Michael W. Smith > Quotes

“... each one of us will face a moment when eternity whispers into our hearts, This is your time.”
― Michael W. Smith, This Is Your Time

“Real joy comes when we get the right desire met - the desire for God himself, for a life led by the Spirit, fulfilling not our material desires but our deepest need, which is to be in a close relationship with our Creator. That is the source of true blessing. The only source.”
― Michael W. Smith

“If you are a Christ follower, the evil one is after you. When you signed on for Christ, you enlisted in a great war. You became a combatant in a titanic battle for spiritual dominion that has been going on since before Adam and Eve. The enemy has marked you for annihilation, and his demonic armies are aiming their big guns right at your heart.

Satan wants you to stumble and fall. He wants your failure to cause others to think that Christianity is empty of meaning and powerless to change lives. If he can tempt you to forget whose side you're on just for a moment... if Satan can get you to forget your commitment to holiness for just that moment, he may bring down not only you, but others who are watching you. It's a serious thing to be a follower of Jesus. We must find ourselves in a state of constant dependency on him. We must ask God for his strength to overcome the evil one and resist such temptations.”
― Michael W. Smith

“... true blessings come not from stuff or from satisfying the self; they come from submitting one's self to God.”
― Michael W. Smith

“We have the assurance that God's grace is sufficient for us, freeing us from the bondage of legalism. We are no longer locked up by a sense of duty; instead we are compelled to holy living by his great love for us. Because of this grace we are free to live our lives in a way that reflects his purity. We can refuse to lower the bar in order to justify our failure. We will never grow into the glorious creatures God knows we can be unless we keep his high standard as our goal, not the standards culture sets for what is righteous and what isn't. We can increase our capacity for obedience to God's leading by keeping our eyes and ears attuned to what is good, lovely, uplifting, encouraging, and positive.”
― Michael W Smith

“I fear that we are being led to become morally lazy. Our affluence has given many of us almost immediate access to virtually anything we want. We have grown comfortable with indulgence, and we don't want to feel guilty about it. Guilt prods us toward the hard work of changing. That's why we want our heroes to be flawed like we are. They assure us that our weaknesses, addictions, moral lapses, and compromises are not unusual. Such heroes become mirrors reflecting a comfortable image that says, Hey, don't get so uptight about your failures and lapses. We're all like this.”
― Michael W Smith

“The grunge, corruption, immorality, and violence that critics like to call reality are not reality at all. They are blights on reality, as rust is a blight on metal, mold is a blight on food, and pond scum is a blight on water. The true reality is found beneath the blight and what God created in the beginning - the perfection of the world as he originally made it. Only the good that God created is real. We came along and added the corruption, evil, pain, decay, and death, which are not reality but contaminations of reality.

To make the concept clearer, if you leave a hammer outside in the weather long enough, you will find its head completely covered with rust. None of the original metal will be invisible. If you value the hammer, you will not accept the rust as its true reality. The true reality is the metal beneath the rust. You will use oils and abrasives to clean away the rust and restore the hammer to its original condition - its true reality.

That's how God looks at the world. He created it pure and uncontaminated. Our original ancestors misused it, and the results is the rust of death, pain, grief, and all the troubles we deal with now. But God values his creation, and he fully intends to remove the rust and restore everything to its original uncontaminated perfection.

That is the ultimate reality. That is true realism. The ugly stuff we contend with day by day is the rust.”
― Michael W Smith

“My guess is that you have, at times, unwittingly prayed for adversity. Think about it. What are you asking for when you pray for patience? You are probably asking for trying situation that will demand that you be patient. What are you asking for when you pray for humility? It's likely you are asking for your ego to be brought down a few notches. What are you asking for when you pray for more reliance on God? Well, you may be asking for God to take away those things you rely on instead of him. When you pray for God's blessings, you are praying for the kind of character that will desire to be holy and do what it takes to get there. Whether you realize it or not, you may be praying for some form of adversity that God will use like an obstacle course to condition you into a strong and fit soldier for his service.”
― Michael w smith

“Born as we are into a fallen race of sinners, we all tend to be selfish. We want things our way. We want what we want when we want it. Good parents do their best to train and discipline that selfishness out of us, and good teachers and pastors reinforce the lesson. But that self-centered tendency is deep-rooted, and it almost always requires hand-to-hand combat in the arena of life where the wants of self are pitted against the needs of others. Marriage and family provides this arena. Family is the perfect challenge to selfishness. Living in a family demands that I be sensitive to the needs of others. It demands my time. It intrudes on my wants. It tramples my ego. It virtually obliterates the concept of leisure. What a blessing!

No, I'm not being facetious; these duties are truly blessings. Without such duties, we would become utterly self-centered, egotistical, and narcissistic- all of which are deadly because focus on self alienates us from God. Facing up to our duties beats down selfishness and forms godly character by challenging the supremacy of self.

Let me be quick to say that marriage and family are not the only means of beating down the curse of selfishness. Many single people and childless couples are truly godly in character, compassionate, loving, and unselfish in all their doings. But I think marriage and family provide a rewarding means of dealing with selfishness because the glue that holds us to it when we'd rather bail out is love.”
― Michael W Smith

“I think we can safely say that you'll never find joy in making yourself into something God didn't intend. You will find joy only in being all he wants you to be. The apostle Paul gives us the key in Romans 8:28: "And we know that God causes everything to work together for the good of those who love God *and are called according to his purpose for them*" (NLT; emphasis added). God has a purpose for you, and he calls you to it. If you don't hear that call, the way to receive the blessing it promises is to clear from your mind the clutter of your own desires. Then pray, counsel, and listen until God's will becomes clear.”
― Michael W. Smith

“... it's not realistic to think we can fill our minds with corrupting images yet hang on to what we know is right. When we continually expose our minds to the standards of the culture, those standards begin to seep into our lives. The fatal change comes so gradually that, like the frog in the kettle, we don't even notice it. First we are no longer shocked by evil. Then we become accustomed to it. Then we tolerate it. Then it's only a tiny step to accept it as normal.”
― Michael W Smith

“God created us in his own image. Of course, that doesn't mean we can be God as he is; it means we can become a little duplicates of him. We won't achieve the glorious potential God has in store for us if we keep our eyes lower to the mirror of merely what is; we must lift them to the window of what can be. That's why the anti-heroes of today's entertainment can hurt us they keep us glued to the mirror instead of the window. If we want to do more than just drift along in the cultural stream, it helps to search up models of goodness, purity, honor, character, and courage, both in our entertainment and in real life... The great advantage to having such heroes is that they don't badger us into changing; they inspire us to want to change.”
― Michael W Smith

“Far from being a way to achieve success, ease, and comfort, Christianity calls us to live a life that forgets self and focuses on being God's instrument to show his love to others.”
― Michael W. Smith

“I am continually amazed at the enormous compliment God gives us in hearing our prayers. It's simply astounds me that the greatest being in the universe wants us involved in placing his power where it's most needed. We have a solemn duty to apply that power and blessing others by offering heartfelt words to God in prayer on behalf of those who have needs.”
― Michael W Smith