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If prayer stands as the place where God and human beings meet, then I must learn about prayer. Most of my struggles in the Christian life circle around the same two themes: why God doesn't act the way we want God to, and why I don't act the way God wants me to. Prayer is the precise point where those themes converge.

Philip Yancey

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Philip Yancey
Age: 75
Born: 1949
Born: November 4
Author
Journalist
Publisher
Writer
Atlanta
Georgia
Way
Learn
Stands
Converge
Life
Doesn
Meet
Themes
Place
Beings
Struggles
Two
Wants
Around
Struggle
Precise
Human
Prayer
Circle
Humans
Point
Theme
Must
Christian
Circles

More quotes by Philip Yancey

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Jesus gave us a model for the work of the church at the Last Supper. While his disciples kept proposing more organization - Hey, let's elect officers, establish hierarchy, set standards of professionalism - Jesus quietly picked up a towel and basin of water and began to wash their feet.
Philip Yancey
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Pain narrows vision. The most private of sensations, it forces us to think of ourselves and little else.
Philip Yancey
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As the books of Job, Jeremiah, and Habakkuk clearly show, God has a high threshold of tolerance for what appropriate to say in a prayer. God can handle my unsuppressed rage. I may well find that my vindictive feelings need God's correction - but only by taking those feelings to God will I have the opportunity for correction and healing.
Philip Yancey
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The world is not against you, but the world is a place where bad things happen. It's just true. Airlines crash, people do evil things. A lot of bad things happen and it causes pain.
Philip Yancey
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And perhaps, exhibiting the fruit of the Spirit may be our very best defense against a materialist view of mankind here on earth.
Philip Yancey
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I have learned that faith means trusting in advance what will make sense only in reverse.
Philip Yancey
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The self-sacrificing, servant aspect of the Christian life has many parallels to parenthood.
Philip Yancey
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... the approach of admitting our errors, besides being most true to a gospel of grace, is also most effective at expressing who we are. Propaganda turns people off humbly admitting mistakes disarms.
Philip Yancey
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We should feel dissonance we are, after all, immortals trapped in mortal surroundings. We lack unity because long ago a gap fissured open between our mortal and immortal parts theologians trace the fault line back to the Fall.
Philip Yancey
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... the core problem with Christians communicating faith: we do not always do so in love. That is an indispensable point to presenting faith in a grace-full way.
Philip Yancey
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In the stories of extravagant grace given to us by Jesus, there are no loopholes disqualifying us from God's love.
Philip Yancey
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Often, it seems, we're [Christians] perceived more as guilt dispensers than as grace dispensers.
Philip Yancey
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As a writer, I play with words all day long. I toy with them, listen for their overtones, crack them open, and try to stuff my thoughts inside.
Philip Yancey
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The Quakers have a saying: An enemy is one whose story we have not heard. To communicate to post-Christians, I must first listen to their stories for clues to how they view the world and how they view people like me.
Philip Yancey
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We deserve punishment and get forgiveness we deserve God’s wrath and get God’s love.
Philip Yancey
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Grace is free only because the giver himself has borne the cost.
Philip Yancey
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The rubber hits the road when we try to show grace to a person most unlike us, even someone morally offensive.
Philip Yancey
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All too often the church holds up a mirror reflecting back the society around it, rather than a window revealing a different way.
Philip Yancey
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The more we love, and the more unlikely people we love, the more we resemble God - who, after all, loves ornery creatures like us.
Philip Yancey
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There is but one true Giver in the universe all else are debtors.
Philip Yancey