In His Own Words: The Real Jesus

“We believe that all religions are basically the same.
They all believe in love and goodness.
They only differ on matters of
Creation, sin, heaven, hell, God, and salvation . . .
We believe that each man must find the truth that is right for him.
We believe there is no absolute truth,
except the truth that there is no absolute truth.
We believe in the rejection of creeds,
and the flowering of individual thought.”

—Steve Turner

“The uniqueness of Christ is not a peripheral teaching of the Christian faith. If we lose our sense of absolute dependence on what Jesus did, it will erode away the whole of the faith until little remains. But equally important to holding to the uniqueness of Christ is not acting arrogant or superior to those who do not agree or who are not Christians. Nothing so quickly discredits this biblical claim than if we make it without love, or in pride, defensiveness, conceit, or if we refuse to discuss it at all . . . This introduces the important issue that part of the persuasiveness of the Christian faith includes factors that are not, strictly speaking, cognitive – a point too often neglected in discussions of apologetics. It raises the matter of who we are as we try to defend the truth of God and persuade others. What looms large is our own character, the quality of our love, and our ability to relate to other people with both courage and sensitivity.”

—Dick Keyes

“There is no other stream.”

—Aslan, The Silver Chair

“I could never myself believe in God, if it were not for the cross. The only God I believe in is the One Nietzsche ridiculed as ‘God on the cross.’ In the real world of pain, how could one worship a God who was immune to it? I have entered many Buddhist temples in different Asian countries and stood respectfully before the statue of the Buddha, his legs crossed, arms folded, eyes closed, the ghost of a smile playing round his mouth, a remote look on his face, detached from the agonies of the world. But each time after a while I have had to turn away. And in imagination I have turned instead to that lonely, twisted, tortured figure on the cross, nails through hands and feet, back lacerated, limbs wrenched, brow bleeding from thorn-pricks, mouth dry and intolerably thirsty, plunged in Godforsaken darkness. That is the God for me! He laid aside his immunity to pain. He entered our world of flesh and blood, tears and death. He suffered for us. Our sufferings become more manageable in the light of his. There is still a question mark against human suffering, but over it we boldly stamp another mark, the cross that symbolizes divine suffering. ‘The cross of Christ … is God’s only self-justification in such a world” as ours….’ ‘The other gods were strong; but thou wast weak; they rode, but thou didst stumble to a throne; But to our wounds only God’s wounds can speak, And not a god has wounds, but thou alone.”

—John Stott

“Who is to say which is more incredible – a man who raises the dead or a God who weeps?”

—Ken Gire

“Behind every agonizing “No” from God is his “Yes” to something better, his “Trust Me” with the timing, and his “I AM with you right now”.

—Walter Henegar

“Being confident of the goodness of the Lord shouldn’t be confused with an assumption that because God is good, he will give me the things I have set my heart on. In his grace, God is freeing you from the small confines of your little definition of what is good so that you can experience the huge and satisfying good that he has planned for you . . . This is the bottom line. The good that God promises me isn’t a situation, possession, position, or relationship. The good that he promises me is himself. What could possibly be a better gift?”

—Paul Tripp

“The LORD God is a sun and a shield; the LORD bestows favor and honor. No good thing does he withhold from those who walk uprightly.”

—Psalm 84:11

“Savior, like a shepherd lead us,
Much we need Thy tender care;
In Thy pleasant pastures feed us,
For our use Thy folds prepare:
Blessed Jesus, blessed Jesus,
Thou hast bought us, Thine we are;
Blessed Jesus, blessed Jesus,
Thou hast bought us, Thine we are.”

—Dorothy Thrupp

“There is no attribute more comforting to His children than that of God’s Sovereignty. Under the most adverse circumstances, in the most severe trials, they believe that Sovereignty has ordained their afflictions, that Sovereignty overrules them, and that Sovereignty will sanctify them all.”

—Charles Spurgeon

“If God had perceived that our greatest need was economic, he would have sent an economist. If he had perceived that our greatest need was entertainment, he would have sent us a comedian or an artist. If God had perceived that our greatest need was political stability, he would have sent us a politician. If he had perceived that our greatest need was health, he would have sent us a doctor. But he perceived that our greatest need involved our sin, our alienation from him, our profound rebellion, our death, and he sent us a Savior.”

—D. A. Carson

I would not have the restless will
That hurries to and fro,
Seeking for some great thing to do,
Or secret thing to know;
I would be treated as a child,
And guided where I go.
So I ask Thee for the daily strength,
To none that ask denied,
And a mind to blend with outward life
While keeping at Thy side;
Content to fill a little space,
If Thou be glorified.

—Anna Waring

“Made for spirituality, we wallow in introspection.  Made for joy, we settle for pleasure.  Made for justice, we clamor for vengeance.  Made for relationships, we insist on our own way. Made for beauty, we are satisfied with sentiment.  But new creation has already begun.  The sun has begun to rise.  Christians are called to leave behind, in the tomb of Jesus Christ, all that belongs to the brokenness and incompleteness of the present world.  It is time, in the power of the Spirit, to take up our proper role, our fully human role, as agents, heralds, and stewards of the new day that is dawning.  That, quite simply, is what it means to be Christian: to follow Jesus Christ into the new world, God’s new world, which he has thrown open before us.”

—N.T Wright – Simply Christian, 237.

“”He came down from heaven” can almost be transposed into “Heaven drew earth up into it,” and locality, limitation, sleep, sweat, footsore weariness, frustration, pain, doubt, and death are, from before all worlds, known by God from within. The pure light walks the earth; the darkness, received into the heart of Deity, is there swallowed up. Where, except in uncreated light, can the darkness be drowned?”

—C. S. Lewis

“In your light do we see light.”

—Psalm 36:9

“Everybody’s got a hungry heart.”

—Saint Springsteen

“To be human is to be animated and oriented by some version of the good life, some picture of what we think counts as “flourishing.” And we want that. We crave it. We desire it. This is why our most fundamental mode of orientation to the world is love. We are oriented by our longings, directed by our desires. We adopt ways of life that are indexed to such visions of the good life, not usually because we “think through” our options but rather because some picture captures our imagination.”

—James K.A. Smith

“Self-indulgence tends to suppress gratitude; self-discipline tends to generate it. That is why gluttony is a deadly sin: oddly, it is an appetite suppressant. The reason is that a person’s appetites are linked: full stomachs and jaded palates take the edge from our hunger and thirst for justice. And they spoil the appetite for God.”

—Cornelius Plantinga

“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness.”

—Matthew 5: 6

“If God were not angry at injustice and deception and did not make a final end to violence- that God would not be worthy of worship… If I don’t believe that there is a God who will eventually put all things right, I will take up the sword and will be sucked into the endless vortex of retaliation.  Only if I am sure that there’s a God who will right all wrongs and settle all accounts perfectly do I have the power to refrain.”

—Miroslav Volf, Exclusion and Embrace

“Think how we feel when we see someone we love ravaged by unwise actions or relationships.  Do we respond with benign tolerance as we might towards strangers? Far from it . . . Anger isn’t the opposite of love.  Hate is, and the final form of hate is indifference . . . God’s wrath is not a cranky explosion, but his settled opposition to the cancer . . . which is eating out the insides of the human race he loves with his whole being.”

—Rebecca Manley Pippert

“Our Lord’s injunction to ‘judge not’ cannot be understood as a command to suspend our critical faculties in relation to other people, to turn a blind eye to their faults (pretending not to notice them), to eschew all criticism and to refuse to discern between truth and error, goodness and evil.”

—John Stott

“A Prayer of Tears:

Let me enter your heart, O God.
Let me see what breaks your heart.
Let my heart be broken, too.

Amen.”

—Richard Foster