Inspirational Quotes by David F. Wells

“There come those times in a nation’s life, Os Guinness has written, when its people rise up against the founding principles of their own nation. This is one of those times in America. It is far more dangerous than any terrorist attack. It is, in fact, “a free people’s suicide,” as he puts it in the title of his book. Why? Because what holds the republic together has never been simply the Constitution and our laws. The law is an exceedingly blunt instrument when it comes to controlling human behavior. There are many things that are unethical that are not illegal. Most lying, for example, is not illegal but it is always unethical. Our criminal and civil laws can control only so much of our behavior. It is virtue that does the rest. And that is precisely what is being eroded in this self-oriented, self-consumed culture.”

“Worldliness is what makes sin look normal in any age and righteousness seem odd.”

“[The Reformers] granted that personal experience is powerful because it is intense, but they insisted that we should not allow this power to delude us into thinking that experience is always right.”

“In this atmosphere, where everything is believed and anything is believable, at least to someone, nothing can act as a norm. All that is left is power. And, in a fallen world, we do well to be cautious when all there is, is power.”

“God's love is his holiness reaching out to sinners; grace is but the price that his love pays to his holiness; the cross is but its victory over sin and death; and faith is but the way in which we bring our worship to him who is holy.”

“Evil by its very nature opposes the purposes of God, but God, in his sovereignty, can make even this evil serve his purposes.”

“If the good news is an invitation to a Jesus way of life and not information about somebody who accomplished something on my behalf, I’m sunk. This is law and no gospel.”

“A God with whom we are on easy terms and whose reality is little different from our own... who is merely there to satisfy our needs - has no real authority to compel and will soon begin to bore us.”

“What has to be forgiven is not just what we do but who we are, not just our sinning but our sinfulness, not just our choices but what we have chosen in place of God.”

“Authenticity, theologically speaking, is not simply about being true to ourselves or about being satisfied with ourselves. It is about being true to who we are in Christ.”

“The present age is in the sunset of dissolution; the age to come is the dawn whose light bathes life, banishes its shadows, and illumines its meaning because this age is moving the people of God to that time when everything has become subject to Christ and he has rendered it all up to the Father.”

“t takes no courage to sign up as a Protestant. After all, millions have done so throughout the West. They are not in any peril. To live by the truths of historic Protestantism, however, is an entirely different matter. That takes courage in today's context.”

“Those who attend churches are now like any other customers you might meet in the mall. Displease them in any way and they will take their business elsewhere. That is the fear that lurks in many a church leader's soul because they know that is how the marketplace works.”

“It is true, of course, that great preachers are always few and far between in any age. But in every age there should be enough preachers to do the job, preachers who are conscientious, who know what it is to labor over Scripture during the week and then on Sunday deliver its truth with some conviction, with some insight, with some depth, and with some application to life, and in the Holy Spirit’s power.”

“We are called to see that the Church does not adapt its thinking to the horizons that modernity prescribes for it but rather that it brings to those horizons the powerful antidote of God's truth.”

“Truth and integrity lie very close to one another. In the absence of what is true, all that remains are power and manipulation. What takes the place once occupied by truth are private agendas, community ideals, rhetorical force, savage ad hominem attacks, fabrications, exaggerations, and power seeking. In the absence of truth, lying becomes the common coin of the realm. And this lying takes on especially virulent forms when it becomes religious. For then God is pressed into service for our personal advantage. The stage is then set for terrible things to happen.”

“[Christianity today] is about everything except truth. And yet this truth, personally embodied in Christ, gives us a place to stand in order to deal with the complexities of life, such as broken relations, teenage rebellion, and job insecurities.”

“There are professors, Plantinga drily notes, who have left faculty meetings feeling more enlightened by what they said than by what they heard!”

“In our postmodern culture which is TV dominated, image sensitive, and morally vacuous, personality is everything and character is increasingly irrelevant.”

“What is to be gained if we are so intent in reaching out to the unchurched that we then unchurch the reached?”