John Stott
Our Christian life began not with our decision to follow Christ but with God's call to us to do so.Collection: Christian
We should travel light and live simply. Our enemy is not possessions but excess.Collection: Money
Do not be content with a static Christian life. Determine rather to grow in faith and love, in knowledge and holiness.Collection: Christian
Truth without love is too hard; love without truth is too soft.Collection: Love Is
The Christian community is a community of the cross, for it has been brought into being by the cross, and the focus of its worship is the Lamb once slain, now glorified. So the community of the cross is a community of celebration, a eucharistic community, ceaselessly offering to God through Christ the sacrifice of our praise and thanksgiving. The Christian life is an unending festival. And the festival we keep, now that our Passover Lamb has been sacrificed for us, is a joyful celebration of his sacrifice, together with a spiritual feasting upon it.Collection: Christian
Simplicity is the first cousin of contentment.Collection: Cousin
Because in no other person but the historic Jesus of Nazareth has God become man and lived a human life on earth, died to bear the penalty of our sins, and been raised from death and exalted to glory, there is no other Savior, for there is no other person who is qualified to save.Collection: Jesus
It is impossible to pray for someone without loving him, and impossible to go on praying for him without discovering that our love for him grows and matures.Collection: Prayer
[Christian rebellion] arises from the doctrine of mankind made in the image of God, and therefore protests against all forms of dehumanization. It sets itself against the social injustices which insult God the Creator, seeks to protect human beings from oppression and longs to liberate them… it protests against every authoritarian regime, whether of the left or of the right, which discriminates against minorities, denies people their civil rights, forbids the free expression of opinions or imprisons people for their views alone.Collection: Christian
The reason I am a Christian is not that it is nice, but that it is true.Collection: Christian
Persecution is simply the clash between two irreconcilable value-systems.Collection: Two
I believe that to preach or to expound the scripture is to open up the inspired text with such faithfulness and sensitivity that God’s voice is heard and His people obey HimCollection: Believe
The law requires works of human achievement; the gospel requires faith in Christ's achievement. The law makes demands and bids us obey; the gospel brings promises and bids us believe.Collection: Believe
The nations are not gathered in automatically. If God has promised to bless "all the families of the earth," he has promised to do so "through Abraham's seed" (Genesis 12:3, 22:18). Now we are Abraham's seed by faith, and the earth's families will be blessed only if we go to them with the gospel. That is God's plain purpose.Collection: Christian
Lord Jesus, I pray that this day I may take up my cross and follow you.Collection: Jesus
His authority on earth allows us to dare to go to all the nations. His authority in heaven gives us our only hope of success. And His presence with us leaves us with no other choice.Collection: Giving
God continues to speak through what He has spoken.Collection: Speak
The Christian community is a community of the cross, for it has been brought into being by the cross, and the focus of its worship is the Lamb once slain, now glorified.Collection: Christian
Good works are indispensable to salvation - not as its ground or means, however, but as its consequence and evidence.Collection: Mean
There is something inherently inappropriate about cherishing small ambitions for God.Collection: Ambition
Social responsibility becomes an aspect not of Christian mission only, but also of Christian conversion. It is impossible to be truly converted to God without being thereby converted to our neighbor.Collection: Christian
Nobody can call himself a Christian who does not worship Jesus.Collection: Christian
Word and worship belong indissolubly to each other. All worship is an intelligent and loving response to the revelation of God, because it is the adoration of His name. Therefore, acceptable worship is impossible without preaching. For preaching is making known the name of the Lord, and worship is praising the name of the Lord made known.Collection: Intelligent
Circumcision stands for a religion of human achievement, of what man can do by his own good works; Christ stands for a religion of divine achievement, of what God has done through the finished work of Christ.Collection: Men
The chief reason why the Christian believes in the divine origin of the Bible is that Jesus Christ Himself taught it.Collection: Christian
Christian people should surely have been in the vanguard of the movement for environmental responsibility, because of our doctrines of creation and stewardship. Did God make the world? Does he sustain it? Has he committed its resources to our care? His personal concern for his own creation should be sufficient to inspire us to be equally concerned.Collection: Christian
Ambitions for self may be quite modest. . . . Ambitions for God, however, if they are to be worthy, can never be modest. There is something inherently inappropriate about cherishing small ambitions for God. How can we ever be content that he should acquire just a little more honour in the world? No. Once we are clear that God is King, then we long to see him crowned with glory and honour, and accorded his true place, which is the supreme place. We become ambitious for the spread of his kingdom and righteousness everywhere.Collection: Kings
The truth is that there are such things as Christian tears, and too few of us ever weep them.Collection: Christian
Perhaps the transformation of the disciples of Jesus is the greatest evidence of all for the resurrection.Collection: Jesus
When the Christian loses himself, he finds himself, he discovers his true identity.Collection: Christian
The incentive to peacemaking is love, but it degenerates into appeasement whenever justice is ignored. To forgive and to ask for forgiveness are both costly exercises. All authentic Christian peacemaking exhibits the love and justice-and so the pain-of the cross.Collection: Christian
Envy is the reverse side of a coin called vanity - Nobody is ever envious of others who is not first proud of himself.Collection: Vanity
The church lies at the very center of the eternal purpose of God. It is not a divine afterthought.Collection: Lying
The major mark of justified believers is joy, especially joy in God himself. We should be the most positive people in the world. For the new community of Jesus Christ is characterized not by a self-centered triumphalism but by a God-centered worship.Collection: Jesus
If we truly worship God, acknowledging and adoring his infinite worth, we find ourselves impelled to make him known to others, in order that they may worship him too. Thus worship leads to witness, and witness in its turn to worship, in a perpetual circle.Collection: Order
Instead of inflicting upon us the judgment we deserved, God in Christ endured it in our place.Collection: Judgment
Do we claim to believe in God? He's a missionary God. You tell me you're committed to Christ. He's a missionary Christ. Are you filled with the Holy Spirit? He's a missionary Spirit. Do you belong to the church? It's a missionary society. And do you hope to go to heaven when you die? It's a heaven into which the fruits of world mission have been and will be gathered.Collection: Believe
Christian giving is to be marked by self-sacrifice and self-forgetfuln ess, not by self-congratula tion.Collection: Christian
In the real world of pain, how could one worship a God who was immune to it?Collection: Pain
The Cross is the blazing fire at which the flame of our love is kindled, but we have to get near enough for its sparks to fall on us.Collection: Fall
We have the means of evangelizing our country, but they are slumbering in the pews of our churches.Collection: Country
Grace is love that cares and stoops and rescues.Collection: Grace
We live and die; Christ died and lived!Collection: Easter
No man has ever appreciated the gospel until the law has first revealed him to himself. It is only against the inky blackness of the night sky that the stars begin to appear, and it is only against the dark background of sin and judgment that the gospel shines forth.Collection: Stars
...The first and great evidence of our walking by the Spirit or being filled with the Spirit is not some private mystical experience of our own, but our practical relationships of love with other people.Collection: Mystical Experiences
The symbol of the religion of Jesus is the cross, not the scales.Collection: Friday
Good conduct arises out of good doctrine.Collection: Doctrine
Moved by the perfection of His holy love, God in Christ substituted Himself for us sinners. That is the heart of the cross of Christ.Collection: Heart