Inspirational Quotes by Philip Yancey
“God's terrible insistence on human freedom is so absolute that he granted us the power to live as though He did not exist, to spit in His face, to crucify Him.”
topics: Freedom
“God dispenses gifts, not wages. None of us gets paid according to merit, for none of us comes close to satisfying God's requirements for a perfect life. If paid on the basis of fairness, we would all end up in hell... In the bottom line realm of ungrace, some workers deserve more than others; in the realm of grace the word 'deserve' does not even apply.”
topics: Gifts
“We tend to think, 'Life should be fair because God is fair.' But God is not life. And if I confuse God with the physical reality of life - by expecting constant good health for example- then I set myself up for crashing disappointment.”
“Everyone has an image of God distorted in some way--we must, of course, since God transcends our capacities to imagine him.”
topics: God
“the best way to prepare for suffering is to work on a strong, supportive life when you’re healthy.”
― Philip Yancey ,
“God welcomes home anyone who will have him and, in fact, has made the first move already.”
topics: grace
“Faith like Job’s cannot be shaken because it is the result of having been shaken.” C.”
― Philip Yancey ,
“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.”
“Ungrace plays like the background static of life for families, nations, and institutions. It is, sadly, our natural human state.”
“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.”
“To justify Christianity because it provides a foundation of morality, instead of showing the necessity of Christian morality from the truth of Christianity, is a very dangerous inversion,” cautioned T. S. Eliot.”
“The church works best as a separate force, a conscience to society that keeps itself at arm’s length from the state. The closer it gets, the less effectively it can challenge the surrounding culture and the more perilously it risks losing its central message. Jesus left his followers the command to make disciples from all nations. We have no charge to “Christianize” the United States or any other country — an impossible goal in any case.”
“Western powers have learned a related and painful lesson in Iraq and Afghanistan: change imposed by force rarely produces the desired results. Likewise, a faith that matters grows best from the ground up, working its way through society gradually, without coercion.”
“When we ignore the world outside the walls we suffer—as does it.”
“The sufferings of Jesus show us that pain comes to us not as punishment but rather as a testing ground for faith that transcends pain. In truth, pain redeemed impresses me more than pain removed.”
“Civilisation once looked to art as the means of passing wisdom from one generation to the next. Writing itself was invented in part to convey the sacred: permanent things deserved a permanent place, hence the hieroglyphs on Egyptian tombs. But a modern civilisation that no longer believes in permanent things, one that accepts no certain narrative of meaning, resorts to deconstruction, not construction.”
“I find a simple answer in the Bible's overarching theme that God is love. That quality, more than anything else, makes clear the reason behind all creation. Love cannot really exist without an object to receive it.”
“It was no accident, I believe, that Jesus spoke his triumphant words, I HAVE OVERCOME THE WORLD, even as Roman soldiers were buckling on weapons for his arrest. He knew how to judge the present by the future.”
“one East European Christian observed, “You Western Christians often seem to consider material prosperity to be the only sign of God’s blessing. On the other hand, you often seem to perceive poverty, discomfort, and suffering as signs of God’s disfavor. In some ways we in the East understand suffering from the opposite perspective. We believe that suffering may be a sign of God’s favor and trust in the Christians to whom the trial is permitted to come.”
― Philip Yancey ,
“As Paul Tournier said, “Where there is no longer any opportunity for doubt, there is no longer any opportunity for faith either.”
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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.