Top 237 Quotes & Sayings by Ravi Zacharias - Page 2

I have little doubt that the single greatest obstacle to the impact of the gospel has not been its inability to provide answers, but the failure on our part to live it out.

My longings, my hopes, my dreams, and my every effort has been to live for Him who rescued me, to study for Him who gave me this mind, to serve Him who fashioned my will, and to speak for Him who gave me a voice.

These days its not just that the line between right and wrong has been made unclear, today Christians are being asked by our culture today to erase the lines and move the fences, and if that were not bad enough, we are being asked to join in the celebration cry by those who have thrown off the restraints religion had imposed upon them. It is not just that they ask we accept, but they now demand of us to celebrate it too.

Christianity is not a political theory. It is not even a cultural theory. It is, at its root, all about changing the heart of each man and woman, boy and girl, so that we begin to think God's thoughts and act in accordance with his character.

Justice is the handmaiden of truth, and when truth dies, justice is buried with it.

When we look into the human heart we see the lust, the greed, the hate, the pride, the anger, and the jealousies that are so destructive. This is at the heart of the human predicament, and the Scriptures call this condition sin.

One of the most staggering truths of the Scriptures is to understand that we do not earn our way to heaven. ...works have a place--but as a demonstration of having received God's forgiveness, not as a badge of merit of having earned it.

Love is as much a question of the will as it is of the emotion. And if you WILL to love somebody, you can.

Faith in the biblical sense is substantive, based on the knowledge that the One in whom that faith is placed has proven that He is worthy of that trust. In its essence, faith is a confidence in the person of Jesus Christ and in His power, so that even when His power does not serve my end, my confidence in Him remains because of who He is.

Truth cannot be sacrificed at the altar of pretended tolerance. Real tolerance is deference to all ideas, not indifference to the truth.

The Bible places supreme value in the thought life. "As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he," Solomon wrote. Jesus asserted that sin's gravity lay in the idea itself, not just the act. "Paul admonished the church at Philippi to have the mind of Christ, and to the same people he wrote, "Whatever is true ... pure ... if there be any virtue ... think on these things." Thus, the follower of Christ must demonstrate to the world what it is not just to think, but to think justly.

I remember the time an older man asked me when I was young, "Do you know what you are doing now?" I thought it was some kind of trick question. Tell me," I said. You are building your memories," he replied, "so make them good ones.

To sustain the belief that there is no God, atheism has to demonstrate infinite knowledge, which is tantamount to saying, “I have infinite knowledge that there is no being in existence with infinite knowledge

All religions, plainly and simply, cannot be true. Some beliefs are false, and we know them to be false. So it does no good to put a halo on the notion of tolerance as if everything could be equally true. To deem all beliefs equally true is sheer nonsense for the simple reason that to deny that statement would also, then, be true. But if the denial of the statement is also true, then all religions are not true.

Study hard. Understand not only the questions, but the questioner. Know how best to articulate the answers, but do it with humility, because ultimately the answer is in a person, the person of Christ, not in an argument. So, do your work and know how to present the answer, but do it with gentleness and meekness.

Where the eye is focused, there the imagination finds its raw material. The right focus must be won at immense cost and discipline. Train the eye to see the good, and the imagination will follow suit.

You cannot really have the world and hold on to it. It is all too temporary and the more you try to hold on to it, the more it actually holds you. By contrast, the more you hold on to the true and the good, the more you are free to really live.

An argument may remove doubt, but only the Holy Spirit can convict of truth.

We cannot discuss human rights, when we are denying people the right to live.

Having the answers is not essential to living. What is essential is the sense of God's presence during dark seasons of questioning.

When you think of it, really there are four fundamental questions of life. Youve asked them, Ive asked them, every thinking person asks them. They boil down to this; origin, meaning, morality and destiny. How did I come into being? What brings life meaning? How do I know right from wrong? Where am I headed after I die?

You'll never get to a person's soul until you understand their hurts.

I came to Him because I did not know which way to turn. I remained with Him because there is no other way I wish to turn. I came to Him longing for something I did not have. I remain with Him because I have something I will not trade. I came to Him as a stranger. I remain with Him in the most intimate of friendships. I came to Him unsure about the future. I remain with Him certain about my destiny. I came amid the thunderous cries of a culture that has 330 million deities. I remain with Him knowing that truth cannot be all-inclusive.

Marriage means handing over yourself, your body, your future, your keeping to the one whom you dearly love, although this person may, in many ways, remain a stranger. This tremendous act of faith is something that can unlock in each lover powers of compassion, generosity, joy, passion, fidelity and hope that no one guessed was even there. That is why the confidence of young lovers is not foolish or arrogant, but an expression of a basic fact in human experience that the greatest of human gifts are set to work only when people are prepared to risk everything and first you risk it before God.

Love is a command, not just a feeling. Somehow, in the romantic world of music and theater we have made love to be what it is not. We have so mixed it with beauty and charm and sensuality and contact that we have robbed it of its higher call of cherishing and nurturing.

The mocker will not have the last laugh. You see, dancing on the grave of an extinguished Christianity is farcical at best. Because the grave is empty. And the one who knows the way out of the grave sits in the heavens and laughs.

Like a child who suddenly stops sobbing when he is clasped in the arms of his mother, such will be the grip of heaven upon our souls.

When secularization has had its full sway, it will leave a generation devoid of shame. And if you show me a generation that lacks shame, I will show you a generation that is monstrous in its appetite... never satisfied.

The biggest difference between Jesus Christ and ethical and moral teachers who have been deified by man. Is that these moralists came to make bad people good. Jesus came to make dead people live!

Our sense of wonder is a blessing from God, given so that we would be continually amazed at His beauty and creation.

Truth by definition excludes.

God put enough into the world to make faith in Him a reasonable thing. But He left enough out to make it impossible to live by reason alone.

There are no unique postures and times and limitations that restrict our access to God. My relationship with God is intimate and personal. The Christian does not go to the temple to worship. The Christian takes the temple with him or her. Jesus lifts us beyond the building and pays the human body the highest compliment by making it His dwelling place, the place where He meets with us. Even today He would overturn the tables of those who make it a marketplace for their own lust, greed and wealth.

Respect for the right of another to be wrong does not mean that the wrong is right

There are so many needs in the world, and our hearts cannot carry them all. You must walk to the priorities God has set before you.

When God is our Holy Father, sovereignty, holiness, omniscience, and immutability do not terrify us; they leave us full of awe and gratitude. Sovereignty is only tyrannical if it is unbounded by goodness; holiness is only terrifying if it is untempered by grace; omniscience is only taunting if it is unaccompanied by mercy; and immutability is only torturous if there is no guarantee of goodwill.

Let us remember that every worldview-not just Christianity's-must give an explanation or an answer for evil and suffering...this is not just a problem distinctive to Christianity. It will not do for the challenger just to raise the question. This problem of evil is one to which we all must offer an answer, regardless of the belief system to which we subscribe.

What we need is not a religion that is right where we are right, but one that is right where we are wrong.

The loneliest people in the world are those who have exhausted pleasure and come away empty.

None of us like the concept of law because none of us like the restraints it puts on us. But when we understand that God has given us his law to aid us in guarding our souls, we see that the law is for our fulfillment, not for our limitation. The law reminds us that some things, some experiences, some relationships are sacred. When everything has been profaned, it is not just my freedom that has been lost- the loss is everyone's. God gave us the law to remind us of the sacredness of life, and our created legal systems only serve to remind us of the profane judgments we make.

If truth is not undergirded by love, it makes the possessor of that truth obnoxious and the truth repulsive.

Christian faith is exclusivistic. Christian faith lays claim upon our lives. The sanctity of life, what we do with a life, is very definitive in the Christian faith, what we do with sexuality, what we do with marriage, all of the fundamental questions of life have points of reference for answers, and people just have an aversion for that. That I think is the biggest reason they feel hostile towards the Christian faith.

I am absolutely convinced that meaninglessness does not come from being weary of pain; meaninglessness comes from being weary of pleasure. And that is why we find ourselves emptied of meaning with our pantries still full.

If you believe in subjective morality, why do you lock your doors at night?

If God is the author of life, there must be a script.

In his book Modern Times, the historian Paul Johnson referred to Hitler, Stalin, and Mussolini as the three devils of the twentieth century. Interestingly, Nietzshean dogma influenced each of them.

I do not believe that one can earnestly seek and find the priceless treasure of God's call without a devout prayer life. That is where God speaks. The purpose of prayer and of God's call in your life is not to make you number one in the world's eyes, but to make him number one in your life. We must be willing to be outshone while shining for God. We hear very little about being smaller in our own self-estimate.

The Biblical world-view is the only one that accepts the reality of evil and suffering while giving both the cause and the purpose, while offering God-given strength and sustenance in the midst of it.

Does that not sound odd to you? When God decides who should live or die, he is immoral, When you decide who should live or die, it's your moral right. There was a pin-drop silence.

Love is the greatest apologetic. It is the essential component in reaching the whole person in a fragmented world. The need is vast, but it is also imperative that we be willing to follow the example of Jesus and meet the need.

The atheist risk everything for the present and the future, on the basis of a belief that we are uncaused by any intelligent being. We just happen to be here. That one is willing to live and die in that belief is a very high price to pay for conjecture.

The purity of man is the absence of something, the purity of Jesus is the presence of something.

It was not the volume of sin that sent Christ to the cross; it was the fact of sin.

What does it mean to be human? It means we are created in the image of God for the glorious reality of being in permanent fellowship with Him.

Whenever you try to break God's moral law, you end up breaking yourself and hurting others - all while proving His law in the process.

The ultimate test of any civilization is how we treat the most vulnerable... what we do to our children. Our world has lost its direction.

God is the shaper of your heart. God does not display his work in abstract terms. He prefers the concrete, and this means that at the end of your life one of three things will happen to your heart: it will grow hard, it will be broken, or it will be tender. Nobody escapes

Unless I understand the Cross, I cannot understand why my commitment to what is right must be precedence over what I prefer.

The older we become, the more difficult it is to fill our hearts with wonder. Only God is big enough to keep filling us with wonder.

Anyone who claims that all religions are the same betrays not only an ignorance of all religions but also a caricatured view of even the best-known ones. Every religion at its core is exclusive.