Top 581 Quotes & Sayings by Timothy Keller - Page 7

Christianity does not set faith against thinking. It sets faith against assuming.

Disordered love always leads to misery and breakdown. The only way to 'reorder' our loves is to love God supremely.

Preaching is compelling to young secular adults ... - not if preachers use video clips from their favorite movies and dress informally and sound sophisticated, - but if the preachers understand their hearts and culture so well that listeners feel the force of the sermon's reasoning, even if in the end they don't agree with it.

Ministry to the poor is a crucial sign that we believe the gospel.

Prayer is never just an emergency flare or desperate anxious gamble. God's attention is not based on our performance but parental love.

Sin is not just breaking the rules, it is putting yourself in the place of God as Savior, Lord, and Judge… There are two ways to be your own Savior and Lord. One is by breaking all the moral laws and setting your own course, and one is by keeping all the moral laws and being very, very good.

Happiness is a by-product of wanting something more than happiness-to be rightly related to God and our neighbor.

If we pick out which parts of the Bible we dislike, we actually have a god we've created. How can that god ever call you out on anything?

One of the signs that you may not grasp the unique, radical nature of the gospel is that you are certain that you do.

The targets of this story are not wayward sinners but religious people who do everything the Bible requires. Jesus is pleading not so much with immoral outsiders as with moral insiders. H wants to show them their blindness, narrowness, and self righteousness, and how these things are destroying both their own souls and the lives of the people around them.

If we can't "love the sinner; hate the sin" then how can we relate to ourselves? Love who we are in Christ but still hate the sin remaining.

If God is real, why does he align perfectly with our views? We should expect God to challenge us on what we think is right somewhere

The Gospel is the deepest consolation you can offer to the human heart.

The church is often like a football stadium where 22 people need a rest and thousands of people need exercise.

Jesus is the ultimate Job, the only truly innocent sufferer.

The best things that have been written, almost, are by Catholics during the counter Reformation: Ignatius of Loyola, St. Francis de Sales, John of the Cross, St. Theresa of ?vila.....great stuff.

A triune God would call us to converse with him . . . because he wants to share the joy he has. Prayer is our way of entering into the happiness of God himself.

The purpose of Sabbath is not simply to rejuvenate yourself in order to do more production, nor is it the pursuit of pleasure. The purpose of Sabbath is to enjoy your God, life in general, what you have accomplished in the world through his help, and the freedom you have in the gospel-the freedom from slavery to any material object or human expectation. The Sabbath is a sign of the hope that we have in the world to come.

Change happens not just by giving the mind new arguments but also by feeding the imagination new beauties

When the world sees us doing evangelism, they just see us recruiting. When they see us doing justice, they see God's glory.

You are worse than you think you are, but also far more loved than you feel you are.

If you and your church were to disappear off the face of the earth tomorrow, would anyone in the community around you notice you were gone? And if the community did even notice would they say 'we are really glad they are gone', or 'we are really going to miss them'?

Jesus came into this world not as a philosopher or a general but as a carpenter. All work matters to God.

Jesus does not just bring good news; he is the good news.

The Bible judges the church; the church does not judge the Bible. The Bible is the foundation for and the creator of the church; the church is not the foundation for or creator of the Bible. The church and its hierarchy must be evaluated by the believer with the biblical gospel as the touchstone or plumb line for judging all truth claims.

As things are brought back under Christ's rule and authority, they are restored to health, beauty, and freedom.

Fear, logic, and tradition are not going to make you live a good life when no one is looking.

Covenant community is like air. We don't miss it until we need it.

To preach the gospel is to show people their need for salvation against a backdrop of God's nature and the character of sin, and then present Jesus as the only remedy for what ails them and the world. In my weekly preaching in the worship services I always call people to believe in Christ.

We think that idols are bad things, but that is almost never the case. The greater the good, the more likely we are to expect that it can satisfy our deepest needs and hopes. Anything can serve as a counterfeit god, especially the very best things in life.

Every other religion points to answers. Jesus, though, says 'I am the answer'.

If we give God things in hope that they'll earn us blessings, we're really not doing anything for him. It's for ourselves.

While marriage is many things, it is anything but sentimental. Marriage is glorious but hard. It's a burning joy and strength, and yet it is also blood, sweat, and tears; humbling defeats and exhausting victories.

Marriage is so much like salvation and our relationship with Christ that you can’t understand marriage w/o looking at the gospel.

Change won’t happen through ‘trying harder’ but only through encountering the radical grace of God.

The gospel shows a God far more holy than the legalist can bear, yet far more merciful than a humanist can conceive

The image of God carries with it the right not to be mistreated or harmed.... Regardless of their record or character, all human beings have an irreducible glory and significance to them, because God loves them.... So we must treasure each and every human being as a way of showing due respect for the majesty of their owner and Creator.

You should not begin to pray for all you want until you realize that in God you have all you need.

In the secular view, suffering is never seen as a meaningful part of life but only as an interruption.

There is a direct relationship between a person's grasp and experience of God's grace, and his or her heart for justice and the poor.

While the difference between a bad sermon and a good sermon is mainly the responsibility of the preacher, the difference between good preaching and great preaching lies mainly in the work of the Holy Spirit. . . . We should do the work it takes to make our communication good and leave it up to God how and how often he makes it great for the listener.

Careful obedience to God’s law may serve as a strategy for rebelling against God

It is possible to avoid Jesus as Savior as much by keeping all the Biblical rules as by breaking them.

Whatever you base your life on--you have to live up to that. Jesus is the one Lord you can live for who already died for you.

I have long profited from Adele Ahlberg Calhoun's gifts in the field of spiritual development, and I am delighted that she has compiled her experience with spiritual disciplines into book form. I highly recommend it and I look forward to using it as a resource at our church.

The key to continual and deeper spiritual renewal and revival is the continual re-discovery of the gospel.

Nothing we formulate or do can qualify us for access to God. Only grace can do that- based not on our performance but on the saving work of Christ.

Public faith means going public with what’s in your heart, with humility and respect for others, as we speak of the truth of the gospel.

The life of faith is not the perfect life; it is the life which clings on to what God has said he will do.

I hate the moment when suddenly my anger turns into tears

The Gospel is this: You're more sinful, evil and weak than you'd ever believe. But you're more valued, accepted and loved than you dared hope.

The most rapturous delights you have ever had - in the beauty of a landscape, or in the pleasure of food, or in the fulfillment of a loving embrace - are like dewdrops compared to the bottomless ocean of joy that it will be to see God face-to-face (1 John 3:1-3). That is what we are in for, nothing less. And according to the Bible, that glorious beauty, and our enjoyment of it, has been immeasurably enhanced by Christ's redemption of us from evil and death.

Faith in the gospel restructures our motivations, our self-understanding, our identity, and our view of the world. Behavioral compliance to rules without heart-change will be superficial and fleeting… We can only change permanently as we take the gospel more deeply into our understanding and into our hearts. We must feed on the gospel, as it were, digesting it and making it part of ourselves. That is how we grow.

Revival occurs as a group of people who, on the whole, think they already know the gospel discover they do not really or fully know it, and by embracing the gospel they cross over into living faith.

The very fact that we have access to God's attention and presence should concentrate the thoughts and elevate the heart.

The most liberating act of free, unconditional grace demands that the recipient give up control of his or her life.

It’s a mistake to think that you must feel love to give it.

When you say, "Come in Jesus as my caregiver, stay out as my Lord," he can't. He's both.

The doctrine of grace and redemption keeps us from seeing any person or situation as hopeless.

Living is giving....If you spend your money on yourself, you are just surviving. But if you want your life to count, if you want to really live - give.