Inspirational Quotes by Philip Yancey
“Dr. Paul Tournier expresses this pattern in the language of psychiatry: “God blots out conscious guilt, but He brings to consciousness repressed guilt.”
“How would my life change if I truly believed the Bible’s astounding words about God’s love for me, if I looked in the mirror and saw what God sees?”
“grace means there is nothing we can do to make God love us less—no amount of racism or pride or pornography or adultery or even murder. Grace means that God already loves us as much as an infinite God can possibly love.”
“Apart from forgiveness, the monstrous past may awake at any time from hibernation to devour the present. And also the future.”
“I can only advance in the kingdom if I become like that woman: trembling, humbled, without excuse, my palms open to receive God’s grace.”
“grace means there is nothing I can do to make God love me more, and nothing I can do to make God love me less.”
“That stance of openness to receive is what I call the “catch” to grace. It must be received, and the Christian term for that act is repentance, the doorway to grace.”
“God may be the Sovereign Lord of the Universe, but through his Son, God has made himself as approachable as any doting human father.”
“He added a chilling remark, “As a gay man, I’ve found it’s easier for me to get sex on the streets than to get a hug in church.”
“The Bible’s many fierce passages on sin appear in a new light once I understand God’s desire to press me toward repentance, the doorway to grace.”
“For a society that seems adrift, without moorings, I know of no better place to drop an anchor of faith.”
“the early discrimination laws against the Jews—the “Jews Only” shops, park benches, rest rooms, and drinking fountains—were explicitly modeled on segregation laws in the United States.”
“As a committed Christian, I wanted to discover what adjustments we might need to make in order to communicate the good news to our friends, neighbors, coworkers.”
“discovered that some of our efforts can actually drown out the good news and become stumbling blocks to faith.”
“In a cruel irony, a refusal to forgive works its negative energy most powerfully in the wronged party. Archbishop Desmond Tutu2, a master of forgiveness, describes the process: To forgive is not just to be altruistic; in my view it is the best form of self-interest. The process of forgiving does not exclude hatred and anger. These emotions are all part of being human. When I talk of forgiveness I mean the ability to let go of the right to revenge and to slip the chains of rage that bind you to the person who harmed you. When you forgive you are free of the hatred and anger that locks you in a state of victimhood. If you can find it in yourself to forgive, you can move on, and you may even help the perpetrator to become a better person.”
“At last I understood: in the final analysis, forgiveness is an act of faith. By forgiving another, I am trusting that God is a better justice-maker than I am. By forgiving, I release my own right to get even and leave all issues of fairness for God to work out. I leave in God’s hands the scales that must balance justice and mercy.”
“Christianity has a principle, “Hate the sin but love the sinner,” which is more easily preached than practiced. If Christians could simply recover that practice, modeled so exquisitely by Jesus, we would go a long way toward fulfilling our calling as dispensers of God’s grace.”
“So I'm trying, instead of shaming or pretending, to come to terms with my emotions, and bring them before God honestly. I have come to realize that I'm never going to stop having emotions, and probably strong emotions, because that is the way I'm wired.”
― Philip Yancey ,
from Prayer
“God already knows who we are; we are the ones who must find a way to come to terms with our true selves.”
― Philip Yancey ,
from Prayer
“Overlong sermons break in upon family concerns and often call off the thoughts from the sermon to the pudding at home that is in danger of being overboiled.”
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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.