur, The Shameful Cross, Moody Bible Institute Founder’s Week 2007

“Society treats men like machines because modern man has come to conclude that man is a machine.”   

-Francis Schaeffer, The Church at the End of the Twentieth Century

“The church's main mission is to overcome the eclipse of God.”   

-Carl F. H. Henry

“I am convinced that many men who preach the gospel and love the Lord are really misunderstood.  People make a 'profession of faith' but because they really haven't understood the message, they are not really saved.  They feel a psychological need and they want psychological relief, but they don't understand that the Christian message is not talking only about psychological relief (though it includes that), but is talking about true moral guilt in the presence of a holy God who exists.  The real need is salvation from true moral guilt, not just relief from guilt-feelings.  And I am certain many people who make a profession go away still unsaved, having not heard one word of the real gospel because they have filtered the message through their own thought-forms and their own intellectual framework in which the word guilt equals guilt-feelings.”   

-Francis Schaeffer, Death in the City

“Jesus is not a nice old man in a button-up cardigan sweater and loafers singing happy songs while loading everyone onto a trolly headed to the Neighborhood of Make-Believe to meet King Friday like some Mr. Rogers clone.  That god is the neutered and limp-wristed popular Sky Fairy of pop culture that wants to bless everyone, does not care what you call him/her/it/they, never gets angry, and would never talk about sin or send anyone to hell.  This mythical Sky Fairy is increasingly mistaken for Jesus, however, by many young pastors and Christians I have met who don't want the gospel to be the offensive and foolish stumbling block that it is.  So they remake Jesus into a feather-hair fairy in lavender tights and take the sword of revelation out of his hand, replacing it with a daisy."

-Mark Driscoll

“One of the most popular mantras chanted by young pastors who align themselves with postmodernity is that God's people need to be more real and authentic.  In general, this is wise.  A disingenuous faith is repugnant to believers and nonbelievers alike.  But because we are sinners, simply encouraging people to be who they are in the name of authenticity is dangerous because it can easily be taken as a license to sin without repentance.  In the opening chapter of Romans, Paul says that people are prone to be real rather than repentant because they love to sin, which explains why Jesus told us to deny ourselves rather than to be ourselves."

-Mark Driscoll

“To sin by silence when one should protest makes cowards of men."

-Abraham Lincoln

 “What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us."

-A.W. Tozer, The Knowledge of the Holy

“The nature and depth of human pride are illuminated by comparing boasting to self-pity.  Both are manifestations of pride.  Boasting is the response of pride to success.  Self-pity is the response of pride to suffering.  Boasting says, ‘I deserve admiration because I have achieved so much.’  Self-pity says, ‘I deserve admiration because I have suffered so much.’  Boasting is the voice of pride in the heart of the strong.  Self-pity is the voice of pride in the heart of the weak.  Boasting sounds self-sufficient.  Self-pity sounds self-sacrificing.  The reason self-pity does not look like pride is that it appears to be so needy.  But the need arises from a wounded ego.  It doesn’t come form a sense of unworthiness.  It is the response of unapplauded pride.”

-John Piper, The Dangerous Duty of Delight

“We can never know who or what we are till we know at least something of what God is.”

-A.W. Tozer, The Knowledge of the Holy

 “God-centeredness is the basis for the grace that saves people.  Without grace-full God-centeredness, evangelism will evolve into nice people being nice to other people in hopes that they will be nice to God, a compromised gospel with a mild God who exists to benefit me.”

-Will Metzger, Tell the Truth

“Everything you were designed to experience and enjoy is found in God.  Knowing God is your life and your highest joy.  You either believe that or you don't.  Believe it and you will experience and enjoy life, real life, eventually.  Guaranteed.  Disbelieve it and, at best, you will experience counterfeit life and enjoy it only for a season.”

-Larry Crabb, The PAPA Prayer

"It is essential to understand that battles are primarily won in the hearts of men."

-Vince Lombardi

"We didn't lose the game; we just ran out of time."

-Vince Lombardi

“Through my scientific work I have come to believe more and more strongly that the physical universe is put together with an ingenuity so astonishing that I cannot accept it merely as a brute fact… I cannot believe that our existence in this universe is a mere quirk of fate, an accident of history, an incidental blip in the great cosmic drama.” 

-Paul Davis, prolific science writer and former professor of theoretical physics at University of Adelaide, Australia

  “We can learn God’s will for our character intellectually through reading and studying the Scriptures—and we should do that.  That is where the change begins, as our minds are renewed.  But real change—down in the depth of our soul—is produced as the tenets [teachings] of Scripture are worked out in real life.  This usually involves adversity [hardships].  We may admire and even desire the character trait of patience, but we will never learn patients until we have been treated unjustly and learn experientially to “suffer long” (the meaning of patience) the one who treats us unjustly.”

–Jerry Bridges, Is God Really in Control?

“It is all well and good to speak of the Bible as a wonderful, rich story, or an amazing collection of deep writings, or an honored conversation partner, or an in-living-color book that is mysteriously beyond our comprehension, but what does all of this actually mean?  Is the Bible the final word in all matters of faith and practice?  Can it be trusted in all that it affirms?  Is it intelligible and knowable?  Is it from God?  Is it ever mistaken?  What can we say about the Bible that we cannot say about any other book?  ...I'm not sure that the emerging church believes about the Bible.  And this concerns me.  Burned out evangelicals who go emergent and talk squishy about the Bible may still basically treat the Bible as if it were completely true and authoritative.  This would be a fortuitous inconsistency.  But what happens in the second generation?  What happens when an erstwhile church planter with a few [Brian McLaren] books under his belt starts doing church with a radical skepticism about the authority of the Bible and forms a people by musing on about how his community affirms the Bible (in part?), therefore making it 'welcome' in their conversation?  We can wax eloquent about the beauty of the story and how the Scriptures read us, but unless people are convinced that the Bible is authoritative, true, inspired, and the very words of God, over time they will read it less frequently, know it less fully, and trust it less surely.”

–Kevin DeYoung, Why We're Not Emergent: By Two Guys Who Should Be

“It is one thing to know that someone smiles on us; it is another to know that behind that smile was the greatest sacrifice that could possibly have been offered.  One smile makes you feel temporarily warmed; the other leads to gratitude and worship.” 

–Edward T. Welch, Addictions: A Banquet in the Grave

“Authenticity, theologically speaking, is not simply about being true to ourselves or about being satisfied with ourselves.  It is about being true to who we are in Christ” 

–David F. Wells, JETS, 51/1 p. 31

 “How well I have learned that there is no fence to sit on between heaven and hell.  There is a deep, wide, gulf, a chasm, and in that chasm is no place for any man.”   

-Johnny Cash (quoted in Vintage Jesus, by Mark Driscoll)

“How dare we make God more acceptable to the culture in which we live while making God unacceptable to Himself!”

 -Bruce Ware, God’s Greater Glory

“So often we are troubled by a persistent sin only because it disturbs our peace and makes us feel guilty.  We need to focus on it as an act of rebellion against God.  Our rebellion is of course against the sovereign authority of God.  But it is also rebellion against our heavenly Father who loved us and sent His Son to die for us.  God our Father is grieved by our sins.”

 -Jerry Bridges, Growing Your Faith

“They who say that for God to become human or exist in three persons is incomprehensible forget they are talking about the nature of God, and it never has been a requirement that the creature comprehend fully the Creator.”

 -Douglas McCready, He Came Down From Heaven

“If a man in broad daylight of his own free will closes his eyes, the sun is not responsible for his failure to see.”

 -Gregory of Nyssa, 383 AD

“When God looks at the center of the universe, He doesn’t look at you.”

–Max Lucado, It’s Not About Me

"A number of people produce at will such musical sounds from their behind (without any stink) that they seem to be singing from that region.”

–Augustine, Bishop of Hippo (354-430 A.D.)
City of God, Book XIV, Chapter 24

 "If God were not to be enjoyed in heaven, but only vast wealth, immense treasures of silver, and gold, great honor of such kind as men obtain in this world, and a fullness of the greatest sensual delights and pleasures; all these things would not make up for the want [lack] of God and Christ, and the enjoyment of them there."

–Jonathan Edwards
God the Portion of the Christian

"Mysticism is sweet, and Christian works are precious, but the seed of the Church, both at the birth of Christianity and in the age of the Reformation, has been the blood of martyrs; and our sainted martyrs shed their blood not for mysticism and not for philanthropic projects, but for the sake of convictions such as concerned the acceptance of truth and the rejection of error."

–Abraham Kuyper
Lectures on Calvinism

“I find your lack of faith, disturbing."

–Darth Vader

“Man is by nature unable to want God to be God.  Indeed he himself wants to be God, and does not want God to be God."

–Martin Luther

 “He loves you as much when He smites, as when He smiles on you."

–John Flavel, The Righteous Man’s Refuge

 "I got no chance and I got no pants."

–Eric Archer

“They do not like God as He is, and yet they would not like Him if He were otherwise."

–Jonathan Edwards

“It is true that they like some things in Christ, they like salvation from the pains of hell, they like the safety from everlasting misery which they hear is to be had in Him; but there are other things in Him which they do not like, His holiness, His salvation from sin, His kingly office, and therefore they will not accept Him as He is. If they could have part of Christ without the rest they would, but they will not accept of the whole of Christ.”

–Jonathan Edwards

“I don’t respect people who don’t proselytize [evangelize].  I don’t respect that at all.  If you believe that there’s a heaven and hell, and people could be going to hell, or not getting eternal life or whatever, and you think it’s not really worth telling them this because it would make it socially awkward—and atheists who think that people shouldn’t proselytize, “Just leave me along.  Keep your religion to yourself.”—How much do you have to hate somebody to not proselytize?  How much do you have to hate somebody to believe that everlasting life is possible and not tell them that?  I mean, if I believed without a shadow of doubt that a truck was coming at you and you didn’t believe it and that truck was bearing down on you, there’s a certain point where I tackle you, and this is more important than that.”  

-Penn Jillette, of Penn and Teller fame, atheist

“Yet, even in an eclipse we find it is painful and dangerous to look directly at the sun.  We are warned by the news media at such time not to make attempts to look directly at it, lest we do serious damage to our eyes.  If we cannot gaze directly at the sun during an eclipse, how much more severe would be the brilliance that literally outshines the sun?  The glory of God reaches a magnitude of brightness far beyond that of the sun shining at full strength.”

-R.C. Sproul, The Holiness of God

"Our wisdom, in so far as it ought to be deemed true and solid Wisdom, consists almost entirely of two parts: the knowledge of God and of ourselves."

-John Calvin

"If the living God should address mankind in any fleeting moment at any point in space with but a simple sentence, with even one single 'Thus saith the Lord!' what intelligent person would not stop, look and listen?  Yet in His revelation God has published news incomparably important to every generation, past and present, of momentous value to each of us who lives in this present opportunity for decision."

-Carl F.H. Henry, God, Revelation and Authority, vol. 2

"If someone else was drawing the line for you and they knew what your weaknesses are and when you're vulnerable to slip up, where would they draw the line for you to keep from messing up?"

-Michael Dimarco, Almost Sex

“For until men recognize that they owe everything to God, that they are nourished by His fatherly care, that He is the Author of their every good, that they should seek nothing beyond Him—they will never yield Him willing service.  Nay, unless they establish their compete happiness in Him, they will never give themselves truly and sincerely to Him.” 

-John Calvin, Institutes 1.2.1

“The heart rules the belly through the chest.”

 -C.S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man

 "I do wonder how you can win the Nobel Peace Prize on the same morning that you are bombing the moon.  But perhaps that is Obama’s secret.  He takes out his aggression on the moon rather than on other countries."

 -Mike Wittmer

“Lovers are normally face to face, absorbed in each other; Friends, side by side, absorbed in some common interest.” 

-C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves

"There are two tenets of atheism.  One, ‘there is no God.’  Two, ‘I hate Him.’"   

-Doug Wilson

"[In our time] the moral law has become the very emblem of immorality.  We call affirming it ‘being judgmental’ and ‘being intolerant,’ which is our way of saying that it has been judged and will not be tolerated.” 

-J. Budziszewski, What We Can’t Not Know

"In point of fact, I think that the Christian religion is the one religion that most clearly deserves to be honored and respected whether or not its claims to be a divine revelation are true.  There is nothing like the combination of of a charismatic figure like Jesus and a first-class intellectual like St. Paul. . . who had a brilliant philosophical mind and could speak and write in all the relevant languages.  If you're wanting Omnipotence to set up a religion, this is the one to beat." 

-Antony Flew, There Is A God: How the World's Most Notorious Atheist Changed His Mind

""Saying 'Preach the gospel; if necessary use words' is like saying 'Tell me your phone number; if necessary use digits.'"

-J.D. Greear

"Racism is serious. Abortion is more serious. Racism might lead to lynching. Abortion is lynching." 

–John Piper

“The interval between the dates of the original compositions [of the Gospels] and the earliest extant evidence [is] so small as the be negligible, and the last foundation for any doubt that the Scriptures have come down to us substantially as they were written has now been removed.”

–Sir. Frederic Kenyon, former director of the British Museum

“I’ll retire when they pry my cold, dead fingers off of my Bible.”

–R.C. Sproul

"Nero beheaded Paul. But things change. 
Today people name their dogs Nero and their sons Paul. 
Live for the long view."

–John Piper

“So there is an incalculable, faultless, eternal God who loves the frail beings He made with a crazy kind of love.  Even thought we could die at any moment and generally think our puny lives are pretty sweet compared to loving Him, He persists in loving us with unending, outrageous love.”

–Francis Chan, Crazy Love

“…I want atheism to be true and am made uneasy by the fact that some of the most intelligent and well-informed people I know are religious believers.  It isn’t just that I don’t believe in God and, naturally, hope that I’m right in my belief.  It’s that I hope there is no God!  I don’t want there to be a God; I don’t want the universe to be like that.”

-Thomas Nagel, philosopher, atheist

“O Lord, grant that I feel more amazed that I am forgiven for my wrongs than that I have been wronged.” 

–John Piper

“If we are looking for a definition of love, we should not look in a dictionary but at Calvary.”

–John Stott, The Cross of Christ

 “My feelings are not God.  God is God.  My feelings do not define truth.  God's word defines truth.  My feelings are echoes and responses to what my mind perceives.  And sometimes-many times-my feelings are out of sync with the truth.”

–John Piper, Finally Alive