Quotes by Pastors - Page 143

We want a money-back guarantee before we take a step of obedience, but that eliminates faith from the equation. Sometimes we need to take a flying leap of faith.We need to step into the conflict without knowing if we can resolve it. We need to share our faith without knowing how our friends will react to it. We need to pray for a miracle without knowing how God will answer. We need to put ourselves in a situation that activates a spiritual gift we've never exercised before. And we need to go after a dream that is destined to fail without divine intervention.If we want to discover new lands, we've got to lose sight of the shore. We've got to leave the Land of Familiarity behind. We've got to sail past the predictable. And when we do, we develop a spiritual hunger for the unprecedented and lose our appetite for the habitual. We also get a taste of God's favor.
Mark Batterson
...faith is acting as if God has already answered. And acting as if God has answered means acting on our prayers...
Mark Batterson
Throwing down your staff is letting go and letting God. And that's counterintuitive for those of us who are control freaks. As our executive pastor Joel Schmidgall likes to say, "You can have faith or you can have control, but you cannot have both." If you want God to do something off the chart, you have to take your hands off the controls.
Mark Batterson
When it comes to loving people, let's not allow it to be something we do on the side. Let's make it a lifestyle. Whether we are at the gas station, picking up groceries, even waiting to get our car repaired, there is always an open opportunity to love someone in need.
Jarrid Wilson
If you let fear dictate your decisions, you will live defensively, reactively, cautiously. Living by faith is playing offense with your life.
Mark Batterson
We all want to spend eternity with God. We just don't want to spend time with Him. We stand and stare from a distance, satisfied with superficiality. We Facebook more than we seek His face. We text more than we study The Text. And our eyes aren't fixed on Jesus. They're fixed on our iPhones and iPads - emphasis on "i." Then we wonder why God feels so distant. It's because we're hugging the rim. We wonder why we're bored with our faith. It's because we're holding out.We want joy without sacrifice.We want character without suffering.We want success without failure.We want gain without pain.We want a testimony without the test.We want it all without going all out for it.
Mark Batterson
God will never tempt you. It's not in His nature. In fact, He promises to provide an escape route for every tempting situation. But I can promise you this: God will test your faith. And those tests won't get easier. They will get progressively harder as the stakes get higher. And those tests will undoubtedly revolve around what is most important to you...God will test you to make sure your identity and your security are found in the cross of Jesus Christ. And God will go after anything you trust in more than Him until you put it on the altar.
Mark Batterson
In our process of spiritual maturity, our faith needs to attain bigger dimensions
Sunday Adelaja
We need to mature in the knowledge of God and His word, and then our faith will grow as well
Sunday Adelaja
We need to grow from faith to faith so that we can have victory over the world
Sunday Adelaja
The mindset of a Christian should be based on his faith that God can change the circumstances in His life
Sunday Adelaja
Only people who have solid faith overcome the world
Sunday Adelaja
It is time to get strengthened in faith and know that the blessings of God are stronger than the devil’s attack
Sunday Adelaja
God is fond of you. If He had a wallet, your photo would be in it. If He had a refrigerator, your picture would be on it. He sends you flowers every spring and a sunrise every morning. Face it, friend, He's crazy about you.
Max Lucado
We see that every victory in our life depends on our faith
Sunday Adelaja
Faith without any actions in accordance with God’s will is a dead faith
Sunday Adelaja
Only through our faith do we allow Him to move in our lives
Sunday Adelaja
Only absolute and unshakable faith in God can make us rule over the world
Sunday Adelaja
Only our faith will allow God to prepare the table in front our enemies
Sunday Adelaja
We cannot lose the battle, if we release our faith knowing that God can do a miracle
Sunday Adelaja
How confident we are in our faith is how victorious we will be
Sunday Adelaja
Sometimes we don’t have enough faith to do big things, it is immature faith
Sunday Adelaja
If you don’t have the faith in principles and you don’t believe in the absolutism of the truth then you won’t be able achieve anything in life.
Sunday Adelaja
To be sentenced to jail because of your faith in God is to let you know the degree of darkness in that particular society
Sunday Adelaja
Numbers 12: 6 - 8When there is a prophet among you, I, the Lord, reveal myself to them in visions, I speak to them in dreams. But this is not true of my servant Moses; he is faithful in all my house. With him I speak face to face, clearly and not in riddles; he sees the form of the Lord.So, unless you're Moses, this verse makes it obvious that God will not always speak clearly. Often he speaks softly and in riddles. He will reveal something supernaturally to us, but it's always something we need to pay close attention to. We usually need to then carefully interpret and apply what we hear. We are convinced that God's motivation behind this - as with all he does - is to draw us into relationship.
Mike Pilavachi
When God blesses you financially, don't raise your standard of living. Raise your standard of giving.
Mark Batterson
If you go to Jesus to get a new personality, Lewis says, you still haven't really gone to Jesus. Your real self will not come out as long as you are looking for it; it will only emerge when you're looking for Him.
Timothy J. Keller
God goes ahead of a man who walks by faith, that is the beauty of faith
Sunday Adelaja
When you know your purpose in life, then by faith you know God will enable you to do it
Sunday Adelaja
It is only through faith that you will receive the patience, obedience, and humility to be submissive
Sunday Adelaja
By faith you can work miracles and perform heroic deeds
Sunday Adelaja
By faith we will become strong and withstand the spiritual battle warring against us
Sunday Adelaja
Faith is a necessary prerequisite for a courageous act
Sunday Adelaja
Obedience and submission requires faith
Sunday Adelaja
There is a special joy connected to your faith
Sunday Adelaja
You move gropingly, relying on your faith and act by your intuition
Sunday Adelaja
Only the people who are working the victory by faith will experience the joy of harvest
Sunday Adelaja
Do not pay attention to those who are trying to stop or hinder you
Sunday Adelaja
Faith with work yields fulfillment
Sunday Adelaja
David is called a man after God's heart. This can be a little confusing when you get into his story, because he's guilty of adultery and murder and cover-up. He's a train wreck as a husband, and he's worse as a dad. But his heart belongs to God. His whole life is immersed in the presence and story of God. What lights him up is to serve God and love God, and when he mess up—and he does—he repents and wants to get right with God again.
John Ortberg
Let your faith be in the Lord Jesus and not in your strength, to fight against ungodliness and injustice in the society.
Sunday Adelaja
If you are faithful in little things, then you will be given a bigger commitment.
Sunday Adelaja
People who believe more must not be hard upon those believe less. Why? Because faith, ultimately, is not a virtue; it's a gift. If you want to believe but can't, stop looking inside. Go to Jesus and say, "help me believe." Go to him and say, "So you're the one who gives faith. I've been trying to work it out by reasoning, and thinking, and meditating, and going to church in hopes that a sermon will move me. I've been trying to get faith by myself. Now I see that you are the source of faith. Please, give it to me. " If you do that, you'll find that Jesus has been seeking you. He is the author of faith, the provider of faith, and the object of faith. (from King's Cross)
Timothy Keller
I made the fearful decision to head to Sydney, Australia, to study the Bible. My calling, my wife, Laura, my church, my passion—all were behind the scariest door of all time. Since that day, this remains exactly true: Fear never leaves. But the way we handle it can always change.
Carl Lentz
I still find my corrupt heart longing for tomorrow's bread. I can make a good argument to the Lord about how effective I can be if He would supply me with enough advance funds. It's a little frightening to pray for TODAY's bread. That means I must pray again for tomorrow and believe again for tomorrow. My greedy heart is willing to be corrupted by a little bit of riches so that I see my warehouse full of loaves. I can make a good argument about how God won’t have to be bothered with me every day if He would only advance me about ten years worth of bread.
Gayle D. Erwin
In the beginning, the call of God was not propositional. It was experiential. (p. 10)
Robin R. Meyers
The average man has no central core of moral assurance, no spring within his breast, no inner strength to place him above the need for repeated psychological shots to give him the courage to go on living. He has become a parasite on the world, drawing his life from his environment, unable to live a day apart from the stimulation which society affords him.
A.W. Tozer
So it goes for those of us who live in a cul-de-sac, where babies are brought home from the hospital and watched over, where hearts stop and feet slip, where we wonder if there is a hidden road that leads somewhere.We believe and we doubt. Believing and doubting share the same inevitability, but they are not equal. They cannot lay the same claim on our allegiance. They do not share the same power.If there are places beyond the cul-de-sac, doubt cannot take us there.
John Ortberg
Deep, contended joy comes from a place of complete security and confidence [in God] - even in the midst of trial.
Charles R. Swindoll
If you allow it, [suffering] can be the means by which God brings you His greatest blessings.
Charles R. Swindoll
Spiritual victory is not something you earn - it is something you accept. The Christian life is not so much about what you have done - it's about what Christ has done. It's not so much about how strong you are - it's about how strong God is.
Alan D. Wright
Stories are verbal acts of hospitality.
Eugene H. Peterson
Waiting is an exercise of faith that demonstrates the condition of our hearts. Waiting on God is an act of faith. And faith is what separates the men from the boys.
Steve Farrar
In all my travels, I've never seen a country's population more determined to forgive, and to build and succeed than in Rwanda.
Rick Warren
Anti-intellectualism remains strongly entrenched in many parts of the church, but it is grounded in fear, not in faith. (p. 19)
Robin R. Meyers
Take faith, for example. For many people in our world, the opposite of faith is doubt. The goal, then, within this understanding, is to eliminate doubt. But faith and doubt aren't opposites. Doubt is often a sign that your faith has a pulse, that it's alive and well and exploring and searching. Faith and doubt aren't opposites, they are, it turns out, excellent dance partners.
Rob Bell
Faith is always supposed to make it harder, not easier, to ignore the plight of our sisters and brothers. (p. 165)
Robin R. Meyers
Someone has said,”Education is going from an unconscious to conscious awareness of one’s ignorance.”..No one has a corner on wisdom. All the name-dropping in the world does not heighten the significance of our character. If anything, it reduces it. Our acute need is to cultivate a willingness to learn and to remain teachable.
Charles R. Swindoll
If the church is to survive as a place where head and heart are equal partners in faith, then we will need to commit ourselves once again not to the worship of Christ, but to the imitation of Jesus. His invitation was not to believe, but to follow. (p. 145)
Robin R. Meyers
...the ongoing suspicion that scientific discoveries or rigorous biblical scholarship will undermine faith is a tacit admission that faith is threatened by knowledge, because it is ultimately constructed on weak or faulty assumptions and, like the proverbial house of cards, needs to be "protected" from collapsing. (p. 21)
Robin R. Meyers