Witness Unhindered

“If the churches came to understand that the greatest threat to faith today is not hedonism but distraction, perhaps they might begin to appeal anew to a frazzled digital generation. Christian leaders seem to think that they need more distraction to counter the distraction. Their services have degenerated into emotional spasms, their spaces drowned with light and noise and locked shut throughout the day when their darkness and silence might actually draw those whose minds and souls have grown web-weary.”

Andrew Sullivan

 “I believe in the power of distraction.”

Woody Allen

 “A personal gospel without a social gospel is like a soul without a body. A social gospel without a personal gospel is like a body without a soul. One is a ghost. The other is a corpse.”

Bryan Chapell

“Perhaps the most common invitation to cynicism about the church is hypocrisy. Cynicism’s standard cliché about the church is that it is “filled with hypocrites.” This is a curiously powerless criticism. Of course it is filled with hypocrites. What else is new? Hospitals are filled with sick people. Hypocrisy is a human problem, not a distinctively Christian problem. Is anyone suggesting that there is no hypocrisy outside of the church? . . . Just because hypocrisy is so widespread, almost normal, this does not lessen its seriousness. Jesus reserved some of the most stinging rebukes for hypocrites. He repeated, “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!” no less than seven times in one chapter (Matthew 23) as he denounced one hypocrisy after another in the religious leadership. They crucified him at the end of the week.”

Dick Keyes

“I hate, I despise your festivals,
and take no delight in your solemn assemblies . . .
Take away the noise of your songs;
I will not listen to melody of your harps.
But let justice roll down like waters,
and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.”

Amos

“The fear of God is that affectionate reverence, by which the child of God bends himself humbly and carefully to his Father’s law.”

Charles Bridges

“Evangelism is just one beggar telling another beggar where to find the bread.”

D. Thambyrajah Niles

“Words without deeds are empty, but deeds without words are dumb.”

Lesslie Newbigin

“The biggest problem with poverty is the shame that comes with it. When you give the best you have to someone in need, it translates into something much deeper to the receiver. It means that they are worthy. If it’s not good enough for you, it’s not good enough for those in need either. Giving the best you have does more than feed an empty belly – it feeds the soul.”

Kristine Levine

“The priority for the Church is neither evangelism nor social action; it is to live under the lordship of Christ . . . As a Christian learns to live her life under the lordship of Jesus Christ, as she learns to adopt his perspective on money, sex, power, time and eternity and live her life in the light of these, then she will become the kind of person who provokes questions in the minds of her twenty-first century non-Christian neighbours.”

Graham Tomlin, The Provocative Church

“What is the normal Christian life? What are we hoping to see cultivated in people? We are constantly driving people to make a big splash. Once or twice a year, a group comes along with a plan to ‘take Auburn by storm.’ There is always a lot of noise and clamor, a lot of labor and money spent, and for a moment everyone (the Christians at least) look up to see what’s going on. As quickly as it appears, it disappears. Some get excited and want to make more noise next year. But for the most part the noise fades and people go back to the business at hand. And that is where the church ought to meet people, in the ‘business at hand’ – the ordinary, mundane duties and experiences that make up the larger portion of our lives. Jesus said the whole sum of Christian living was loving God and loving our neighbor. Did He mean for us to work that out in an arena or in our minute by minute ordinary lives? The more difficult and yet truest and most meaningful spirituality is that which deals with Jesus in everything . . . Many Christians will never notice or recognize this as ministry because it makes so little noise. So what. God brings extraordinary things out of the ordinary.”

Steve Malone

“A church can become crowded with legitimate causes, concerns, and needs. And it can be hard to find Jesus.”

Ray Ortlund

“There have been men before now who got so interested in proving the existence of God that they came to care nothing for God Himself … as if the good Lord had nothing to do but exist! There have been some who were so occupied in spreading Christianity that they never gave a thought to Christ. Man! Ye see it in smaller matters. Did ye never know a lover of books that with all his first editions and signed copies had lost the power to read them? Or an organiser of charities that had lost all love for the poor? It is the subtlest of all the snares.”

CS Lewis 

“The great desire of the Holy Spirit is that our churches so exalt Jesus Christ that men and women are moved to God through Christ, become his disciples in the fellowship of the churches, and then follow him into adventuresome service and controversy in the world . . . The Holy Spirit wants, above all else, that Jesus be known in the world. The main way that Jesus is known in the world is by the faithful preaching and teaching of Scripture’s gospel.”

Dale Bruner

“Spirit of God, descend upon my heart.
Wean it from earth; through all its pulses move;
Stoop to my weakness, mighty as Thou art;
and make me love Thee as I ought to love.

I ask no dream, no prophet ecstasies,
No sudden rending of the veil of clay,
No angel vision, no opening skies;
but take the dimness of my soul away.”

George Croly

 “The work of the Spirit is Christocentric. He will draw attention not to himself but to Christ. He will glorify Christ. It is the things of Christ that he takes and declares, that is, his ministry is built upon and is the necessary sequel to that of Christ . . . Wherever a church or person centers thoughtfully (that is, biblically and evangelically) on honoring the person, teaching, and work of Jesus Christ, there, we may be quite sure, we are in the presence of the Holy Spirit. For the Spirit’s work is the thoughtful honoring of Christ.”

Dale Bruner

“Wait, pray, and believe, and all shall be well. He will not suffer them who fear Him and depend upon Him to want anything that is truly good for them.”

John Newton

“Waiting on God isn’t about the suspension of meaning and purpose. It’s part of the meaning and purpose that God has brought into your life. Waiting on God isn’t to be viewed as an obstruction in the way of the plan. Waiting is an essential part of the plan. For the child of God, waiting isn’t simply about what the child will receive at the end of his wait. No, waiting is much more purposeful, efficient, and practical. Waiting is fundamentally about what we will become as we wait . . . God is using the wait to do in and through you exactly what he has promised. Through the wait he is changing you. By means of the wait, he is causing you to see and experience new things about him and his kingdom. And all of this sharpens you, enabling you to be a more useful tool in his redemptive hands . . . Waiting on God is restorative. It is one of the tools God uses to remake us into what we were designed to be in the beginning . . . Picture in your mind the nimble and skilled fingers of a potter who is putting pressure on the clay right where it’s needed so that it will take on the beauty that is its potential. And with this picture in mind, give thanks for the very moment that once would have driven you crazy. Waiting is a “productive delay”.”

Paul Tripp

“Waiting and fidelity are closely connected, and many of us struggle with both. Lured by the promise of freedom and infinite choice, we are fearful of foreclosing our options and limiting our opportunities. Why make commitments to something in the future, when better opportunities might surface in the meantime? Why live in a way that anticipates a future when the present includes so many other possibilities? What promise could possibly be so life-giving that we would shape our lives around it?”

-Christine Pohl, Making Room

“When the scriptural people of God seek redemption, they want personal salvation, and they express their desire in what sounds like a cry of the heart.  But to them redemption goes far beyond personal salvation. When biblical people want God to redeem, what they want is freedom and righteousness throughout the land.  They want God to unseat Pharaoh or Caesar. They want God to drive the Midianites back across the border. They’re Exodus people, after all. They’re Passover people. They have a history of being squeezed by Egypt, Babylon, or Rome.  In their eyes, God’s redemption means justice is coming, liberation is coming, the King of all the earth is coming!”

-Cornelius Plantinga, Engaging God’s World

“John [the Baptist] saw the mission of the Coming One as primarily one of separation: those who repented he would save and the unrepentant he would judge.  John, in fact, expected this twofold messianic work to take place in a single eschatological event. He had predicted that the coming Messiah would both ‘gather his wheat into the granary’ and burn the chaff with unquenchable fire (Matt. 3:12).  When John was in prison, he began to reflect on the fact that, while he did see Jesus gathering wheat, he did not see him burning chaff.”

-Anthony Hoekema, The Bible and the Future