Inspirational Quotes by Philip Yancey
“Even in “post-Christian” societies the gospel will continue to do its subversive work. Jesus used small things to describe his kingdom: a sprinkling of yeast that causes the whole loaf to rise, a pinch of salt that preserves a slab of meat, the smallest seed in the garden that grows into a great bush in which the birds of the air come to nest. Practices that used to be common—human sacrifice, slavery, duels to the death, child labor, exploitation of women, racial apartheid, debtors’ prisons, the killing of the elderly and incurably ill—have been banned, in large part because of a gospel stream running through cultures influenced by the Christian faith. Once salted and yeasted, society is difficult to un-salt and un-yeast.”
“We should leave a worship service asking ourselves not “What did I get out of it?” but rather “Was God pleased with what happened?”
“El poder consigue todo, menos lo más importante: no puede controlar el amor.”
― Philip Yancey ,
“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.”
topics: prayer
“Earth is crammed with heaven And every bush aflame with God But only those who see take off their shoes. —ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING”
“Author Stephen Brown notes that a veterinarian can learn a lot about a dog owner he has never met just by observing the dog. What does the world learn about God by watching us his followers on earth?”
“Andy Rooney, the late commentator on the 60 Minutes television show, once said, “I’ve decided I’m against abortion. I think it’s murder. But I have a dilemma in that I much prefer the pro-choice to the pro-life people. I’d much rather eat dinner with a group of the former.”
“Taken as a whole, the Bible clearly puts the emphasis on what pleases God—the point of worship, after all. To worship, says Walter Wink, is to remember Who owns the house.”
“«El problema de Dios no es que no sea capaz de hacer ciertas cosas. Su problema es que él ama. El amor le complica la vida a Dios, como se la complica a cualquiera”1.”
― Philip Yancey ,
“What would it look like if a Christian took literally Jesus' sweeping commands and acted on them. What would a Good Samaritan look like today, in urban America?”
“When the church joined with the state, it tended to wield power rather than dispense grace.”
“In a sort of negative proof of the power of prayer, three times God commanded Jeremiah to stop praying; God wanted no alteration in his plans to punish a rebellious nation.”
“Whatever you may believe about it, the birth of Jesus was so important that it split history into two parts. Everything that has ever happened on this planet falls into a category of before Christ or after Christ.”
― Philip Yancey ,
topics: jesus
“It seems that God arranged the most humiliating circumstances possible for His entrance, as if to avoid any charge of favoritism.”
― Philip Yancey ,
topics: jesus
“There is only one way for any of us to resolve the tension between the high ideals of the gospel and the grim reality of ourselves: to accept that we will never measure up, but that we do not have to. We are judged by the righteousness of the Christ who lives within, not our own.”
― Philip Yancey ,
“Can we live now “as if” God is loving, gracious, merciful, and all-powerful, even while the blinders of time are obscuring our vision? The”
“When the church has occasion to set the rules for all society, it often veers toward the extremism”
“I know Christians who yearn for God's older style of a power-worker who topples pharaohs, flattens Jericho's walls, and scorches the priests of Baal. I do not. I believe the kingdom now advances through grace and freedom, God's goal all along. I accept Jesus' assurance that his departure from earth represents progress, by opening a door for the Counselor to enter. We know how counselors work: not by giving orders and imposing changes through external force. A good counselor works on the inside, bringing to the surface dormant health. For a relationship between such unequal partners, prayer provides an ideal medium. Prayer is cooperation with God, a consent that opens the way for grace to work. Most of the time the Counselor communicates subtly: feeding ideas into my mind, bringing to awareness a caustic comment I just made, inspiring me to choose better than I would have done otherwise, shedding light on the hidden dangers of temptation, sensitizing me to another's needs. God's Spirit whispers rather than shouts, and brings peace not turmoil. Although such a partnership with God may lack the drama of the bargaining sessions with Abraham and Moses, the advance in intimacy is striking. . . The partnership binds so tight that it becomes hard to distinguish who is doing what, God or the human partner. God has come that close.”
“Be careful,” warned Nietzsche, “lest in fighting the dragon you become the dragon.”
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Philip Yancey is an American Christian author. Fourteen million of his books have been sold worldwide, making him one of the best-selling evangelical Christian authors. Two of his books have won the ECPA's Christian Book of the Year Award: The Jesus I Never Knew in 1996, What's So Amazing About Grace in 1998. He is published by Zondervan Publishing.
Yancey was born in Atlanta, Georgia. When Yancey was one year old, his father, stricken with polio, died after his church elders suggested he go off life support in faith that God would heal him. This was one of the reasons he had lost his faith at one point of time. Yancey earned his MA with highest honors from the graduate school of Wheaton College. His two graduate degrees in Communications and English were earned from Wheaton College Graduate School and the University of Chicago.
Yancey moved to Chicago, Illinois, and in 1971 joined the staff of Campus Life magazine--a sister publication of Christianity Today directed towards high school and college students--where he served as editor for eight years. Yancey was for many years an editor for Christianity Today and wrote articles for Reader's Digest, The Saturday Evening Post, Publishers Weekly, Chicago Tribune Magazine, Eternity, Moody Monthly, and National Wildlife, among others. He now lives in Colorado, working as a columnist and editor-at-large for Christianity Today. He is a member of the editorial board of Books and Culture, another magazine affiliated with Christianity Today, and travels around the world for speaking engagements.