Insightful Statements
“In a vision Ezekiel saw the glorious river of God, and we can see it now. It’s a wide river that includes and embraces all nations. It’s a gushing river of celebration of God’s blessing. It’s a powerful river of the unleashed energy of God. It’s a deep river of spiritual depth and devotion to God, and it’s getting longer, wider, and faster and deeper and fresher and more powerful with each passing hour!”
“We can be wonderfully captured by Christ—first our hearts and then our wills, then the powerful passion and inner drives, then our habits and our hopes—until we are lost in His wonder and grace.”
“See for a moment the desolate moonscape of your soul—rocky and lonely, starkly barren and coldly silent. Let God inhabit the lonely planet of your heart and change it.”
“Every preacher must remember his role—He is not the cause of people’s coming to Christ, but he should be the catalyst, and he can be if he is under the anointing of God.”
“It’s not too simplistic to say that we all live by one of two principles: my way—His way. In the end my way produces frustration, and His produces fulfillment.”
“It needs to be said that those who do as little as possible hoping to get as much as possible make human rules absolutely necessary and divine judgment absolutely sure.”
“It seems strange but true that it is only those who see a world beyond this world and prepare for it that get their values right in this one.”
“Belief in Jesus Christ is always practical faith, and I will tell you why. True faith means you base your whole life on it. Every Christian should unashamedly say—If Christ is wrong, then my own life is misguided because I have put all my eggs in that one basket!”
“Nothing is much more blessed than meeting a person of such transparent integrity that they never leave anyone in doubt as to where they stand.”
“We must not neglect Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s passionate plea in The Cost of Discipleship against the cheapening of Christianity until it becomes a set of propositions assented to and of acts performed rather than the vibrant, vital personal relationship with the once-crucified, forever-risen Christ.”
“There cannot be living faith without thought, but for the believer there should be no thought without living faith.”
“Few things offend modern man like being told that the human mind working in its own light and by its own steam is, in fact, dark and bent toward evil and blind to God, but that’s what Scripture says.”
“Tell the man on the street that the final arbiter of truth is not human reason but divine revelation, and get prepared to be ignored and scorned.”
“Five centuries before Christ there was a Greek thinker named Protagoras. His famous expression was, ‘Man is the measure of all things.’ Today that still is the conclusion of our prideful, private approach to life and of our independent judgment.”
“In some ways it seems very simple. If modern Christians approached Scripture the way Jesus approached Scripture, our basic idea would be, this is God’s words, and God cannot err. Therefore, we would all be inerrantists!”
“The assumption that there may be untrue statements in Scripture is simply an intellectual’s way of declaring his rebellion against God.”
“Jesus taught His disciples to receive Scripture as all truth and totally authoritative. Jesus never hinted to any other attitude toward it. In fact, He excluded it!”
“God does not love us because Christ died for us; Christ died for us because God loved us.”
“Martin Lloyd-Jones once said, ‘As I see it . . . the greatest of all the lessons . . . the secret of success in the realm of the church and the things of the Spirit is to go back.’ If that is true, to go forward, we must go back, for in going back we discover the New Testament pattern and rediscover the secret that empowered them.”
“The secret power of faith is not with the one who believes but in the one believed! It is not a great faith that saves you but a great Savior.”
“In short, what does it mean to believe in Jesus? Why, it means to throw yourself on His mercy. Yes, throw your life at His feet, and he will take you in His arms.”
“By the death of the Son of God, the God of life has given us all things—for Jesus bought them by His blood. Come and adore Him!”
“God’s eternal purposes are no more affected by man’s ravings and rebellion than the sun is affected by shining on a trash pile or an open grave.”
“The Bible is a mirror where we see ourselves clearly and a spotlight by which we see Jesus supremely.”
“Think of the Bible as a telescope but also as a microscope. As a microscope we use it to examine the disease in our souls; but as a telescope we use it to see the Captain of our souls, the coming, conquering King.”
“Open the Bible—look within, look through, look on, and look beyond! It will give you insight, clear sight, foresight, and hindsight for living. It’s good for inspection, protection, and reflection.
“We do not become baptized in order to become Christians. Rather, we get baptized to show what we have become. Water baptism is illustration, not for salvation. It does not cleanse; it confesses! It does not wash—it witnesses!”
“When I speak like this, I always ask God to give me tears. If “eternal” when spoken of heaven means forever and ever, then “eternal” means the same when we speak of hell. In fact, an endless hell would be as difficult to remove from the New Testament as an endless heaven!”
“It is an extraordinary, contrasting fact that the world sees death as conclusive, but the Bible sees it as a beginning. To the believer death is a dark door that opens on a wonderful new world of increasing joy.”
“Real Christians do not view a short life as being cheated out of something wonderful, but as rapid promotion into something more wonderful.”
“I can say—because God has helped us, He can help us now, and I would rather rest on that fact than have unlimited blessings yet be without God’s uninterrupted presence.”
“Just because I cannot see how God will help me, does that mean that He will not help? Unbelief says because I cannot see His face, He must be frowning. Faith says I need not see His face, for I know His heart!”
“Let others verify my unabashed conviction that no one has the right to say, ‘Jesus is Lord of my heart,’ if that same person has not made the Bible lord of his mind.”
“Even the most rebellious person enjoys the blessings of God, but only those whose heart is turned toward God enjoy the God of blessing. Only those who truly love God seek His face regardless of what is in His hand.”
“When we come to an impasse in life, and we are unable to understand events with a faith that thinks, then we should accept them with a faith that adores.”
“In a nutshell, if I had to narrow it down to just two purposes of Scripture, I think I would say it would be to tell us to adore the Lord Jesus and to amend our lives. Yes, to adore and amend, to respond and repent! And I think it’s possible to do both at the same moment in time.”
“In Scripture God may not tell us all the truth on a subject, but all that He told us is all truth.”
“The Bible is the timeliest book for here and now and the testing book for hereafter.”
“A mouth that complains and a heart that is grateful cannot be found in the same human body.”
“Mature Christians face a trial and say in faith, ‘It’s not so bad!’ They experience a blessing and say in gratitude, ‘It couldn’t be better!’ Let God teach us to make little of our problems and much of our blessings.”
“It is a foolish thing to throw away the main course because there is no dessert, and it is even more shortsighted to not enjoy the blessings of today because we are not told the blessing of tomorrow.”
“It would seem to me that those of us who say that Jesus means more to us than anything of this world should find ways to demonstrate that it is true or keep quiet.”
“Because God respects us, He allows us the right to make decisions, even when the choices destroy us.”
“When we truly follow Christ, the demands are a total surrender, but that does not matter. For, what we give up pales into insignificance compared to what we gain.”
“Evangelistic passion looks, as Jesus said, ‘on the fields’ to the world without, and it looks to the world without because the evangelist has looked to the world beyond.”
“Never even dream of contributing to your own salvation. It’s all of God and all of grace! In fact, the only thing we ever contributed was the sin that made forgiveness necessary!”
“Now, what is faith? Faith is the eye that beholds the Lamb of God; it is the hand that accepts the gift of grace; it is the mouth that drinks the cup of salvation.”
“We must remember faith has no value in itself—absolutely none! The value of faith is the object of faith. We believe in Jesus Christ; He saves us, not faith!”
“We must think it through—the source of forgiveness is God’s amazing grace, and the basis of forgiveness is Christ’s precious blood.”
“Too many of us who were born originals live as clones and die as copies. Have the courage to be the you God made.”
“The atmosphere of expectancy is the breeding ground of the supernatural.”
“No person who thought like a victim ever lived like a victor because attitude affects altitude.”
“The key to successful personal evangelism is to live being ready for those that God has made ready.”
“God never writes down your past and a way of writing off your future. The mistakes of yesterday do not forfeit the miracle of tomorrow.”
“To die without hope is simply the natural outcome grown of living without purpose.”
“I do not know anything that erodes our character, robs our joy, and embitters our spirit more quickly than comparing what we have with others of our generation.”
“Think of the contrast between love and lust. Love says, ‘Ultimately!’ Lust says ‘Immediately!” Love gives; lust gets. Love satisfies; lust gratifies. Loves brings fulfillment; lust produces emptiness.”
“Insecure people always produce isolation, and isolation always produces loneliness.”
“When someone truly loves the Lord, what some people call duty they will call delight! What some would call hard work, they will call sheer joy."
“Why the cross? God met death with death that He might give us life. We were dead in sin so Christ died that we might have His life! Your pardon is bought with His blood.”
“Show me a person constantly aware that their pardon was bought by His blood, and I will show you a person God will use for His glory.”
“I can always pray—for when I cannot pray in words, I groan in faith. When I cannot speak, I say to Jesus, ‘Speak for me, you know my heart-cry.’”
“No preacher can remain in error long who often extols the power of the shed blood of Christ. I do not know anyone who is far off the mark theologically who is grateful for Jesus’ dying for their sins.”
“Stand up and make it very plain when you preach. Preach the ruin caused by the sin of man and the remedy provided by the grace of God. Preach that!”
“Be willing to be made nothing in order to make Christ everything. People will remember Christ forever if they hear about Him from a person willing to be forgotten.”
“If you do no good for God talking to your neighbor across the fence, you will do no good for God talking to the stranger across the seas. Start at home or stay at home!”
“Live so that one line could be truthfully written on your tombstone—‘Here lies one that lived to make Christ known.’”
“When you say to God, ‘I surrender all,’ you do not always know where you will be going, but you should always know what you are going after!—His glory!”
Michael Gott speaks of his sense of life mission:
“I was called by God. — It still moves me deeply when I realize it and confess that my life work is to be an evangelist like the ones of Paul’s day. I feel it is incumbent on me to seek to do that with every fiber of my being every time I have the opportunity before a person or a group numbered in the hundreds.”
“I realize some are trying to package their preaching to be popular with applauding Christian crowds; a few are trying to make their preaching simple enough to be understood by the lonely and lost. I’m checking my motives all the time.”
“Personally, I love the words of Jesus when He said, ‘... I chose you and appointed you, that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should remain ...’ (John 15:16)”