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 More Quotes by Philip Yancey More Quotes From Philip Yancey Goodness cannot be imposed externally, from the top down; it must grow internally, from the bottom up. Philip Yancey top-down grows goodness Indeed we are all in peril if the flawed messenger invalidates the message. Philip Yancey peril messengers messages Homeless people bear God's image too. Philip Yancey homeless bears people Curiously, the righteous Pharisees had little historical impact, save for a brief time in a remote corner of the Roman Empire. But Jesus' disciples - an ornery, undependable, and hopelessly flawed group of men - became drunk with the power of a gospel that offered free forgiveness to the worst sinners and traitors. Those men managed to change the world. Philip Yancey impact men jesus People instinctively know the difference between something done with a profit motive and something done with a love motive. Philip Yancey differences done people 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 loyalty religious faith Faith is not simply a private matter, or something we practice once a week at church. Rather, it should have a contagious effect on the broader world. Jesus used these images to illustrate His kingdom.: a sprinkle of yeast causing the whole loaf to rise, a pinch of salt preserving a slab of meat, the smallest seed in the garden growing into a great tree in which birds of the air come to nest. Philip Yancey garden air jesus The more we love, and the more unlikely people we love, the more we resemble God - who, after all, loves ornery creatures like us. Philip Yancey ornery unlikely people Eugene Peterson points out that "the root meaning in Hebrew of salvation is to be broad, to become spacious, to enlarge. It carries the sense of deliverance from an existence that has become compressed, confined and cramped." God wants to set free, to make it possible for us to live open and loving lives with God and our neighbors. "I run in the path of your commands, for you have set my heart free," wrote the psalmist. Philip Yancey loving-life heart running In the move The Last Emperor, the young child anointed as the last emperor of China lives a magical life of luxury with a thousand eunuch servants at his command. "What happens when you do wrong?" his brother asks. "When I do wrong, someone else is punished," the boy emperor replies. To demonstrate, he breaks a jar, and one of the servants is beaten. In Christian theology, Jesus reversed that ancient pattern: when the servants erred, the King was punished. Grace is free only because the giver himself has borned the cost. Philip Yancey brother religious christian 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 use-of-power parent attitude Misunderstanding must be nakedly exposed before true understanding can begin to flourish. Philip Yancey true-understanding exposed understanding I am learning that mature faith, which encompasses both simple faith and fidelity, works the opposite of paranoia. It reassembles all the events of life around trust in a loving God. When good things happen, I accept them as gifts from God, worthy of thanksgiving. When bad things happen, I do not take them as necessarily sent by God -- I see evidence in the Bible to the contrary -- and I find in them no reason to divorce God. Rather, I trust that God can use even those bad things for my benefit. Philip Yancey divorce simple opposites Jesus is the best clue we have as to what God is like and He is consistently gracious and merciful, especially to those who are failures. He is harsh to uptight, judgmental people, but merciful and gracious to the failures. He seems to draw out the smallest kernel of faith in each person that He's with. So, I presume that that's the way God is going to judge humanity. Philip Yancey judging people jesus I have yet to find any support in the Bible for an attitude of smugness: Ah, they deserve their punishment; watch them squirm. Philip Yancey punishment support attitude If your church conveys that spirit of condescension or judgment, it's likely not a place where grace is on tap. Philip Yancey church grace spirit God operates by different rules of time and space. And God's infinite greatness, which we would expect to diminish us, actually makes possible the very closeness that we desire. A God unbound by our rules of time has the ability to invest in every person on earth. God has, quite literally, all the time in the world for each one of us. Philip Yancey greatness space desire I would say my being disheartened has more to do with American culture than anything else. We are becoming a very shallow culture. My goodness, the celebrity ethos has taken over completely. Turn on the television and you see that over and over. There's very little substance. And so, everything gets shorter. Everything is entertainment oriented. Our churches reflect that. A thirty-five minute sermon without a Power Point or video clips is rare these days. That's not true in other countries so much. Philip Yancey ethos taken country Prayer enters the pool of God's love and widens outward. Philip Yancey gods-love pool prayer Thanks to the scientific method, most people in "developed" countries have an outlook of mild deism. We assume things like weather and disease operate according to fixed natural laws. Every so often, though, problems impinge on us so directly that we stretch beyond that mildly deistic stance and ask God to intervene. When a drought drags on too long, we pray for rain. When a young mother gets a diagnosis of cervical cancer, we solicit prayers for her healing. We beseech God as if trying to talk God into something God otherwise might not want to do. Philip Yancey prayer mother country
