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Often, it seems, we're [Christians] perceived more as guilt dispensers than as grace dispensers.

Philip Yancey

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Philip Yancey
Age: 75
Born: 1949
Born: November 4
Author
Journalist
Publisher
Writer
Atlanta
Georgia
Grace
Christian
Often
Seems
Perceived
Christians
Guilt

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We can’t expect the nation to operate by Christian principles… but we can expect this of the church.
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We deserve punishment and get forgiveness we deserve God’s wrath and get God’s love.
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The deadening part of Bible study is when you think you've already got it all figured out.
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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.
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I have learned that faith means trusting in advance what will make sense only in reverse.
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Across time and generations, books carry the thoughts and feelings, the essence, of the human spirit.
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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
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Unless we love natural goods - sex, alcohol, food, money, success, power - in the way God intended, we become their slaves, as any addict can attest.
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If Jesus had never lived, we would not have been able to invent him.
Philip Yancey
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C. S. Lewis observed that almost all crimes of Christian history have come about when religion is confused with politics. Politics, which always runs by the rules of ungrace, allures us to trade away grace for power, a temptation the church has often been unable to resist.
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The giants of the faith all had one thing in common: neither victory nor success, but passion.
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Prayer unfolds in the stillness of the soul.
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On a small scale, person-to-person, Jesus encountered the kinds of suffering common to all of us. And how did he respond? Avoiding philosophical theories and theological lessons, he reached out with healing and compassion. He forgave sin, healed the afflicted, cast out evil, and even overcame death.
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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.
Philip Yancey
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... the core problem with Christians communicating faith: we do not always do so in love. That is an indispensable point to presenting faith in a grace-full way.
Philip Yancey
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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
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When we ignore the world outside the walls we suffer-as does it.
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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Grace, like water, flows to the lowest part.
Philip Yancey
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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