Inspirational Quotes by Philip Yancey
“Barbara Brown Taylor, an Episcopal priest, decided to leave her clergy position in part because of the church’s failure to administer that grace: One thing that had always troubled me was the way people disappeared from church when their lives were breaking down. Separation and divorce were the most common explanations for long absences, but so were depression, alcoholism, job loss, and mortal illness. One new widow told me that she could not come to church because she started crying the moment she sat down in a pew. A young man freshly diagnosed with AIDS said that he stayed away because he was too frightened to answer questions and too angry to sing hymns. I understood their reasoning, but I was sorry that church did not strike these wounded souls as a place they could bring the dark fruits of their equally dark nights.”
“In the Christian scheme of things, this world and the time spent here are not all there is. Earth is a proving ground, a dot in eternity — albeit an important dot, for Jesus said our destiny depends on our obedience here.”
― Philip Yancey ,
“the parents of a severely disabled child have no end in sight.”
― Philip Yancey ,
“¿Hay siempre fe cuando se produce un gran número de milagros?”
― Philip Yancey ,
“To a woman shamed by an embarrassing malady, to a social outcast with leprosy, to a thief hanging on a cross hours from death, to a common prostitute — to all these people and many more he held out the bright promise that significance is not something attained but rather bestowed by a gracious God. And thus we who follow Jesus should treat those who rank low on society’s scale — “the least of these,” in Jesus’ phrase — as he did, proclaiming by our deeds what we believe about the image of God in every person.”
“see the confusion of politics and religion as one of the greatest barriers to grace. C. S. Lewis once said that almost all crimes of Christian history have come about when religion is confused with politics. Politics, which always runs by the rules of ungrace, allures us to trade away grace for power, a temptation the church has often been unable to resist.”
“Sometimes God seemed as close as his wife or children. Sometimes he had no sense of God's presence, no faith to lean on. "God is wild, you know," he wrote. "We're not in charge.”
“I have marveled at, and sometimes openly questioned, the self-restraint God has shown throughout history, allowing the Genghis Khans and the Hitlers and the Stalins to have their way. But nothing - nothing - compares to the self-restraint shown that dark Friday in Jerusalem.”
“who are we to sit in judgment of God’s moral government of the universe?”
― Philip Yancey ,
“Lest I sound like a cranky moralist, I should say that to me the real question is not why modern secularists oppose traditional morality; it is on what basis they defend any morality.”
“Jimmy Carter taught a Sunday school class throughout his presidency, winning the grudging respect of reporters who had once questioned his religious talk as a political ploy. Even so, he lost many Christians’ votes to Ronald Reagan, the only U.S. president to have been divorced and who rarely attended church and gave little to charity, mainly because Reagan supported many of the favorite causes of the religious Right.”
“Knowledge is passive, intellectual; suffering is active, personal. No intellectual answer will solve suffering. Perhaps this is why God sent his own Son as one response to human pain, to experience it and absorb it into himself.”
“Unlike many television evangelists, the apostle Paul seemed to expect from the Christian life not health and wealth, but a measure of suffering. He told Timothy, “In fact, everyone who wants to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted” (2 Timothy 3:12).”
― Philip Yancey ,
“Church is a place where I can say, unashamedly, "I don't need to sin. I need another sinner.”
“A skeptical world judges the truth of what we say by the proof of how we live. Today’s activists may be the best evangelists.”
“«La resistencia no es solo la capacidad para soportar algo difícil, sino también la capacidad para convertirlo en algo glorioso».”
― Philip Yancey ,
“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.”
“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.”
“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 ,
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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.