Billy Graham Quotes - Page 5

There is not one verse of Scripture that indicates you can be a Christian and live any kind of a life you want to. When Christ enters into the human heart, He expects to be Lord and Master. He commands complete surrender.

Faith actually means surrender and commitment to the claims of Christ. It means an acknowledgment of sin and a turning to Christ.

America and Western Europe are on a moneymaking, pleasure-mad spree unparalleled in the history of the world. God is generally ignored or ridiculed. Church members in many cases are only halfhearted Christians. Judgment is coming.

We have been trying to solve every ill of society as though society were made up of regenerate men to whom we had an obligationto speak with Christian advice.

God’s church is a Bible-centered church, and it grows strong under persecution.

Before three thousand people were brought into the church on the day of Pentecost, the disciples had spent fifty days in prayer, fasting, and spiritual travail.

The Bible nowhere teaches that the church will ultimately convert the whole world to Jesus Christ. There has never been a generation in history, nor will there ever be generation, in which the majority of the people will believe in Christ.

Thousands of people have entered churches without discovering a vital experience with Jesus Christ. The substitutes have been handed them in the guise of religious rituals, good works, community effort, or social reform . . .none of which can gain a person a right relationship with God.

There will come a time when people hungering for the truth will seek it where it is supposedly disseminated, such as books and churches, but they will not hear the Word of the Lord. Instead of receiving a message to satisfy their spiritual longings, they will hear a sermon on some current political or social problem, or a sermonette on art and literature. And so they wander from one place to another, going from hope to despair, and eventually giving up.

Unless the church quickly recovers the authoritative biblical message, we may witness the spectacle of millions of Christians going outside the institutional church to find spiritual food.

What right does any church have even attempting to approve of lifestyles or certain acts for which God prescribed the death penalty in the Old Testament?

There are many who sit in some churches week after week, year after year, without hearing the whole Gospel and knowing what it is to be born again. They hear a gospel which is incomplete, and consequently not good news at all.

Statistics indicate that the church is rapidly losing in the population explosion. There are fewer Christians per capita every day.

The church has lost its ability to discipline members who live openly in sin. Consequently, we have lost our witness in the community.

The church is a storehouse of spiritual food whereby the inner man is fed, nourished, and developed into maturity. If it fails, it is not fulfilling its purpose as a church.

It could be said that going to church will not make one a Christian. But . . . refusing to fellowship with believers will not make you one either.

I hope the day will never come when the church abandons the “class meeting” and the prayer service . . .The old-fashioned “testimony” meeting should be revived, for through this medium we can share with others our faith and triumphs as well as our needs and mistakes.

Down through the centuries the church has contributed more than any other single agency in lifting social standards to new heights.

The church isn’t just a particular building or congregation but the spiritual fellowship of all who belong to Jesus Christ. If we belong to Christ, we also belong to each other.

Many churches have molded their programs around the community—not the Word of God.

The Lord did not design the church to cater to people’s needs—the Lord breathed life into the church to proclaim His truths.

It is unbelief that shuts the door to heaven and opens it to hell. It is unbelief that rejects the Word of God and refuses Christ as Savior. It is unbelief that causes men to turn a deaf ear to the Gospel.

When the church begins to entertain the flock and respond to the cult of self—it is diminished to a mere community center.

The fiercest storm is taking place in some of our churches—the unbelief and disobedience of God’s Word.

In our desire to make Christ known and to increase the influence of the church, we are many times prone to think that Christians and the church can be made popular with the unbelieving world. This is a grave mistake on the part of the church.

It is vitally important for local church leaders to keep in touch with the spiritual state of their members, to discuss their level of biblical knowledge, and to teach them how to study God’s Word and pray.

The church is far greater than [a building or denomination]. It includes the whole family of God—that vast unseen fellowship of men and women throughout the ages who belong to Christ. Paul wrote of “God’s household, which is the church of the living God” [1 Timothy 3:15 NIV).

God speaks to us through our conscience. This may be a “still small voice” that will not let us go until we do what we know is right . . .we must never silence that inner voice—[but] check what we think it is saying against the Scriptures.

Conscience is the detective that watches the direction of our steps and decries every conscious transgression.

Conscience is a vigilant eye before which each imagination, thought, and act is held up for either censure or approval . . .There is no greater proof of the existence of a moral law and Lawgiver in the universe than this little light of the soul. It is God’s voice to the inner man.

Do not be content to skim through a chapter [of the Bible] merely to satisfy your conscience. Hide the Word of God in your heart.

God does communicate with those who are willing to obey Him. He penetrates the dark silence with free, life-giving discoveries in nature, the human conscience, Scripture, and the Person of Jesus Christ.

Sometimes it is difficult to differentiate the Christian from the man of the world. In America, for example, churchgoing has become popular, but churchgoing may not necessarily be accompanied by genuine depth in prayer and Bible study or a change in lifestyle.

Satan] invades the Sunday school, the Bible class, and even the pulpit. He even invades the church under cover of an orthodox vocabulary, emptying sacred terms of their biblical sense.

I am afraid the church is trying to speak out on too many issues that really do not concern the church. There are certain issues we know to be wrong—racial injustice, crime, gambling, dishonesty, pornography. On these matters we must thunder forth as the prophets of God.

In some churches today and on some religious television programs, we see the attempt to make Christianity popular and pleasant. We have taken the cross away and substituted cushions.

In thousands of churches [people] are led astray theologically. Thus spiritually and morally they are drifting aimlessly, without compass or guide.

The church in America has been deeply infiltrated by the “world,” and in the process it is beginning to copy and resemble the world in many of its activities.

Preaching the whole council of God involves man’s environment and physical being as well as his soul. There is no doubt that the church is in danger of getting off the main track and getting lost.

God did not ordain that the church should drift aimlessly in the seas of uncertainty without compass, captain, or crew.

The church should be setting the pace. The church should be taking its proper place of leadership in the nation . . .God help the church to wake up!

The church holds the key to revival. It is within our grasp.

The converted person will love the good he once hated, and hate the sin he once loved.

To be a Christian is not a pious pose. It is not a long list of restrictions. Christianity flings open the windows to the real joy of living. Those who have been truly converted to Jesus Christ know the meaning of abundant living.

In order to get to heaven, Jesus said that you must be converted. I didn’t say it—Jesus said it!

There are thousands of people who have had some form of emotional experience that they refer to as conversion but who have never been truly converted to Christ. Christ demands a change in the way you live—and if your life does not conform to your experience, then you have every reason to doubt your experience!

It is a comfort to hear the words of God in times of stress.

God doesn’t comfort us to make us comfortable, but to make us comforters.

We should go to no place that we would not go in His Presence. But He is not with us just to judge or condemn us; He is near to comfort, protect, guide, encourage, strengthen, cleanse, and help.

There are countless opportunities to comfort others, not only in the loss of a loved one, but also in the daily distress that so often creeps into our lives.

Because tragedy happened to you, it gives you a greater sense of oneness with others who experience tragedy. Because we have been comforted through the Word of God, we in turn may be able to comfort others.

When we are a comfort and encouragement to others, we are sometimes surprised at how it comes back to us many times over.

Humanity wants comfort in its sorrow, light in its darkness, peace in its turmoil, rest in its weariness, and healing in its sickness and diseases: The Gospel gives all of this to us.

If the church is acceptable to this present ageand is not suffering reproach, then it is not the true church that our Lord founded.

The church should not reflect pop culture but portray godly attributes. The church should not seek pleasures but seek after God.

The church is blending into the community by embracing what the world enjoys and, in turn, bringing inside the church the world’s ideas and interests.

Christ’s church is a place to grow people up in the Lord, not to enhance our leisure time.

Church is not for pretenders and performers. Church is a place for pastors to preach principles of the faith in order to prepare believers to face the storms of life on the stage of an unbelieving world.

The church is in turmoil today. The church is not to reflect the world but to be a portrait of Jesus Christ.

No church is perfect, but don’t let that discourage you. Someone has said that if you ever find one that is, it will stop being perfect the minute you join!

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