Top 261 Quotes & Sayings by Tullian Tchividjian - Page 4

The gospel is not about a lifestyle that we live, it's about the law-fulfilling life that Christ lived.

God is not interested in what you think you should be or feel. He is not interested in the narrative you have construct for yourself, or that others have construct for you. He may even use suffering to deconstruct that narrative.

While our sin reaches far, God's grace reaches farther. God came after us not to strip away our freedom but to strip away our slavery to self, that we could become truly free.

...this culture of mandatory happiness actually promotes dishonesty and more suffering.

Grace could not have done it’s curing work if the law had not first done its crushing work.

Because Jesus was strong for us we are free to be weak.

Holy Saturday. The best reminder that the silence of God doesn't equal the absence of God.

God's grace meets us in messy places because messy places are all that there are.

The hub of Christianity is not "do something for Jesus." The hub of Christianity is "Jesus has done everything for you".

Your pain could be God prying open your life and heart to remove a gift of His that you've been on to more dearly than Him.

Even one who has been to God a million times with the same problem need not fear exhausting the grace of God.

The smaller you get-the smaller life makes you-the easier it is to see the grandeur of grace. While I am far more incapable than I may have initially thought, God is infinitely more capable than I ever hoped.

We are all both victims and victimizers. Just as everyone suffers, no one is innocent of causing suffering themselves.

When it comes to understanding and appreciating grace, our biggest problem is our so-called goodness...not our self-perceived badness.

The gospel doesn't just ignite the Christian life but it keeps Christians growing and growing every day. There's no reason to move beyond the gospel. There's only movement more into it.

When we reduce the notion of “calling” to work inside the church, we fail to equip our people to apply their Christian faith to everything they do, everywhere they are.

I grew up in a remarkable home, the middle of seven children. My parents raised us well. They loved us well. We laughed hard growing up. But being the middle child, I couldn't figure out where I fit in the home, whether I was the youngest of the older three or the oldest of the younger three. When you don't know where you fit inside the home and you're young and you're desperate to fit in somewhere, I'd figured where I would fit outside the home. So I made some bad decisions about who I hung out with, I dropped out of high school, got kicked out of the house.

Every time we sin in thought, word, or deed, we're essentially saying in that moment that, "I don't need you God. I don't want you God. I like my way better than your way."

When you don't know where you fit inside the home and you're young and you're desperate to fit in somewhere, I'd figured where I would fit outside the home. So I made some obviously bad decisions about who I hung out with and the things that I did.

Contrary to what we conclude naturally, the gospel is not too good to be true. It is true! Its the truest truth in the entire universe. No strings attached! No fine print to read. No buts. No conditions. No qualifications. No footnotes. And especially, no need for balance.

Grace flows most refreshingly through the faucet of brokenness.

The focus of the Christian faith is not our morality; it is Jesus, who died for our immorality.

Christmas is the beachhead of God’s campaign against sin and sadness, darkness and death, fear and frustration.

The more I focused on my need to get better the worse I actually got - the more neurotic and self-conscious and self-absorbed I became.

The way of God's grace becomes indispensable when we realize that the way of God's law is inflexible.

When Martin Luther was asked what we contribute to our salvation, he said, "Sin and resistance"

Long-term, gospel-motivate d obedience can only come from the grace of what Jesus has already done, not the guilt of what we must do.

There's nothing like suffering to reveal how small and needy you are. Pain has the remarkable capacity to reveal the weakness of the things you're leaning on to make life worth living.

We must reacquaint ourselves with the biblical weight of the problem that we less-than-perfect human beings contend with in the face of a holy and righteous God.

Christianity is not about good people getting better. If anything, it is good news for bad people coping with their failure to be good. The heart of the Christian faith is Good News, not good advice, good technique, or good behavior. Too many people have walked away from the church, not because they’re walking away from Jesus, but because the church has walked away from Jesus.

The Gospel frees us to speak honestly about the reality of pain, confident that nothing is riding on our ability to cope with or fend off suffering.

I was spending way too much time thinking about me and what I needed to do, and far too little time thinking about Jesus and what he had already done for me.

My job as a pastor and theologian is to tease out the nature and the necessity of the gospel in meticulous ways, in everything I say, in everything I like. I want desperately for the church in America to rediscover the power and the beauty and the nature and the necessity of the gospel.

If you have suffered the loss of a family member to chronic disease, if you suffer debilitating seasons of depression, if you have lost your job and livelihood, gone through a divorce that came out of the blue, know that God is not punishing you. He is not waiting for you to do something.

Disobedience happens not when we think too much grace but when we think too little of it

Explanations are a substitute for trust.

The pain cleared my vision, and once it was taken away, I realized just how much I'd been relying on the endorsement of others to make me feel like I mattered.

When you fail to distinguish Law and Gospel, you lose both.

God reminds us again and again that things between He and us are forever fixed. They are the rendezvous points where God declares to us concretely that the debt has been paid, the ledger put away, and that everything we need, in Christ we already possess. This re-convincing produces humility, because we realize that our needs are fulfilled. We don’t have to worry about ourselves anymore. This in turn frees us to stop looking out for what we think we need and liberates us to love our neighbor by looking out for what they need.

Grace loves without reference to what may or may not happen-which is precisely why such incredible things do happen!

The Christian life has been nothing more and nothing less than a daily dependence on and a rediscovery of God's grace.

Because the church has moved away from the gospel anytime you move away from the gospel, you at the same time move toward pretense, you move toward image-keeping, you move toward the need to pretend.

To progress is always to begin again.

The passive righteousness of faith frees me from passing final judgment on myself.

Grace is the most dangerous, expectation-wre cking, smile-creating, counterintuitiv e reality there is.

When I was 25, I believed I could change the world. At 41, I have come to the realization that I cannot change my wife, my church, or my kids, to say nothing of the world. Try as I might, I have not been able to manufacture outcomes the way I thought I could, either in my own life or other people's.

If we read the Bible asking first, 'What would Jesus do?' instead of asking 'What has Jesus done?' we’ll miss the good news that alone can set us free.

For the life of the believer, one thing is beautifully and abundantly true: God's chief concern in your suffering is to be with you and be himself for you.

We are not responsible for finding the right formula to combat or unlock our suffering.

Our default faith mode is to trust, above all things, our own ability to create a safe, controllable, predictable world.

I think there is tribalism is a big deal inside of the church, that the church thinks of themselves as a tribe and not a mission.

People who haven't experienced major setbacks sometimes feel that their hurts are somehow less legitimate or real.

Grief, of course, is not something that operates according to a specific time frame, and it seems cold to suggest otherwise. Yet when we do not grasp that God is present in pain, we eventually insist on victory or, worse, blame the sufferer for not "getting over it" fast enough. This is more than a failure to extend compassion; it's an exercise in cruelty.

I think for far too long the Church has concluded that Christians don't need the gospel, it's simple what non-Christian people need in order to be saved.

Being the middle child, I couldn't figure out where I fit in the home. I couldn't figure out whether I was the youngest of the older three or the oldest of the younger three.

As long as I am focusing on the faults of others, then I don't have to face my own.

My struggle isn't believing my performance can earn God's favor; my struggle is believing my performance can keep God's favor

Since Genesis 3 we have been addicted to setting our sights on something, someone, smaller than Jesus.

Spiritual growth is marked by a growing realization of just how much grace you need.

The best evangelists, the best preachers, the best teachers are desperate people.