Inspirational Quotes by Michael S. Horton

“In many ways, it’s more fun to be part of movements than churches. We can express our own individuality, pick our favorite leaders, and be swept off our feet at conferences. We can be anonymous. Although encouraged by like-minded believers, we are not bound up with them so that we should feel compelled to bear their burdens or suffer their rebukes. Yet this movement mentality keeps us restless and makes ordinary life in and submission to an actual church seem intolerably confining.”

“We are united to Christ for justification and renewal. These must be distinguished, but never separated. Saving faith is not the enemy of good works, but their only possible source.”

“There is no community without consensus: a basic, shared agreement about the things that define it. You have to show up in order to belong. And shared agreements have to be patrolled (disciplined) in order to be maintained and to endure through the various crises that individual members might provoke.”

“Furthermore, repentance and faith are not a one-time experience, but are part of a lifelong process that has ups and downs along the way. The most important thing to keep our eye on is not religious experience itself, but the faithful ministry of God’s means of grace.”

“everything that the Bible identifies as sin and our nature recognizes as such is something essentially good gone wrong. More precisely, it is something God has made that we have corrupted. Augustine defined the essence of sin as being curved in on ourselves”

“Where the biblical message calls us to the cross, to die to self and to be raised in Christ, the new message calls the old Adam to an improved self, empowered to fulfill more easily his own life project. The”

“Loving Neighbors Is Tougher Than Loving Causes”

“We’re all adolescents now,” writes Thomas Bergler. “When are we going to grow up?”17 Bergler explains that churches and parachurch organizations first began to provide youth-oriented programs — mainly to help at-risk kids in the cities (e.g., the YMCA). Then the “teenager” was invented as a unique demographic in society. As a result, the youth group was created, offering adolescent-friendly versions of church. “In the second stage, a new adulthood emerged that looked a lot like the old adolescence. Fewer and fewer people outgrew the adolescent Christian spiritualities they had learned in youth groups; instead, churches began to cater to them.” Eventually, churches became them.”

“Being “ordinary” means that we reject the idolatry of pursuing excellence for selfish reasons. We aren’t digging wells in Africa to prove our worth or value. We aren’t serving in the soup kitchen or engaging in spiritual disciplines because we long to be unique, radical, and different. When we do these things for selfish reasons, God becomes a tool for winning our lifetime achievement award. Our neighbors become instruments in the crafting of our sense of meaning, impact, and identity. What we do for God is really for ourselves.”

“Instead of living in monasteries, committing their lives in service to themselves and their own salvation, or living in castles, commanding the world to mirror the kingdom of Christ, Luther argues, believers should love and serve their neighbors through their vocations in the world, where their neighbors need them.101 “God does not need our good works, but our neighbor does.”

“In essence, don’t wait for the host to move you to the children’s table.”

“Ordinary” has to be one of the loneliest words in our vocabulary today. Who wants a bumper sticker that announces to the neighborhood, “My child is an ordinary student at Bubbling Brook Elementary”? Who wants to be that ordinary person who lives in an ordinary town, is a member of an ordinary church, and has ordinary friends and works an ordinary job? Our life has to count! We have to leave our mark, have a legacy, and make a difference. And all of this should be something that can be managed, measured, and maintained. We have to live up to our Facebook profile. It’s one of the newer versions of salvation by works.”

“If you make every sentence an exclamation or put every verb in ‘bold,’ then nothing stands out.”

“Whenever a new generation announces its radical and totally unprecedented culture shift, there is an evangelical movement that pressures churches to get on board if they want to adapt and survive the next wave. It’s doubtful that cultures actually work like that. But it is especially disruptive for the ordinary growth of believers in a covenant of grace that extends to every culture and “to a thousand generations.” There is change, to be sure, but what kind of change, to what end, and through what means? For that, Scripture rather than culture must provide the ultimate answer.”

“Patient dedication to the ordinary and often tedious disciplines of corporate and family worship, teaching, prayer, modeling, and mentoring have been eroded by successive waves of enthusiasm.”

“Like every other area of life, we have come to believe that growth in Christ — as individuals or as churches — can and should be programmed to generate predictable outcomes that are unrealistic and are not even justified biblically. We want big results — sooner rather than later.”

“Where did we get the idea that older folks need to be given a “kid-free” environment with other “golden oldies,” and that men’s groups and women’s groups are more meaningful than the communion of saints?”

“If your personal relationship with Jesus is utterly unique, then it is not properly Christian.”

“Paul never encouraged Timothy to contemplate his personal “legacy.”

“You pursue excellence when you care about something other than your own excellence.”