Philip Yancey quotes: top famous quotes and sayings by Philip Yancey

Top Philip Yancey Quotes

Browse top 86 most favorite famous quotes and sayings by Philip Yancey.

Favorite Philip Yancey Quotes

1. "God does not seem impressed by size or power or wealth. Faith is what he wants, and the heroes who emerge are heroes of faith, not strength or wealth." ~ Philip Yancey

2. "We grow up hungry for love, and in ways so deep as to remain unexpressed we long for our Maker to love us." ~ Philip Yancey

3. "Parents learn the uses of power and its limits. They can insist on certain outward behavior but cannot change inner attitudes. They can require obedience but not goodness - and certainly not love." ~ Philip Yancey

4. "As I look around on Sunday morning at the people populating the pews, I see the risk that God has assumed. For whatever reason, God now reveals himself in the world not through a pillar of smoke and fire, not even through the physical body of his Son in Galilee, but through the mongrel collection that comprises my local church and every other such gathering in God's name. (p. 68, Church: Why Bother?)" ~ Philip Yancey

5. "God reproduces and lives out His image in millions of ordinary people like us. It is a supreme mystery. We are called to bear that image as a Body because any one of us taken individually would present an incomplete image, one partly false and always distorted, like a single glass chip hacked from a mirror. But collectively, in all our diversity, we can come together as a community of believers to restore the image of God in the world. (In His Image, Philip Yancey and Dr. Paul Brand, p. 40)" ~ Philip Yancey

6. "God wants us to choose to love him freely, even when that choice involves pain, because we are committed to him, not to our own good feelings and rewards. He wants us to cleave to him, as Job did, even when we have every reason to deny him hotly. That, I believe, is the central message of Job. Satan had taunted God with the accusation that humans are not truly free. Was Job being faithful simply because God had allowed him a prosperous life? Job's fiery trials proved the answer beyond doubt. Job clung to God's justice when he was the best example in history of God's apparent injustice. He did not seek the Giver because of his gifts; when all gifts were removed he still sought the Giver." ~ Philip Yancey

7. "Grace is the most perplexing, powerful force in the universe, and, I believe, the only hope for our twisted, violent planet." ~ Philip Yancey

8. "Grace is free only because the giver himself has borne the cost." ~ Philip Yancey

9. "Faith means believing in advance what will only make sense in reverse." ~ Philip Yancey

10. "Politics deals with externals: borders, wealth, crimes. Authentic forgiveness deals with the evil in a persons heart, something for which politics has no cure. Virulent evil (racism, ethnic hatred) spreads through society like an airborne disease, one cough infects a whole busload. When moments of grace do occur, the world must pause, fall silent, and acknowledge that indeed forgiveness offers a kind of cure.There will be no escape from wars, from hunger, from misery, from rancid discrimination, from denial of human rights, if our hearts aren't changed." ~ Philip Yancey

11. "I fell in love. It felt exactly like a fall, a head-over-heels tumble into a state of unbearable lightness. The earth tilted on its axis. I did not believe in romantic love at the time, thinking it a human construct, an invention of fourteenth century Italian poets. I was as unprepared for love as I had been for goodness and beauty. Suddenly, my heart seemed swollen, too large for my chest." ~ Philip Yancey

12. "Death, decay, entropy, and destruction are the true suspensions of God's laws; miracles are the early glimpses of restoration." ~ Philip Yancey

13. "[Jesus] invoked a different kind of power: love, not coercion." ~ Philip Yancey

14. "Life with God is an individual matter, and general formulas do not easily apply." ~ Philip Yancey

15. "The problem of pain meets its match in the scandal of grace." ~ Philip Yancey

16. "Whenever faith seems an entitlement, or a measuring rod, we cast our lots with the Pharisees and grace softly slips away." ~ Philip Yancey

17. "We whine about things we have little control over; we lament what we believe ought to be changed." ~ Philip Yancey

18. "On a small scale, person-to-person, Jesus encountered the kinds of suffering common to all of us. And how did he respond? Avoiding philosophical theories and theological lessons, he reached out with healing and compassion. He forgave sin, healed the afflicted, cast out evil, and even overcame death." ~ Philip Yancey

19. "Jesus gave us a model for the work of the church at the Last Supper. While his disciples kept proposing more organization - Hey, let's elect officers, establish hierarchy, set standards of professionalism - Jesus quietly picked up a towel and basin of water and began to wash their feet." ~ Philip Yancey

20. "Nature was one of the key forces that brought me back to God, for I wanted to know the Artist responsible for beauty such as I saw on grand scale in photos from space telescopes or on minute scale such as in the intricate designs on a butterfly wing." ~ Philip Yancey

21. "In a nutshell, the Bible from Genesis 3 to Revelation 22 tells the story of a God reckless with desire to get his family back." ~ Philip Yancey

22. "Dependence, humility, simplicity, cooperation, and a sense of abandon are qualities greatly prized in the spiritual life, but extremely elusive for people who live in comfort." ~ Philip Yancey

23. "Never do I see Jesus lecturing people on the need to accept blindness or lameness as an expression of God's secret will; rather, he healed them." ~ Philip Yancey

24. "recall Gandhi's remark that if you take the principle "an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth" to its logical conclusion, eventually the whole world will go blind and toothless." ~ Philip Yancey

25. "we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose." And "he who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all — how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things?" ~ Philip Yancey

26. "Somehow, that "faith" was what God valued, and it soon became clear that faith was the best way for humans to express a love for God." ~ Philip Yancey

27. "Where is God when it hurts? We know one answer because God came to earth and showed us. You need only follow Jesus around and note how he responded to the tragedies of his day: large-scale tragedies such as an act of government terrorism in the temple or a tower collapsing on eighteen innocent bystanders; as well as small tragedies, such as a widow who has lost her only son or even a Roman soldier whose servant has fallen ill. At moments like these Jesus never delivered sermons about judgment or the need to accept God's mysterious providence. Instead he responded with compassion – a word from Latin which simply means, "to suffer with" – and comfort and healings. God stands on the side of those who suffer. (pp.27-28/What Good Is God?)" ~ Philip Yancey

28. "The things, good Lord, that we pray for, give us the grace to labour for', as Sir Thomas More expressed it. The inner voice of prayer expresses itself naturally in action, just as the inner voice of my brain guides all my bodily actions." ~ Philip Yancey

29. "Thunderously, inarguably, the Sermon on the Mount proves that before God we all stand on level ground: murderers and temper-throwers, adulterers and lusters, thieves and coveters. We are all desperate, and that is in fact the only state appropriate to a human being who wants to know God. Having fallen from the absolute Ideal, we have nowhere to land but in the safety net of absolute grace." ~ Philip Yancey

30. "As the books of Job, Jeremiah, and Habakkuk clearly show, God has a high threshold of tolerance for what appropriate to say in a prayer. God can "handle" my unsuppressed rage. I may well find that my vindictive feelings need God's correction - but only by taking those feelings to God will I have the opportunity for correction and healing." ~ Philip Yancey

31. "Philip Yancey sees our blasé attitude toward the faithfulness of God in the waitstaff At Yellowstone. Even when they are finished their chores, they don't look up and marvel at the geiser going off. After all, they see it so often." ~ Philip Yancey

32. "And yet when I wish to explore how faith works, I usually sneak in by the back door of doubt, for I best learn about my own need for faith during its absence. God's invisibility guarantees I will experience times of doubt. Everyone dangles on a pendulum that swings from belief to unbelief, back to belief, and ends - where?" ~ Philip Yancey

33. "Prayer is not a means of removing the unknown and predictable elements in life, but rather a way of including the unknown and unpredictable in the outworking of the grace of God in our lives." ~ Philip Yancey

34. "Christian faith is... basically about love and being loved and reconciliation. These things are so important, they're foundational and they can transform individuals, families." ~ Philip Yancey

35. "The world says you gain your life by getting more and more and more and more, but Jesus says, 'No, that leads to death. You get it back by giving it away and when you give it away you get it back.'" ~ Philip Yancey

36. "In China, where you can be arrested and imprisoned for your faith, getting together with other Christians is a lifeline and you'll risk anything for the privilege. No one attends church in China casually, or for a social advantage - quite the opposite." ~ Philip Yancey

37. "God endorses the confusion and even outrage that we feel when mysterious things happen." ~ Philip Yancey

38. "The self-sacrificing, servant aspect of the Christian life has many parallels to parenthood." ~ Philip Yancey

39. "Muslims have great reverence in their prayers but not much intimacy." ~ Philip Yancey

40. "Much of the misgiving that Muslims feel for the West stems from our strong emphasis on freedom, always a risky enterprise. I've heard some say they would rather rear their children in a closely guarded Islamic society than in the United States, where freedom so often leads to decadence." ~ Philip Yancey

41. "When suffering happens, it forces us to confront life in a different way than we normally do." ~ Philip Yancey

42. "It's too bad prayer comes bundled in a package of 'spiritual disciplines.' Really, we should see prayer as a spiritual privilege. We don't do it as a callisthenic exercise to gain points with God; we do it, because it is good for us in every way." ~ Philip Yancey

43. "We need faith and the mind of the Lord Jesus to recognize something of lasting value in even our most ordinary tasks." ~ Philip Yancey

44. "God formed an alliance based on the world as it is, full of flaws, whereas prayer calls God to account for the world as it should be." ~ Philip Yancey

45. "If prayer stands as the place where God and human beings meet, then I must learn about prayer. Most of my struggles in the Christian life circle around the same two themes: why God doesn't act the way we want God to, and why I don't act the way God wants me to. Prayer is the precise point where those themes converge." ~ Philip Yancey

46. "Contrary to nature's rule of "survival of the fittest," we humans measure civilization by how we respond to the most vulnerable and the suffering." ~ Philip Yancey

47. "For us who are Christians, the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ is proof positive that love is stronger than hate, that life is stronger than death, that light is stronger than darkness, that laughter and joy, and compassion and gentleness and truth, all these are so much stronger than their ghastly counterparts." ~ Philip Yancey

48. "We human beings instinctively regard the seen world as the "real" world and the unseen world as the "unreal" world, but the Bible calls for almost the opposite." ~ Philip Yancey

49. "the promise of pleasures so alluring that we may devote our lives to their pursuit, and then the haunting realization that these pleasures ultimately do not satisfy." ~ Philip Yancey

50. "Pleasure represents a great good but also a grave danger." ~ Philip Yancey

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Her eyes went so wide they nearly bulged. It was probably wrong of me to find that amusing. Or to want to take a photo of Nicholas with his fangs out and wearing a black cape lined with red satin and then hang it over my pillow in a heart-shaped frame."
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