Quote

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

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
Must
Externally
Internally
Imposed
Goodness
Bottom
Grow
Grows
Cannot

More quotes by Philip Yancey

Image
... we need to reclaim the goodnewness of the gospel, and the best place to start is to rediscover the good news ourselves.
Philip Yancey
Image
Prayer unfolds in the stillness of the soul.
Philip Yancey
Image
The promise of pleasures so alluring that we may devote our lives to their pursuit, and then the haunting realization that these pleasures ultimately do not satisfy.
Philip Yancey
Image
True healing, of deep connective tissue, takes place in community. Where is God when it hurts? Where God's people are.
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
Release what is good.
Philip Yancey
Image
Our best efforts at changing society will fall short unless the church can teach the world how to love.
Philip Yancey
Image
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
Image
At Calvary, God accepted his own unbreakable terms of justice.
Philip Yancey
Image
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
Image
By striving to prove how much they deserve God's love, legalists miss the whole point of the gospel, that it is a gift from God to people who don't deserve it. The solution to sin is not to impose an ever-stricter code of behavior. It is to know God.
Philip Yancey
Image
Across time and generations, books carry the thoughts and feelings, the essence, of the human spirit.
Philip Yancey
Image
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
Image
The self-sacrificing, servant aspect of the Christian life has many parallels to parenthood.
Philip Yancey
Image
The surgery of life hurts. It helps me, though, to know that the surgeon himself, the Wounded Surgeon, has felt every stab of pain and every sorrow.
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
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.
Philip Yancey
Image
The deadening part of Bible study is when you think you've already got it all figured out.
Philip Yancey
Image
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
Image
The Gospels and the rest of the New Testament reflect the life of Jesus, what it means for us & what it means for the world.
Philip Yancey