Top 211 Quotes & Sayings by Vance Havner - Page 2

A picture of Christ was hung in the back of a pulpit. When the minister rose to speak one Sunday morning, a little boy asked his mother, 'Mother, who is that man who stands so we can't see Jesus?'

We are suffering from a believism that never has believed, and a receivism that never has received, and it leads to deceivism.

No nation can last long when it stops praying and takes up playing.

God's deepest secrets often miss the wise and prudent and are revealed unto babes. We say, "Children, be like your parents." Jesus said, "Parents, be like your children."

When a man makes alliance with the Almighty, giants look like grasshoppers.

One man with a genuine experience with God is worth more than a library full of arguments.

There was a time when ministers spoke forthrightly and named things. We don't name anything anymore. Finney had a sermon on How to Preach so as to Convert Nobody. He said 'Preach on sin but never mention any of the sins of your congregation - that will do it.'

Too much preaching nowadays pats the back and tickles the ear, but does not get under the skin. There is no conviction and therefore no conversion. I am thinking not only of the ministry of reproof and rebuke but also of the message of inspiration, of encouragement, of comfort. People go out of church at noon with the depths unstirred, the heart untouched, the conscience unpricked.

Men love everything but righteousness and fear everything but God.

The thermometer of a church is its prayer meeting.

Jesus Christ demands more complete allegiance than any dictator who ever lived. The difference is, He has a right to it.

It is one thing to say Jesus is all you want; until He is all you have and you discover He is all you ever needed.

When God's people are removed from this earth, you might as well try to dam up Niagara Falls with toothpicks as to stem the flood of lawlessness that will engulf mankind. Thank God for the restraining Spirit today!

The same church members who yell like Comanche Indians at a ball game on Saturday sit like wooden Indians in church on Sunday.

The world does not hate its own. It does hate our Lord. It hates His followers. Where do you belong in this lineup?

If you lack knowledge, go to school. If you lack wisdom, get on your knees.

Popularity has slain more prophets of God than persecution ever did.

The real test of your Christianity is not how pious you look at the Lord's table on Sunday, but how you act at the breakfast table at home. If it takes two cups of coffee to make you fit to live with, you had better go to the mourner's bench.

Some missionaries bound for Africa were laughed at by the boat captain. 'You'll only die over there,' he said. But a missionary replied, 'Captain, we died before we started.'

Some preachers ought to put more fire into their sermons or more sermons into the fire.

It is not that God is stingy and must be coaxed, for He "giveth liberally and upbraideth not." It is that we ourselves are so shallow and sinful that we need to tarry before Him until our restless natures can be stilled and the clamor of outside voices be deadened so that we can hear His voice. Such a state is not easily reached, and the men God uses have paid a price in wrestlings and prevailing prayer. But it is such men who rise from their knees confident of His power and go forth to speak with authority.

The church is so subnormal that if it ever got back to the New Testament normal it would seem to people to be abnormal.

What our Lord said about cross-bearing and obedience is not in fine type. It is in bold print on the face of the contract.

We may never be martyrs but we can die to self, to sin, to the world, to our plans and ambitions. That is the significance of baptism; we died with Christ and rose to new life.

Our Lord approved neither idol worship or idle worship but ideal worship in Spirit and truth.

I would just as soon listen to a gangster lecture on honesty as watch Hollywood portray the Bible.

We are challenged these days, but not changed; convicted, but not converted. We hear, but do not; and thereby we deceive ourselves.

Where God guides He provides. He is not responsible for expenses not on His schedule. He does not foot the bill when we leave His itinerary.

I preach on specific sins because people are not convicted by sermons on sin in general. It was when our Lord said to the Samaritan woman, 'Go call thy husband...' (John 4:16), that she really faced up to her sinfulness.

Worse than blind leaders of the blind are bland leaders of the bland.

There are many who say they want to be victorious Christians, but few are willing to endure the discipline necessary to make one a good solider of Jesus Christ. There is a prize to possess, but before we possess it there is a price to be paid, and few will pay it.

We've learned how to lengthen life, but we don't know how to deepen it.

Nothing is needed so much as a holy indignation against sin. It is true that there is not enough love for God, and one sign of it is that there is not enough hatred for sin.

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

Most church members live so far below the standard, you would have to backslide to be in fellowship with them.

There never has been a culture since this world began in which a New Testament Christian could feel at home.

Real revival does not begin with joyous singing. It begins with conviction and repentance on the part of Christians.

The preacher who jests and jokes with his people all week will soon find that he cannot stand in his pulpit on Sunday with power to reprove, rebuke and exhort. He may be the life of the party but it will be the death of the prophet.

In other days people chose a church on the basis of their doctrinal convictions. Now, lacking doctrinal convictions, they choose for social reasons.

Jesus is all we have; he is all we need and all we want. We are shipwrecked on God and stranded on omnipotence!

We have suffered from the preaching of cheap grace. Grace is free, but it is not cheap. People will take anything that is free, but they are not interested in discipleship. They will take Christ as Savior but not as Lord.

Somehow the idea has gotten around that it is unchristian to take a stand against heresy. Some of us need to read the New Testament again.

We are not to be isolated but insulated, moving in the midst of evil but untouched by it.

What gives the Word of God authority is simply the fact that it is the word of God!

More Bibles are bought and fewer read than any other book.

Adam tried to hide behind the trees in the garden. There is only one tree that can hide us from Him and that is the tree of the cross.

There is no devil in the first two chapters of the Bible and no devil in the last two chapters. Thank God for a book that disposes of the devil!

A wife who is 85 percent faithful to her husband is not faithful at all. There is no such thing as part-time loyalty to Jesus Christ.

Civilization today reminds me of an ape with a blowtorch playing in a room full of dynamite. It looks like the monkeys are about to operate the zoo, and the inmates are taking over the asylum.

To some Christianity is an argument. To many it is a performance. To a few, it is experience.

I have often been reminded of the wild duck that came down on migration into a barnyard and liked it so well that he stayed there. In the fall his erstwhile companions passed overhead and his first impulse was to rise and join them, but he had fed too well and could rise no higher than the eaves of the barn. The day came when his old fellow travelers could pass overhead without his even hearing their call. I have seen men and women who once mounted up with wings like eagles but are now content to live in the barnyard of this world.

Satan does some of his worst work on exhausted Christians when nerves are frayed and the mind is faint.

If you stand on the Word, you do not stand with the world.

A soft and sheltered Christianity, afraid to be lean and lone, unwilling to face the storms and brave the heights, will end up fat and foul in the cages of conformity.

If the devil cannot keep you from being saved, if next he fails to make you backslide, then he undertakes to keep you just an average Christian. Here he succeeds with most believers.

People get so used to the dark that they think it is growing brighter.

We need men of the cross, with the message of the cross, bearing the marks of the cross.

If you can't pray as you want to, pray as you can. God knows what you mean.

You can't preach it like it is if you don't believe it like it was.

Nobody in pulpit or pew needs a revival more than a bitter-spirited fundamentalist with his dispensations right and his disposition wrong.