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

Philip Yancey

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Philip Yancey
Age: 75
Born: 1949
Born: November 4
Author
Journalist
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Atlanta
Georgia
May
Promise
Things
Philosophy
Life
Story
Jesus
Difficult
Stories
Promises
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Gospel
Power
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More quotes by Philip Yancey

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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
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I never seeĀ God. I seldom run into visual clues that remind me of God unless I am looking. The act of looking, the pursuit itself, makes possible the encounter. For this reason, Christianity has always insisted that trust and obedience come first, and knowledge follows.
Philip Yancey
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Grace does not depend on what we have done for God but rather what God has done for us. Ask people what they must do to get to heaven and most reply, Be good. Jesus' stories contradict that answer. All we must do is cry, Help!
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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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
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The camera follows a young woman as she makes her way through the stands to an area set aside for repentance and conversion. But Jesus' stories imply that far more may be going on out there: beyond that stadium scene, in a place concealed from all camera lenses, a great party has erupted, a gigantic celebration in the unseen world.
Philip Yancey
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Parents learn the uses of power and its limits. They can insist on certain outward behavior but cannot change inner attitudes. They can require obedience but not goodness - and certainly not love.
Philip Yancey
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The church works best not as a power center, rather as a countercultural community - in the world but not of it - that shows others how to live the most fulfilled and meaningful life on earth. In modern society that means rejecting the false gods of independence, success, and pleasure and replacing them with love for God and neighbor.
Philip Yancey
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The deadening part of Bible study is when you think you've already got it all figured out.
Philip Yancey
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It's easy to fall into the trap of feeling like you've heard everything before and that you have nothing left to learn.
Philip Yancey
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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
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Some things just have to be believed to be seen.
Philip Yancey
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God does not seem impressed by size or power or wealth. Faith is what he wants, and the heroes who emerge are heroes of faith, not strength or wealth.
Philip Yancey
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Be still. In that focus, all else comes into focus. In that rift in my routine, the universe falls into alignment.
Philip Yancey
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... we need to reclaim the goodnewness of the gospel, and the best place to start is to rediscover the good news ourselves.
Philip Yancey
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Be salt, and a little bit of salt keeps the whole society from going rancid.
Philip Yancey
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God operates by different rules of time and space. And God's infinite greatness, which we would expect to diminish us, actually makes possible the very closeness that we desire. A God unbound by our rules of time has the ability to invest in every person on earth. God has, quite literally, all the time in the world for each one of us.
Philip Yancey
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Prayer may seem at first like disengagement, a reflective time to consider God's point of view. But that vantage presses us back to accomplish God's will, the work of the kingdom. We are God's fellow workers, and as such we turn to prayer to equip us for the partnership.
Philip Yancey
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...to see that God does answer, in great things as well as small, the prayers of those who put their trust in Him will strengthen the faith of multitudes.
Philip Yancey
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Our best efforts at changing society will fall short unless the church can teach the world how to love.
Philip Yancey