Top 211 Quotes & Sayings by Vance Havner

Sometimes your medicine bottle has on it, 'Shake well before using.' That is what God has to do with some of His people. He has to shake them well before they are ever usable.

I'm tired of hearing sin called sickness and alcoholism a disease. It is the only disease I know of that we're spending hundreds of millions of dollars a year to spread.

Doing leads more surely to talking than talking to doing.

You haven't lost anything when you know were it is. Death can hide but not divide.

The devil will let a preacher prepare a sermon if it will keep him from preparing himself.

It would not be better if things happened to men just as they wish.

The vision must be followed by the venture. It is not enough to stare up the steps - we must step up the stairs.

If they had a social gospel in the days of the prodigal son, somebody would have given him a bed and a sandwich and he never would have gone home.

Many people are in a rut and a rut is nothing but a grave - with both ends kicked out.

Too many church services start at eleven sharp and end at twelve dull.

It is one of the ironies of the ministry that the very man who works in God's name is often hardest put to find time for God. The parents of Jesus lost Him at church, and they were not the last ones to lose Him there.

Our efficiency without God's sufficiency is only a deficiency.

A preacher should have the mind of a scholar, the heart of a child, and the hide of a rhinoceros. His problem is how to toughen his hide without hardening his heart.

At the rate America is decaying morally, we shall have to change our national symbol from an eagle to a vulture.

The Word of God is either absolute or obsolete.

We are not going to move this world by criticism of it nor conformity to it, but by the combustion within it of lives ignited by the Spirit of God.

People used to blush when they were ashamed. Now they are ashamed if they blush. Modesty has disappeared and a brazen generation with no fear of God before its eyes mocks at sin. We are so fond of being called tolerant and broadminded that we wink at sin when we ought to weep.

Too many are willing to sit at God’s table, but not work in his field.

I remember when the Titanic sank in 1912, it was the ship that was supposed to be unsinkable. The only thing it ever did was sink. When it took off from England, all kinds of passengers were aboard - millionaires, celebrities, people of moderate means, and poor folks down in the steerage. But a few hours later when they put the list in the Cunard office in New York, it carried only two categories - lost and saved. Grim tragedy had leveled all distinctions.

What we love usually manages to get into our conversation. What is down in the well of the heart will come up in the bucket of the speech.

Let it never be forgotten that, although we may do nothing about the Word we hear, the Word will do something to us. The same sun melts ice and hardens clay, and the Word of God humbles or hardens the human heart.

The gospel is for lifeboats, not showboats, and a man must make up his mind which boat he is going to operate.

Don't ever come to church without coming as though it were the first time, as though it could be the best time, and as though it could be the last time.

We have always needed old people to keep things from going too fast and young people to keep them from going too slow. Youth has fire and age has light and we need both.

Our Lord sent His disciples out as sheep among wolves; now the wolves are being invited into the sheepfold.

The devil is not fighting religion. He´s too smart for that. He is producing a counterfeit Christianity, so much like the real one that good Christians are afraid to speak out against it.

The temple of truth has never suffered so much from woodpeckers on the outside as from termites within.

God judges what we tolerate as well as what we practice. Too often we put up with things we ought to put out.

Too many Christians live their Christian lives inside their heads; it never gets out through hands and feet and lips.

The preacher who is concerned with gaining a reputation, rising in his profession, is always in bondage. The itch for bigness is a dangerous thing. It has made a castaway of many a man whom God once richly blessed. A man should desire to be neither larger nor smaller than pleases God. Better than that, he should not bother at all about how large or how small but rather how faithful he shall be.

God isn't a talent scout looking for someone who is "good enough" or "strong enough." He is looking for someone with a heart set on Him, and He will do the rest.

God is on the lookout today for a man who will be quiet enough to get a message from Him, brave enough to preach it, and honest enough to live it.

Christians, like snowflakes, are frail, but when they stick together they can stop traffic.

The devil is not fighting religion. He's too smart for that. He is producing a counterfeit Christianity, so much like the real one that good Christians are afraid to speak out against it. We are plainly told in the Scriptures that in the last days men will not endure sound doctrine and will depart from the faith and heap to themselves teachers to tickle their ears. We live in an epidemic of this itch, and popular preachers have developed “ear-tickling” into a fine art.

Salvation is a helmet, not a nightcap.

Salt seasons, purifies, preserves. But somebody ought to remind us that salt also irritates. Real living Christianity rubs this world the wrong way.

The middle of the road is a poor place to walk. It is a poor place to drive. It is a poor place to live.

God has a place and purpose for you, somewhere for you to be and something for you to do. You never will be happy elsewhere, nor can you please God anywhere but there.

Some ministers preach from notes and some don't. They have argued about it for centuries. Let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind. Two Welsh preachers were on their way to a meeting. One noticed that the other carried written outlines. 'Ah,' he remonstrated, 'you cannot carry fire on paper.' 'True,' replied his companion, 'but you can use paper to start a fire!'

Where are the marks of the cross in your life? Are there any points of identification with your Lord? Alas, too many Christians wear medals but carry no scars.

Sometimes your medicine bottle has on it, "shake well before using." That is what God has to do with some of His people. He has to shake them well before they are ever usable.

No man can be a Christian by knowingly and willfully taking Christ on the installment plan, as Savior now, and Lord later.

Many people have the right aim in life, they just never get around to pulling the trigger. The vision must be followed by the venture. It is not enough to stare up the steps -- we must step up the stairs.

There is a trend today that would put a new robe on the prodigal son while he is still feeding hogs. Some would put the ring on his finger while he still in the pigsty. Others would paint the pigsty and advocate bigger and better hog pens.

Abraham did not know where he was going immediately, but he knew where he was going ultimately. He did not know the Whither but he knew the Whom. He believed God, and, being sure of his destiny, he did not worry about his destination.

If you see a Bible that is falling apart, it probably belongs to someone who isn't!

If you are a Christian, you are not a citizen of this world trying to get to heaven; you are a citizen of heaven making your way through this world.

Satan is not fighting churches; he is joining them. He does more harm by sowing tares than by pulling up wheat. He accomplishes more by imitation than by outright opposition.

Paul was not ignorant of Satan's devices, but we are not so wise. Among his most successful devices today are these: exalting tolerance above truth; emphasizing the head more than the heart; making size more important than sort; stressing the positive to the neglect of the negative; putting happiness above holiness; majoring on this world instead of the next.

If you are what you've always been, you are not a Christian. A Christian is a new creation.

The primary qualification for a missionary is not love for souls, as we so often hear, but love for Christ.

We need a dedicated minority who, like the apostles of old, are willing to be called the scum of the earth and a spectacle to the world for the scandal of the cross.

We are fighting the greatest battle of all time with the most untrained army on earth. If strict discipline is necessary in art and athletics, how can we expect to be advanced Christians and stay in kindergarten?

When the Lord's white sheep become dirty gray, all black sheep feel more comfortable.

He who waits on God loses no time.

What we live is what we believe. Everything else is just so much religious talk.

It is not our business to make the message acceptable, but to make it available. We are not to see that they like it, but that they get it.

The tragedy of today is that the situation is desperate but the saints are not.

When I pastored a country church, a farmer didn't like the sermons I preached on hell. He said, Preach about the meek and lowly Jesus. I said, That's where I got my information about hell.

The last word of our Lord to the church was not the Great Commission. The last thing He said to the church was 'Repent.' He said that to five out of seven.