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In any Christian view of life, self-fulfillment must never be permitted to become the controlling issue. The issue is service, the service of real people. The question is, 'How can I be most useful?', not, 'How can I feel most useful?'

D. A. Carson

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D. A. Carson
Age: 78
Born: 1946
Born: December 21
Author
Missionary
Philosopher
Theologian
University Teacher
Writer
Montreal
Quebec
Donald Arthur Carson
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More quotes by D. A. Carson

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We treat the Bible, not as if it's a magic book that has to be handled like a piece of abracadabra, make sure it's dusted, never put it on the floor, and things like that.
D. A. Carson
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Many of us in our praying are like nasty little boys who ring front door bells and run away before anyone answers.
D. A. Carson
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To worship God 'in spirit and in truth' is first and foremost a way of saying that we must worship God by means of Christ. In him the reality has dawned and the shadows are being swept away (Hebrews 8:13). Christian worship is new covenant worship it is gospel-inspired worship it is Christ-centered worship it is cross-focused worship.
D. A. Carson
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Study Bible is the expression used for Bibles that include significant explanatory notes, usually at the bottom of the page, sometimes in the margins. Often a Study Bible will also include some brief articles, photographs of geographical and archaeological sites, fairly extensive maps, and charts that summarize a lot of information.
D. A. Carson
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The broader problem is that a great deal of popular preaching and teaching uses the bible as a pegboard on which to hang a fair bit of Christianized pop psychology or moralizing encouragement, with very little effort to teach the faithful, from the Bible, the massive doctrines of historic confessional Christianity.
D. A. Carson
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The Bible does not tell us that life in this world will be fair. Evil and sin are not Victorian gentlemen they do not play fair.
D. A. Carson
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God has disclosed of himself in human words with such magnificent self accommodation to our limitations. Precisely so that we may be his holy people and reverence everything that he says, cherish it, value it, and thus live it out.
D. A. Carson
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The person who prays more in public than in private reveals that he is less interested in God's approval than in human praise. Not piety but a reputation for piety is his concern.
D. A. Carson
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How much would our churches be transformed if each of us made it a practice to thank God for others and then to tell those others what it is about them that we thank God for?
D. A. Carson
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All of us would be wiser if we would resolve never to put people down, except on our prayer lists.
D. A. Carson
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A wrong understanding is interested in precisionism. That is it tries to say that the Bible can't be telling the truth if it says that Jesus was such and such a distance from some place or other and in fact the distance is off by 15% or something like that. There are all kinds of grounded figures and so forth.
D. A. Carson
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Either worrying drives out prayer, or prayer drives out worrying.
D. A. Carson
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You cannot find excellent corporate worship until you stop trying to find excellent corporate worship and pursue God himself.
D. A. Carson
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Worship is the proper response of all moral, sentient beings to God, ascribing all honor and worth to their Creator-God precisely because he is worthy, delightfully so.
D. A. Carson
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Sin corrupts even our good deeds. We injure our shoulder trying to pat ourselves on the back.
D. A. Carson
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Much praying is not done because we do not plan to pray. We do not drift into spiritual life we do not drift into disciplined prayer. We will not grow in prayer unless we plan to pray. That means we must self-consciousl y set aside time to do nothing but pray.
D. A. Carson
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Damn all false antitheses to hell, for they generate false gods, they perpetuate idols, they twist and distort our souls, they launch the church into violent pendulum swings who oscillations succeed only in dividing brothers and sisters in Christ
D. A. Carson
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Do you wish to see God's love? Look at the cross. Do you wish to see God's wrath? Look at the cross.
D. A. Carson
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Ordinary Bibles often include cross-references and brief concordances Study Bibles include much more, all bound up in one fat volume, so that readers can find a lot of useful explanation on each page without having to hunt through Bible dictionaries and commentaries and the like.
D. A. Carson
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A billion years or so into eternity, how many toys we accumulated during this life will not seem too terribly important.
D. A. Carson