C. John Miller > Quotes

“A pastor really needs to be broken before God every day, or he will break up the church of God with his willfulness or let it slip into spiritual death through his sloth.”
― C. John Miller, The Heart of a Servant Leader: Letters from Jack Miller

“We want God to show us the “practical” things. Who should I marry? What career should I pursue? We want guidance, but Jesus wants to give us himself. Jesus is the light of the world: he is the answer. He wants to show his glory in our lives.”
― C John Miller, Saving Grace: Daily Devotions from Jack Miller

“Remember, the only real leader you have is Jesus Christ. Unless you are daily taught of Him you will not be able to make the right decisions. To get to Him you need to pray, but it needs to be prayer of a unique quality. You can pray all night and all day and still not be in touch with His will. Prayer is not full and effective unless it adds up to our learning to wait upon the Lord for Him to make known His will. He needs to break down our tendency to cry out in prayer "Your will be done," and then to get up and still try to impose our will on circumstances.”
― C. John Miller, The Heart of a Servant Leader: Letters from Jack Miller

“God-given prayer and praise have as their essence a waiting on God, a willingness to be wrought upon by the hammer and the fire of the Almighty, until the chains of self-centered desires fall away from the personality, and the love of Christ become the deepest hunger of the inner life.”
― C. John Miller, The Heart of a Servant Leader: Letters from Jack Miller

“The most important part that Rose Marie and I had was to learn to stay out of the way and to put our lives at his disposal to be used in ways often contrary to our own instincts. Christ captured Barbara in a way that highlighted her unwillingness to submit to him and our helplessness in changing her. Indeed, more than once he let us see that we needed to be rescued as much as Barbara did—perhaps even more, since there is no more impenetrable barrier to God’s love than the sense of being right. So often self-righteousness controls a parent’s attitudes toward a rebellious offspring. For”
― C. John Miller, Come Back Barbara

“Many fathers and mothers are simply more satisfied with a child’s conformity and less concerned with the youngster’s motivation and hidden desires, with what the Bible calls “the thoughts of the heart.” Often unconsciously, the self-centered parent labors to form an orderly child who performs well in public and does not shame the family by disturbing the status quo. The problem, of course, is not with the orderliness of the child, but with the shaping of a person with a desensitized conscience, a performer who has never learned to love God or people from the heart (pp. 160-161).”
― C. John Miller, Come Back, Barbara

“What I finally came to as I walked and prayed for you is the old, old story of getting the gospel clear in your own hearts and minds, making it clear to others, and doing it with only one motive — the glory of Christ. Getting the glory of Christ before your eyes and keeping it there — is the greatest work of the Spirit that I can imagine. And there is no greater peace, especially in the times of treadmill-like activity, than doing it all for the glory of the Lord Jesus. Think much of the Savior's suffering for you on that dreadful cross, think much of your sin that provoked such suffering, and then enter by faith into the love that took away your sin and guilt, and then give your work your best. Give it your heart out of gratitude for a tender, seeking, and patient Savior. Then every event becomes a shiny glory moment to be cherished — whether you drink tea or try to get the verb forms of the new language.”
― C. John Miller, The Heart of a Servant Leader: Letters from Jack Miller

“I wanted a well-organized church, and it was—as well organized as the local cemetery and just as dead. In my life and in my preaching there was no touch of the love of God, no grace. When we come to the impossible and are broken again and again, that’s when we cry out to Jesus for grace. That’s what changes yourself and others. That’s the heart of growing to be like Christ.”
― C. John Miller, Saving Grace: Daily Devotions from Jack Miller

“When you get alone with God and begin to pray, you learn your insignificance. You see how big and powerful God is, and suddenly, the whole of your life becomes worship and praise.”
― C. John Miller, Saving Grace: Daily Devotions from Jack Miller

“Recently I was caught up in a spirit of anxiety. Nothing would shake it. But I simply gave myself to thanking and praising God for everything I could think of.”
― C. John Miller, The Heart of a Servant Leader: Letters from Jack Miller

“Suppose you have shown a lot of mercy to someone. But they haven’t ever thanked you or acknowledged what you have done. When that happens to me, my instinct is to want to choke that person. But when you know God’s mercy to you in Christ, when you know the forgiveness of sins, your hands are so full of God’s good gifts of mercy and grace that you don’t have a hand free to choke anyone.”
― C. John Miller, Saving Grace: Daily Devotions from Jack Miller

“If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. 1 John 1:9 Recognizing and confessing sin is a normal part of the Christian life. God didn’t declare us righteous because of Christ and then leave us to wallow in sin. Rather, he has an ongoing strategy for us that involves getting rid of more and more sin. It’s like living in a dim room that appears clean, and then pulling up the shades or turning on the light, only to see that it is really dusty and dirty. Even though the room feels dirtier now than before, the dirt was there all along. When we walk in the light of the Lord and struggle to love people, we begin to see more things wrong with us. What’s more, the devil says, “There’s no hope for you. God couldn’t love somebody as bad as you.” The truth is that all along you were this bad, this messed up, and this selfish. It was only as the light came in that you saw all these problems. This is a signal, not for despair, but for hope! Don’t be depressed by what you see, but rather learn to own up to your sins by faith and disown them by confessing them. If you confess your sins, they really are forgiven. You can go forward to love others in ways you never dreamed possible.”
― C. John Miller, Saving Grace: Daily Devotions from Jack Miller

“Don’t let your emotional life be controlled by the sin you see in others.”
― C. John Miller, The Heart of a Servant Leader: Letters from Jack Miller

“Jesus was born under the law of God and took on himself the condemnation we deserved for our sin. Now the full legal rights of adoption are given to us who are in Christ by faith.”
― C. John Miller, Saving Grace: Daily Devotions from Jack Miller

“Our natural tendency is to judge and condemn others. But here we find that, because of the cross we’ve been freed from God’s curse and liberated as sons and daughters. We are now free to humble ourselves and walk along with someone who is erring, even if they’ve sinned in a way that may be very terrible. When you bear each other’s burdens, what you are carrying is the burden of the other person’s sin. What motivates you is your compassion. You come alongside the sinner, not trying to crush them, but putting your arm around him or her as much as you can, as if to say, “Jesus loves you, so do I, and we want you to know this.”
― C. John Miller, Saving Grace: Daily Devotions from Jack Miller

“The mind of Christ brings such quietness where otherwise the life would be ruled by discontent and all kinds of defenses and ambitions.”
― C. John Miller, The Heart of a Servant Leader: Letters from Jack Miller

“Her next point is that people really can’t stand to look closely at themselves and these patterns unless they understand justification by faith and union with Christ.”
― C. John Miller, The Heart of a Servant Leader: Letters from Jack Miller

“Without faith in Christ, repentance becomes soul-chilling remorse.”
― C. John Miller, Repentance

“Second, many others have an awareness of their guilt, but do not know how to go to Christ and rid themselves of their dark blots. In their secret heart God is viewed as an unsympathetic tyrant, not as the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.”
― C. John Miller, Repentance

“Examining yourself is fine—if you relate it to the cross and Christ’s love for you.”
― C. John Miller, The Heart of a Servant Leader: Letters from Jack Miller

“Basically at the beginning of a ministry, the leader should humble himself and not try to do too much. Really, even later a good pastor is pretty much a good listener, a patient, deliberate questioner;”
― C. John Miller, The Heart of a Servant Leader: Letters from Jack Miller

“In other words, to quote my dear wife Rose Marie, “It’s important not to decide hastily like an orphan in flight, but like a son who knows the Father’s unconditional love.”
― C. John Miller, The Heart of a Servant Leader: Letters from Jack Miller

“Never again look at your sins apart from Christ. You can’t handle them. You’ll either suppress them and deny that they’re there, or if you see how bad they are, they will overwhelm you. Learn to view your mistakes, your failings, and your transgressions in the light of Jesus’s forgiveness.”
― C. John Miller, Saving Grace: Daily Devotions from Jack Miller

“Anyway I suspect that Reformed people, especially in the English Puritan tradition, have been especially prone to nomism.”
― C. John Miller, The Heart of a Servant Leader: Letters from Jack Miller

“So far we have seen from Scripture that sinners must repent so that they may be near to God and no longer in a state of death.”
― C. John Miller, Repentance

“The difference, however, was that she knew nothing of the joy and power which comes through a believing repentance. Finally, in a dramatic”
― C. John Miller, Repentance

“We have a love for each other that does not overlook faults and sins, but leads us to accept correction and rebuke from one another. As we pray, correction from one another ceases to be a threat and becomes a way of release from the bondages of our small visions, self-centered motives, and lust for pre-eminence.”
― C. John Miller, The Heart of a Servant Leader: Letters from Jack Miller

“They emphasize intense religious experience, and they tend to stress sin as human actions without taking sufficiently into account sin as a state of the heart.”
― C. John Miller, Repentance

“What these people seek from God is enough grace to be strong in themselves.”
― C. John Miller, Repentance

“Get it deep into your mind that your only master is Christ, and that He has power to show you what to do in situations that are overwhelming or boring or draining.”
― C. John Miller, The Heart of a Servant Leader: Letters from Jack Miller