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By focusing too myopically on what we want God to do on our behalf, we may miss the significance of what he has already done.

Philip Yancey

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Philip Yancey
Age: 75
Born: 1949
Born: November 4
Author
Journalist
Publisher
Writer
Atlanta
Georgia
Done
Focusing
Behalf
Significance
Miss
Missing
Already
May

More quotes by Philip Yancey

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Goodness cannot be imposed externally, from the top down it must grow internally, from the bottom up.
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Any discussion of how pain and suffering fit into God's scheme ultimately leads back to the cross.
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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.
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If God doesn't want something for me, I shouldn't want it either. Spending time in meditative prayer, getting to know God, helps align my desires with God's.
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You can know the law by heart without knowing the heart of it
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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
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God loves people because of who God is, not because of who we are.
Philip Yancey
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We human beings instinctively regard the seen world as the real world and the unseen world as the unreal world, but the Bible calls for almost the opposite.
Philip Yancey
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Our confused society badly needs a community of contrast, a counterculture of ordinary pilgrims who insist living a different way. Unlike popular culture, we will lavish attention on the least deserving in direct opposition to our celebrity culture's emphasis on success, wealth, and beauty.
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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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
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Repentance, not proper behavior or even holiness, is the doorway to grace. And the opposite of sin is grace, not virtue.
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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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We can’t expect the nation to operate by Christian principles… but we can expect this of the church.
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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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
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Power can do everything but the most important thing: it cannot control love.
Philip Yancey
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We should be asking: How do we respond to a post-Christian society?
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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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