Inspirational Quotes by 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.”
“«No te olvides en las tinieblas de lo que aprendiste en la luz»,”
― Philip Yancey ,
“After reporting on such moments, the historian Paul Johnson concludes, “Attempts to perfect Christian societies in this world, whether conducted by popes or revolutionaries, have tended to degenerate into red terrors.”
“History is a test of faith, and the correct response to that test is persistent prayer.”
“Un osado mensaje que encontramos en el libro de Job es que a Dios se le puede decir lo que se desee. Arroje ante él su angustia, su ira, sus dudas, su amargura, su dolor por sentirse traicionado, su desilusión.”
― Philip Yancey ,
“Those who have known pain profoundly are the ones most wary of uttering the clichés about suffering. Experience with the mystery takes one beyond the realm of ideas and produces finally a muteness or at least a reticence to express in words the solace that can only be expressed by an attitude of union with the sufferer. JOHN HOWARD GRIFFIN”
― Philip Yancey ,
“Prayer means keeping company with God who is already present.”
“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
“En cambio, Jesucristo nunca obligó a nadie a creer en él. Prefería actuar por medio de la atracción, sacando a los humanos de sí mismos para atraerlos hacia él.”
― Philip Yancey ,
“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
“We cannot simply pray and then wait for God to do the rest.”
“Si Dios se dedicara a enviar rayos como respuesta a las malas doctrinas, nuestro planeta brillaría como un árbol navideño.”
― Philip Yancey ,
“All too often the church holds up a mirror reflecting back the society around it, rather than a window revealing a different way.”
“Endurance is not just the ability to bear a hard thing, but to turn it into glory.”
topics: Endurance
“Sentenced to a nineteen-year term of hard labor for the crime of stealing bread, Jean Valjean gradually hardened into a tough convict. No one could beat him in a fistfight. No one could break his will. At last Valjean earned his release. Convicts in those days had to carry identity cards, however, and no innkeeper would let a dangerous felon spend the night. For four days he wandered the village roads, seeking shelter against the weather, until finally a kindly bishop had mercy on him. That night Jean Valjean lay still in an overcomfortable bed until the bishop and his sister drifted off to sleep. He rose from his bed, rummaged through the cupboard for the family silver, and crept off into the darkness. The next morning three policemen knocked on the bishop’s door, with Valjean in tow. They had caught the convict in flight with the purloined silver, and were ready to put the scoundrel in chains for life. The bishop responded in a way that no one, especially Jean Valjean, expected. “So here you are!” he cried to Valjean. “I’m delighted to see you. Had you forgotten that I gave you the candlesticks as well? They’re silver like the rest, and worth a good 200 francs. Did you forget to take them?” Jean Valjean’s eyes had widened. He was now staring at the old man with an expression no words can convey. Valjean was no thief, the bishop assured the gendarmes. “This silver was my gift to him.”
“In The Gutenberg Elegies, Sven Birkerts laments the loss of “deep reading,” which requires intense concentration, a conscious lowering of the gates of perception, and a slower pace.”
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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.