Top 143 Quotes & Sayings by Bill Hybels

It takes a great deal of courage to follow another person's lead.

Those churches have closed down or have been merged with a church that has a more positive vision.

God wants to father all of us until we're dead sure of his approval, his guiding power and his promise of heaven.

I hate thinking about it, teaching about it, and writing about it. But the plain truth is that hell is real and real people go there for eternity.

Ten years ago, 15 years ago, I think the church would have been asleep at the switch. This level of activism and engagement with the needs of society by local churches I never thought I'd see it in my lifetime.

The real deal is always going to win in the end.

I look at tens of thousands of church leaders who still do need a bit of an awakening.

Visionary people face the same problems everyone else faces; but rather than get paralyzed by their problems, visionaries immediately commit themselves to finding a solution.

Dignity does not float down from heaven it cannot be purchased nor manufactured. It is a reward reserved for those who labor with diligence.

Thirty years ago, we were in a movie theater and thought it was so cool because we were finally delivered from the horrors of stained glass and wooden pews.

More than anything, people want the reality of the discussion at hand. If what is going on in that building is the real thing, if the transforming love and power of Jesus Christ is being experienced, you can sit on a metal folding chair or in a plush theater seat.

He's dangerous because when God talks to him Bob will do whatever God asks him to do at great cost, even if no one agrees, if it's contrary to the way the stream is going, if Bob feels God is in it he will do it.

It's incredible to realize that what we do each day has meaning in the big picture of God's plan

It's one thing to see a vision; it's another thing to be seized by a vision.

You are the most difficult person you will ever lead.

Life's great moments evolve from simples acts of cooperation with God's mysterious promptings.

It’s amazing how many coincidences occur when one begins to pray.

You have never looked in the eyes of someone who does not matter to God.

Authentic Christians are persons who stand apart from others. Their character seems deeper, their ideas fresher, their spirit softer, their courage greater, their leadership stronger, their concerns wider, their compassion more genuine and their convictions more concrete.

When God transforms the life of just one leader, that leader can transform a church. When one church is transformed, you can transform a community. And when enough churches are thriving, you can affect a region, a country, and eventually the entire world with the positive, life-changing power of Jesus Christ and the redeeming and restoring work of his people.

Leadership requires a non-stop demand of fortitude from Day 1 to the end.

Nothing that matters in this world happens unless leaders lead it.

How do you pray a prayer so filled with faith that it can move a mountain? By shifting your focus from the size of your mountain to the sufficiency of the Mountain Mover and then stepping forward in obedience.

If you lower the ambient noise of your life and listen expectantly for those whispers of God, your ears will hear them. And when you follow their lead, your world will be rocked.

You're a leader. It's your job to keep your passion hot. Do whatever you have to do, read whatever you have to read, go wherever you have to go to stay fired up. And don't apologize to anybody.

It's not the things I don't understand about the Bible that bother me; it's the things I understand with perfect clarity and don't comply with that keep me up at night.

Live each day with an open ear toward heaven, eager to respond to any whisper from God.

I can usually sense that a leading is from the Holy Spirit when it calls me to humble myself, serve somebody, encourage somebody or give something away. Very rarely will the evil one lead us to do those kinds of things.

God delights in pouring his favor on obedient risk takers.

The only way to motivate people is to live a motivated life in front of them

There is nothing like the local church when the local church is working right.

Prayerless people cut themselves off from God's prevailing power, and the frequent result is the familiar feeling of being overwhelmed, overrun, beaten down, pushed around, defeated. Surprising numbers of people are willing to settle for lives like that.

The local church is the hope of the world, and its future rests primarily in the hands of its leaders.

If you don't change your schedule, you'll be the same person you've always been.

If the request is wrong, God says, No. If the timing is wrong, God says, Slow. If you are wrong, God says, Grow. But if the request is right, the timing is right and you are right, God says, Go!

The mark of community is not the absence of conflict. It's the presence of a reconciling spirit.

The best gift you can give a human being is an introduction to a God who loves them.

Vision is a picture of the future that produces passion.

You don't have to be any more talented, any richer, any slimmer, any smarter, any more or less of anything to partner with God. All you have to be is willing to be used by him in everyday way

I'm praying to the Creator of the world, the King of the universe, the all-powerful, all-knowing, all-faithful God. I'm praying to the God who made the mountains and who can move them if necessary. I'm praying to the God who has always been faithful to me, who has never let me down no matter how frightened I was or how difficult the situation looked. I'm praying to a God who wants to bear fruit through me, and I am going to trust that he is going to use me tonight. Not because of who I am, but because of who he is. He is faithful.

Life is too short and the world too compassion-starved for you to keep subsisting in situations that drag you down and curtail your potential to help advance the Kingdom. There's just too much at stake.

I would never want to reach out someday with a soft, uncallused hand-a hand never dirtied by serving-and shake the nail-pierced hand of Jesus.

People will not follow a leader with moral incongruities for long. Every time you compromise character you compromise leadership. The foundation of firm leadership is character.

Self awareness allows you to self-correct.

Authentic Christianity is a supernatural walk with a living, dynamic, communicating God.

Leadership is not for the faint of heart

Destructive fear must be stopped in its tracks or it will undermine the life God invites us to live.

Church is what you do. Church is who you are. Church is the human outworking of the person of Jesus Christ. Let's not go to Church, let's be the Church.

Storms draw something out of us that calm seas don't.

The heart and soul of the Christian life is learning to hear God's voice and then developing the courage to do what he asks us to do.

One of the greatest thrills in all of life is to feel the hand of God working through you and to be a part of the working reality of the church engaged in a movement larger than self.

One of the greatest joys of leadership is assembling and knitting together teams of fantastic people.

God is looking for women and men who are full on for Him... people who have abandoned their own program and are just looking for how they can use their unique talents and abilities to further God's activities and programs in this world. These are the people God will tap on the shoulder and say, “Come with me and we're going to do something great in your lifetime. Come, we're going to do this together.

Leaders, your God-given job is not merely to preside over something, not to pontificate to your underlings how smart you are, not merely to preserve something from its gradual demise; it's to figure out what God wants to get done in this world, figure out what role you play in that, and then to move something or someone from here to there.

God didn't make you a leader to respond to stuff all day. He made you a leader to move things forward.

Every single decision you make as a leader has an effect on the spirit of those you lead.

Nothing on earth has greater potential to change lives and carry out His kingdom work in your community, than your local church.There's nothing like the local church when it's working right. Its beauty is indescribable. Its power is breathtaking. Its potential is unlimited. No other organization on earth is like the church. Nothing even comes close.

God made you on purpose, for a purpose

Religion is spelled 'D-O', because it consists of the things people do try to somehow gain God's forgiveness and favor. But the problem is that you never know when you've done enough. But thankfully, Christianity is spelled differently. It's spelled 'D-O-N-E', which means that what we could never for ourselves, Christ has already done for us. To become a real Christian is to humbly receive God's gift of forgiveness and to commit to following His leadership.

For a marriage relationship to flourish, there must be intimacy. It takes an enormous amount of courage to say to your spouse, 'This is me. I'm not proud of it - in fact, I'm a little embarrassed by it - but this is who I am.