Top 192 Quotes & Sayings by Tony Evans - Page 2

Religious programs, activities have often blurred and sidelined the centrality of the cross - causing religion to be empty of its core.

If the church adopts a school, and the school has kids, and the kids have parents, well, then you've reconnected the hub of a community, because you've brought together its three most fundamental institutions - church, schools, and family.

In the urban community, the church doesn't just take people to Heaven; it feeds, clothes, and houses them. It teaches them how to read and gets them jobs. The church should be doing all that. What the government should be doing is freeing up the church and supporting the church, as long as it is providing social services.

We need a right view of the cross. It is both a historical event that can take us to Heaven and a current event that can bring Heaven to bear on Earth.

We don't apologize for who we are. We do what we do as Christians. Our faith isn't hidden. There should never be a separation between God and good works.

To carry our cross is to have such a commitment and identify with Jesus Christ and what He accomplished that I am willing to suffer the repercussions to that identification.

In Scripture, a name often connotes purpose, authority, makeup, and character. In fact, a person's name is frequently seen as an equivalent of that person.

We're going to have to become very aggressive in addressing justice issues that have to do with fairness and doing that which is equitable and honoring to God.

The separation of church and state is a suburban, not an urban, issue.

I must confess that it is a lot easier for me as a pastor to preach about prayer than to spend that same amount of time engaged in it.

The cross is to be our point of reference for every area of our lives all the time.

A name is so important in biblical settings that Scripture frequently mentions God Himself changing someone's name to reflect a new reality. Abram, which means 'exalted father,' was changed to Abraham, meaning 'father of a multitude.'

The goal was not only to teach people the Bible and minister to people personally and spiritually, but also to build a church to be community focused.

Gone must be the days of only pointing fingers at others to fix what they may never fix. Our nation's ills are not merely the result of corruption or racism, although these are evil. Our troubles can also be traced directly to ineffective Christians.

Churches need to be intentional about reaching the next generation by creating templates for young people to see that there is a stepping stone for leadership in this church.

People from different backgrounds may not have natural affinity, but when the Word of God is treated right and the Holy Spirit is allowed to engage, it can bring together things, people, backgrounds, histories, races, colors, and cultures and hold them together in a way that natural affinity may not be able to do.

America was never officially a Christian nation, since neither Jesus Christ nor the Bible are mentioned in the Constitution or the Declaration of Independence. But there's no denying the influence Christianity has had on our country.

As God is continually being marginalized and dismissed in the culture, you will continue to see evil proliferate.

If people are taught wrong, raised wrong, or haven't taken the Bible seriously enough, then they can go into academic error, emotional error, psychological error.

If you're not married, and your boyfriend is putting his hands on you, you know he ain't the one, because you know that will continue.

In order to impact our society, we need to first model unity in the church.

I used to be one of those students who needed to see something bigger, and God brought people into my life who gave me a bigger vision than the circumstances that surrounded me.

We've got to move from membership to discipleship to being full-time Christians, not part-time saints. That means operating comprehensively on the value system of Heaven as we move about in history.

Technology has changed how people communicate, how people relate, the speed at which this takes place. To ignore that, in the name of preaching the Word, is to forget that we're to preach the Word to people.

Whenever you define family as anything other than a man and a woman married together, you have just introduced an ethical nightmare.

Ladies, you do not have to submit yourself to any man abusing you.

Anything you can do that connects believers with one another engages the church to go the next level, which keeps the pastor from being burnt out, which therefore keeps him in the ministry.

We can never get around to being one nation under God if we can't even get around to being one Church under God.

The more people marginalize the true God of the Bible, the more chaotic things become.

The Bible is pregnant with politics. You cannot read the Bible from Genesis through Revelation and go through too many chapters that are not involving politics.

Whenever you exclude God and the value system that He represents out of the equation of a life, of a family, or a culture, you create a spiritual vacuum. Nature abhors a vacuum. It must be filled with something.

The problem is that God is being dismissed from the culture, and that vacuum is allowing, or is the basis for, the deterioration of society. That is because Christians have not kept Him in the center of the culture.

The church is the only mechanism for mass mobilization. That's why the civil rights movement came out of the church.

Until we take seriously God's definition of the church and stop just 'having church,' we will not see transformation in our society.

Christians historically have believed wrong on issues. Take slavery: they believed wrong on that issue for generations, and it had, just, repercussions that were staggeringly negative for our culture and my community. So it is possible to be Christian and to believe wrongly and practice wrongly.

The Church and only the Church has been given the keys to the kingdom, so we have unique access to God that nobody else has.

Although all serious Christians recognize the importance that the Bible places on prayer, most fall short when it comes to doing it.

It is in following Christ as our captain that we can win in our personal lives, families, churches, and communities.

The Church has failed to be a positive influence for good in our nation and our world.

Jesus didn't wait until we got better to die for us. He died when we were in our most unlovely state. The person who doesn't deserve love actually needs love more, not less. If you know someone unworthy of love, that's great! You now have a chance to emulate Christ, because the essence of His love is unconditional.

The Proverbs 31 woman is not the model of a perfect woman. She is the model of a committed woman under God.

When you carry the WEIGHT of yesterday, it will ruin the POWER of today and the PROGRESS of tomorrow.

God is the source. Everything else is a resource.

Success is not what you have done compared to what others have done. Success is what you have done compared to what you were supposed to do.

The reason so many believers are struggling is that we have voted in the past asking God to bless our plans rather than casting our votes based on seeking His agenda. We want God to sign off on our decisions rather than us following His.

A kingdom man is the kind of man that when his feet hit the floor each morning the devil says, "Oh crap, he's up!"

God doesn't need a lot to do a lot. All David had was five stones. And all David used was one.

Sometimes God lets you hit rock bottom so that you will discover He is the Rock at the bottom.

Trials are to see if you believe what you say you believe.

Peace doesn't mean that you will not have problems. Peace means that your problems will not have you.

It often takes the darkness of a storm to show us the light of God's presence.

Don't magnify your problems, magnify your God...he's got you covered.

The Bible is the voice of God in print.

Sometimes God lets you be in a situation that only He can fix so that you can see that He is the One who fixes it. Rest. He's got it.

You cannot change the way you feel until you change the way you think because your thoughts will determine the way you feel.

Don't worry about locating your purpose. If you are seeking after God, your purpose will locate you.

If you have faith, you can do what others can't do, because you can see what others can't see.

The bottom line is pray. If you’re tired, sick, emotionally overwhelmed—pray. If you’re on cloud nine and life seems perfect—pray. If you lack direction—pray. If you doubt that prayer makes any difference—pray. If the circumstances of your life are out of your control—pray. If the circumstances of your life seem well within you’re your control—pray even harder. Whatever you do—pray.

God's timing is always perfect. Trust His delays. He's got you.

Faith is not about how much you believe in what you believe. Faith is about believing that the One you believe in is believable.