Grace is everywhere, like lenses that go unnoticed because you are looking through them.
Philip Yancey...to see that God does answer, in great things as well as small, the prayers of those who put their trust in Him will strengthen the faith of multitudes.
Philip YanceyThe self-sacrificing, servant aspect of the Christian life has many parallels to parenthood.
Philip YanceyFor me, the world of nature bears spectacular witness to the imaginative genius of our Creator.
Philip Yancey... 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 YanceyIf we comprehend what Christ has done for us, then surely out of gratitude we will strive to live 'worthy' of such great love. We will strive for holiness not to make God love us but because He already does.
Philip YanceySome who attempt prayer never have the sense of anyone listening on the other end. They blame themselves for doing it wrong.... Prayer requires the faith to believe that God listens.
Philip YanceyBe still. In that focus, all else comes into focus. In that rift in my routine, the universe falls into alignment.
Philip YanceyI ask God most often that we would be an unbroken line of Christians until Christ shall return.
Philip YanceyAs a writer, I play with words all day long. I toy with them, listen for their overtones, crack them open, and try to stuff my thoughts inside.
Philip YanceyOne Harlem preacher likens us to the pink plastic spoons at Baskin Robbins: we give the world a foretaste of what lies ahead, the vision of the Biblical prophets. In a world gone astray we should be activity demonstrating here and now God's will for the planet.
Philip YanceyFor me, prayer is not so much me setting out a shopping list of requests for God to consider as it is a way of keeping company with God.
Philip YanceyJohn Wesley taught that the gospel of Christ involved more than saving souls. It should have an impact on all of society, and his followers worked to accomplish just that. They were dispensing grace to the broader world, and in the process their spirit helped change a nation, saving it from the revolutionary chaos that had spread across Europe.
Philip YanceyThe proof of spiritual maturity is not how pure you are but awareness of your impurity. That very awareness opens the door to grace.
Philip YanceyIn a nutshell, the Bible from Genesis 3 to Revelation 22 tells the story of a God reckless with desire to get his family back.
Philip YanceyIf my activism, however well-motivated, drives out love, then I have misunderstood Jesus’ gospel. I am stuck with law, not the gospel of grace.
Philip YanceyWhen suffering happens, it forces us to confront life in a different way than we normally do.
Philip YanceyGod formed an alliance based on the world as it is, full of flaws, whereas prayer calls God to account for the world as it should be.
Philip YanceyMost observers understand the difference between a committed Christian who accepts Jesus as a model for living and a 'cultural Christian' who happens to live in a nation with a Christian heritage. Most Muslims do not.
Philip YanceyThe church works best not as a power center, rather as a countercultural community - in the world but not of it - that shows others how to live the most fulfilled and meaningful life on earth. In modern society that means rejecting the false gods of independence, success, and pleasure and replacing them with love for God and neighbor.
Philip YanceyRepentance, not proper behavior or even holiness, is the doorway to grace. And the opposite of sin is grace, not virtue.
Philip YanceyThe 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 YanceyI fell in love. It felt exactly like a fall, a head-over-heels tumble into a state of unbearable lightness. The earth tilted on its axis. I did not believe in romantic love at the time, thinking it a human construct, an invention of fourteenth century Italian poets. I was as unprepared for love as I had been for goodness and beauty. Suddenly, my heart seemed swollen, too large for my chest.
Philip YanceyPolitics deals with externals: borders, wealth, crimes. Authentic forgiveness deals with the evil in a persons heart, something for which politics has no cure. Virulent evil (racism, ethnic hatred) spreads through society like an airborne disease, one cough infects a whole busload. When moments of grace do occur, the world must pause, fall silent, and acknowledge that indeed forgiveness offers a kind of cure. There will be no escape from wars, from hunger, from misery, from rancid discrimination, from denial of human rights, if our hearts aren't changed.
Philip YanceySome of us seem so anxious about avoiding hell that we forget to celebrate our journey toward heaven.
Philip YanceyCharles Williams has said of the Lord's Prayer, "No word in English carries a greater possibility of terror than the little word 'as' in that clause." What makes the 'as' so terrifying? The fact that Jesus plainly links our forgiven-ness by the Father with our forgiving-ness of fellow human beings. Jesus' next remark could not be more explicit: 'If you do not forgive men their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins.'
Philip YanceyWe need faith and the mind of the Lord Jesus to recognize something of lasting value in even our most ordinary tasks.
Philip YanceyWe, Jesus' followers, are the agents assigned to carry out God's will on earth. Too easily we expect God to do something for us when instead God wants to do it through us.
Philip YanceyAs 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 YanceyWhat I see in the Bible, especially in the book of Psalms, which is a book of gratitude for the created world, is a recognition that all good things on Earth are God's, every good gift is from above. They are good if we recognize where they came from and if we treat them the way the Designer intended them to be treated.
Philip YanceyGod 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 YanceyChristian faith is... basically about love and being loved and reconciliation. These things are so important, they're foundational and they can transform individuals, families.
Philip YanceyWe can’t expect the nation to operate by Christian principles… but we can expect this of the church.
Philip YanceyOne of the things I found is that the things we want to say for well-intentioned motives often cause more harm than good. People don't need our words. They mainly need our presence, they need our love. And if you come in too quickly with explanations, you may do more harm than good.
Philip YanceyThe Cross of Christ may have overcome evil, but it did not overcome unfairness. For that, Easter is required.
Philip YanceySometimes I feel like the most liberal person among conservatives, and sometimes like the most conservative among liberals.
Philip Yancey