Christians are simply pilgrims who acknowledge their lostness and their desire for help in finding the way.
Philip YanceyChristianity is not a purely intellectual, internal faith. It can only be lived in community.
Philip YanceyIn 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 YanceyPain narrows vision. The most private of sensations, it forces us to think of ourselves and little else.
Philip YanceyGrace is heartfelt, tinged with love, a spillover gift of the God who extended undeserved favor toward us.
Philip YanceyWe grow up hungry for love, and in ways so deep as to remain unexpressed we long for our Maker to love us.
Philip YanceyI rejected the church for a time because I found so little grace there. I returned because I found grace nowhere else.
Philip YanceyForgiveness is the only way to break the cycle of blame-and pain-in a relationship...It does not settle all questions of blame and justice and fairness...But it does allow relationships to start over. In that way, said Solzhenitsyn, we differ from all animals. It is not our capacity to think that makes us different, but our capacity to repent, and to forgive.
Philip YanceyWe tend to think, 'Life should be fair because God is fair.' But God is not life. And if I confuse God with the physical reality of life- by expecting constant good health for example- then I set myself up for crashing disappointment.
Philip YanceyLike all good things, prayer requires some discipline. Yet I believe that life with God should seem more like friendship than duty. Prayer includes moments of ecstasy and also dullness, mindless distraction and acute concentration, flashes of joy and bouts of irritation. In other words, prayer has features in common with all relationships that matter.
Philip YanceyChristians fail to communicate to others because we ignore basic principles in relationship. When we make condescending judgments or proclaim lofty words that don't translate into action, or simply speak without first listening, we fail to love - and thus deter a thirsty world from Living Water. The good news about God's grace goes unheard.
Philip YanceyUnless we love natural goods - sex, alcohol, food, money, success, power - in the way God intended, we become their slaves, as any addict can attest.
Philip YanceyLove was compressed for all history in that lonely figure on the cross, who said that he could call down angels at any moment on a rescue mission, but chose not to - because of us. At Calvary, God accepted his own unbreakable terms of justice.
Philip YanceyThunderously, inarguably, the Sermon on the Mount proves that before God we all stand on level ground: murderers and temper-throwers, adulterers and lusters, thieves and coveters. We are all desperate, and that is in fact the only state appropriate to a human being who wants to know God. Having fallen from the absolute Ideal, we have nowhere to land but in the safety net of absolute grace.
Philip YanceyRather, God has commissioned us as agents of intervention in the midst of a hostile and broken world.
Philip YanceyWhen I pray for another person, I am praying for God to open my eyes so that I can see that person as God does, and then enter into the stream of love that God already directs toward that person.
Philip YanceyEugene 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 YanceyIf 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 YanceyIf prayer stands as the place where God and human beings meet, then I must learn about prayer.
Philip YanceyPrayer may seem at first like disengagement, a reflective time to consider God's point of view. But that vantage presses us back to accomplish God's will, the work of the kingdom. We are God's fellow workers, and as such we turn to prayer to equip us for the partnership.
Philip YanceyThe 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 YanceyI 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.
Philip YanceyThe 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 YanceyYet as I read the birth stories about Jesus I cannot help but conclude that though the world may be tilted toward the rich and powerful, God is tilted toward the underdog.
Philip YanceyAnd perhaps, exhibiting the fruit of the Spirit may be our very best defense against a materialist view of mankind here on earth.
Philip YanceyJesus' 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.
Philip YanceyIf your church conveys that spirit of condescension or judgment, it's likely not a place where grace is on tap.
Philip YanceyIn the stories of extravagant grace given to us by Jesus, there are no loopholes disqualifying us from God's love.
Philip YanceyA God wise enough to create me and the world I live in is wise enough to watch out for me.
Philip YanceyPrayer is to the skeptic a delusion, a waste of time. To the believer it represents perhaps the most important use of time.
Philip YanceyThe Christian sees the world as a transitional home badly in need of rehab, and we are active agents in that project.
Philip YanceyWe admit that we will never reach our ideal in this life, a distinctive the church claims that most other human institutions try to deny.
Philip YanceyChristians have an important role to play in contending that no human life is "devoid of value." We can do so through courageous protest, as happened in Germany, as well, as in compassionate care for the most vulnerable members of society, as Mother Teresa did. In both approaches theology - what one believes about God and human life - matters. The world desperately needs that good news.
Philip YanceyPolitics draws lines between people; in contrast, Jesus' love cuts across those lines and dispenses grace. That does not mean, of course, that Christians should not involve themselves in politics. It simply means that as we do so we must not let the rules of power displace the command to love.
Philip YanceyGrace comes free of charge to people who do not deserve it and I am one of those people... Now I am trying in my own small way to pipe the tune of grace. I do so because I know, more surely than I know anything, that any pang of healing or forgiveness or goodness I have ever felt comes solely from the grace of God.
Philip Yancey