Tullian Tchividjian Quotes

If we're not reaching the same people Jesus reached, then we're not preaching the same message Jesus preached.

The overwhelming emphasis of contemporary Christianity: "Just do it." The overwhelming emphasis of Biblical Christianity: "It is finished"

We don't need answers and explanations as much as we need God's presence in and through the suffering.

Grace is upside-down, to-do-list wrecking, scandalous and way-too free. It's one-way love.

Remember on your best day that Jesus had to die for you. Remember on your worst day that he did.

If you look at the gospel, it just doesn't break things apart. The gospel brings things together. One of the great demonstration of the gospel's power is reconciliation.

Because of Jesus the sin we cannot forget God does not remember.

Assurance never comes from looking at ourselves. It only comes as a consequence of looking to Christ.

The people who have taught me the most about grace are those who have blown it so bad that they know how much they need it.

What kind of person should you be to someone who has fallen? The kind of person you will run to when you fall.

Thankfully, while our self-righteousness reaches far, God's grace reaches farther.

The truth is that when it comes to suffering, if we do not go to our graves in confusion, we will not go to our graves trusting. Explanations are a substitute for trust.

Legalism breeds a sense of entitlement that turns us into complainers.

Performancism is the mindset that equates our identity and value directly with our performance and accomplishments.

The gospel doesn't just ignite the Christian life but it keeps Christians growing and growing every day. There's no reason to move beyond the gospel. There's only movement more into it.

The Gospel frees us to speak honestly about the reality of pain, confident that nothing is riding on our ability to cope with or fend off suffering.

People who know they are not good make the best messengers of grace because they are desperately aware of their own need for it.

The gospel alone liberates you to live a life of scandalous generosity, unrestrained sacrifice, uncommon valor, and unbounded courage.

...this culture of mandatory happiness actually promotes dishonesty and more suffering.

We must reacquaint ourselves with the biblical weight of the problem that we less-than-perfect human beings contend with in the face of a holy and righteous God.

I was afraid that if I surrendered my life over to God, God would tell me not to do those things that I desperately wanted to do.

God is not interested in what you think you should be or feel. He is not interested in the narrative you construct for yourself, or that others construct for you. Rather, He is interested in you, the you who suffers, the you who inflicts suffering on others, the you who hides, the you who has bad days (and good ones). And He meets you where you are.

Even one who has been to God a million times with the same problem need not fear exhausting the grace of God.

To progress is always to begin again.

When I was 25, I believed I could change the world. At 41, I have come to the realization that I cannot change my wife, my church, or my kids, to say nothing of the world. Try as I might, I have not been able to manufacture outcomes the way I thought I could, either in my own life or other people's.

To be Biblically balanced is to let our theology and preaching be proportioned by the Bible's radically disproportionate focus on God's saving love for sinners seen and accomplished in the crucified and risen Christ.

The good news of suffering is that it brings us to the end of ourselves - a purpose it has certainly served in my life. It brings us to the place of honesty, which is the place of desperation, which is the place of faith, which is the place of freedom.

If people knew the REAL us, they would run. God knows, stays, and loves.

When we imply that our works are for God and not our neighbor, we perpetuate the idea that God's love for us is dependent on what we do instead of on what Christ has done.

When we reduce the notion of “calling” to work inside the church, we fail to equip our people to apply their Christian faith to everything they do, everywhere they are.

When you fail to distinguish Law and Gospel, you lose both.

Thankfully, God's restraining grace keeps even the worst of us from being utterly depraved. The worst people who have ever lived could've been worse.

The ironic thing about legalism is that it not only doesn't make people work harder, it makes them give up. Moralism doesn't produce morality; rather, it produces immorality.

I was spending way too much time thinking about me and what I needed to do, and far too little time thinking about Jesus and what he had already done for me.

The passive righteousness of faith frees me from passing final judgment on myself.

The heart of the Christian faith is Good News, not good advice, good technique, or good behavior.

The focus of the Christian faith is not our morality; it is Jesus, who died for our immorality.

I was always in places where I was widely accepted, approved and loved and I was finally in a place where people did not approve of me, did not accept me and did not love me. It was killing me.

The deepest fear we have, 'the fear beneath all fears,' is the fear of not measuring up, the fear of judgment. It's this fear that creates the stress and depression of everyday life.

The truth is, narratives of self-justification burble beneath more of our relationships and endeavors than we would care to admit.

God wants every local church to be the first place people think to go when they've really messed up...not the last.