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Goodness cannot be imposed externally, from the top down it must grow internally, from the bottom up.

Philip Yancey

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Philip Yancey
Age: 75
Born: 1949
Born: November 4
Author
Journalist
Publisher
Writer
Atlanta
Georgia
Cannot
Must
Externally
Internally
Imposed
Goodness
Bottom
Grow
Grows

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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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Any discussion of how pain and suffering fit into God's scheme ultimately leads back to the cross.
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Some of us seem so anxious about avoiding hell that we forget to celebrate our journey toward heaven.
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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.
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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.
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We should be asking: How do we respond to a post-Christian society?
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Jesus' response to suffering people and to nobodies provides a glimpse into the heart of God. God is not the unmoved Absolute, but rather the Loving One who draws near.
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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.
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Homeless people bear God's image too.
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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.
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Doubt always coexists with faith, for in the presence of certainty who would need faith at all?
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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.
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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.
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Prayer is to the skeptic a delusion, a waste of time. To the believer it represents perhaps the most important use of time.
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I have come to know a God of compassion and mercy and love.
Philip Yancey
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Across time and generations, books carry the thoughts and feelings, the essence, of the human spirit.
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I have come to know a God who has a soft spot for rebels, who recruits people like the adulterer David, the whiner Jeremiah, the traitor Peter, and the human-rights abuser Saul of Tarsus. I have come to know a God whose Son made prodigals the heroes of his stories and the trophies of his ministry.
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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.
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There is but one true Giver in the universe all else are debtors.
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Jesus reserved his hardest words for the hidden sins of hypocrisy, pride, greed and legalism.
Philip Yancey