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What makes the Gospel offensive isn’t who it keeps out, but who it lets in.

Rachel Held Evans

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Rachel Held Evans
Age: 37 †
Born: 1981
Born: June 8
Died: 2019
Died: May 4
Columnist
Journalist
Religious Writer
State of Alabama
Rachel Evans
Lets
Offensive
Gospel
Keeps
Makes

More quotes by Rachel Held Evans

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When we refer to 'the biblical approach to economics' or the biblical response to politics' or 'biblical womanhood,' we're using the Bible as a weapon disguised as an adjective.
Rachel Held Evans
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My friend Adele describes fundamentalism as holding so tightly to your beliefs that your fingernails leave imprints on the palm of your hand... I think she's right. I was a fundamentalist not because of the beliefs I held but because of how I held them: with a death grip. It would take God himself to finally pry them out of my hands. (p.17-18)
Rachel Held Evans
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No step taken in faith is wasted, not by a God who makes all things new.
Rachel Held Evans
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When [Jesus] wanted fully to explain what his forthcoming death was all about He didn't give a theory. He didn't even give them a set of Scriptural texts. He gave them a meal.
Rachel Held Evans
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The Holy Trinity doesn't need our permission to carry on in their endlessly resourceful work of making all things new. That we are invited to catch even a glimpse of the splendor is grace. All of it, every breath and every second is grace.
Rachel Held Evans
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We need to stop building our churches around categories and start building them around people.
Rachel Held Evans
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One of the most destructive mistakes we Christians make is to prioritize shared beliefs over shared relationship, which is deeply ironic considering we worship a God who would rather die than lose relationship with us.
Rachel Held Evans
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But the gospel doesn't need a coalition devoted to keeping the wrong people out. It needs a family of sinners, saved by grace, committed to tearing down the walls, throwing open the doors, and shouting, Welcome! There's bread and wine. Come eat with us and talk. This isn't a kingdom for the worthy it's a kingdom for the hungry.
Rachel Held Evans
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Like all who search for truth out of fear, I desperately wanted someone else to tell me exactly what to do.
Rachel Held Evans
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Imagine if every church became a place where everyone is safe, but no one is comfortable. Image if every church became a place where we told one another the truth. We might just create sanctuary.
Rachel Held Evans
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Church is a moment in time when the kingdom of God draws near, when a meal, a story, a song, an apology, and even a failure id made holy by the presence of Jesus among us and within us.
Rachel Held Evans
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What a comfort to know that God is a poet.
Rachel Held Evans
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When the people of God abandoned the covenant of love and fidelity, drawn as we are by the appeal of shallow, empty pleasures, God removed every possible obstruction to the covenant by being faithful for us, by becoming like us and subjecting Himself to the very worst within us, loving us all the way to the cross and all the way out of the grave.
Rachel Held Evans
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Millennials aren't looking for a hipper Christianity.
Rachel Held Evans
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Perhaps the most radical thing we followers of Jesus can do in the information age is treat each other like humans-not heroes, not villains, not avatars, not statuses, not Republicans, not Democrats, not Calvinists, not Emergents-just humans. This wouldn't mean we would stop disagreeing, but I think it would mean we would disagree well.
Rachel Held Evans
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The church is the last place we want to be sold another product, the last place we want to be entertained.
Rachel Held Evans
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But if the world is watching, we might as well tell the truth. And the truth is, the church doesn't offer a cure. It doesn't offer a quick fix. The church offers death and resurrection. The church offers the messy, inconvenient, gut-wrenching, never-ending work of healing and reconciliation.
Rachel Held Evans
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I have come to regard with some suspicion those who claim that the Bible never troubles them. I can only assume this means they haven’t actually read it.
Rachel Held Evans
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We turned an anthem into an assignment, a poem into a job description.
Rachel Held Evans
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What each of us longs for the most is to be both fully known and fully loved. Miraculously, God feels the same way about us. God, too, wants to be fully known and fully loved. God wants this so much that He has promised to knock down every obstacle in the way, enduring even His own death, to be with us, to consummate this love.
Rachel Held Evans