Quote

A philosophy may explain difficult things, but has no power to change them. The gospel, the story of Jesus' life, promises change.

Philip Yancey

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Philip Yancey
Age: 75
Born: 1949
Born: November 4
Author
Journalist
Publisher
Writer
Atlanta
Georgia
Life
Story
Jesus
Difficult
Stories
Promises
Change
Gospel
Power
Explain
May
Promise
Things
Philosophy

More quotes by Philip Yancey

Image
Power, no matter how well-intentioned, tends to cause suffering. Love, being vulnerable, absorbs it. In a point of convergence on a hill called Calvary, God renounced the one for the sake of the other.
Philip Yancey
Image
The uncommitted share many of our core values, but if we do not live out those values in a compelling way, we will not awaken a thirst for their ultimate Source.
Philip Yancey
Image
True faith does not so much attempt to manipulate God to do our will as it does to position us to do his will.
Philip Yancey
Image
There is an offense to the Gospel no matter how graciously we present it. It includes the message that God, not humanity, is the ultimate judge of right and wrong, and that the choices we make here have eternal consequences.
Philip Yancey
Image
If my activism, however well-motivated, drives out love, then I have misunderstood Jesus’ gospel. I am stuck with law, not the gospel of grace.
Philip Yancey
Image
Power can do everything but the most important thing: it cannot control love.
Philip Yancey
Image
I ask God most often that we would be an unbroken line of Christians until Christ shall return.
Philip Yancey
Image
Christian faith is... basically about love and being loved and reconciliation. These things are so important, they're foundational and they can transform individuals, families.
Philip Yancey
Image
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
Image
Prayer is not a means of removing the unknown and predictable elements in life, but rather a way of including the unknown and unpredictable in the outworking of the grace of God in our lives.
Philip Yancey
Image
Nature was one of the key forces that brought me back to God, for I wanted to know the Artist responsible for beauty such as I saw on grand scale in photos from space telescopes or on minute scale such as in the intricate designs on a butterfly wing.
Philip Yancey
Image
When he lived on earth, [Jesus] surrounded himself with ordinary people who misunderstood him, failed to exercise much spiritual power, and sometimes behaved like churlish schoolchildren.
Philip Yancey
Image
I doubt God keeps track of how many arguments we win God may indeed keep track of how well we love.
Philip Yancey
Image
We often surround ourselves with the people we most want to live with, thus forming a club or clique, not a community. Anyone can form a club it takes grace, shared vision, and hard work to form a community.
Philip Yancey
Image
I say this with care, but I wonder if a fierce, insistent desire for a miracle - even a physical healing - sometimes betrays a lack of faith rather than an abundance of it. When yearning for a miraculous resolution to a problem, do we make our loyalty to God contingent on whether he reveals himself yet again in the seen world?
Philip Yancey
Image
No one ever converted to Christianity because they lost the argument.
Philip Yancey
Image
The world says you gain your life by getting more and more and more and more, but Jesus says, 'No, that leads to death. You get it back by giving it away and when you give it away you get it back.'
Philip Yancey
Image
Whoever desires to remain faithful to Jesus must communicate faith as he did, not by compelling assent but by presenting it as a true answer to basic thirst. Rather than looking back nostalgically on a time when Christians wielded more power, I suggest another approach: that we regard ourselves as subversives operating within the broader culture.
Philip Yancey
Image
Most observers understand the difference between a committed Christian who accepts Jesus as a model for living and a 'cultural Christian' who happens to live in a nation with a Christian heritage. Most Muslims do not.
Philip Yancey
Image
God must love art because most of the Bible is expressed in the form of story or poetry.
Philip Yancey