Collin Hansen > Quotes

“More than anything else, your non-Christian friends need not just your gospel words but also a gospel community that testifies to the truth of those gospel words. You want them to watch the life of your church and say, “God really does change people. And he really is building a just and righteous city—here in the church” (see 1 Cor. 14:25; Heb. 11:10).”
― Collin Hansen, Rediscover Church: Why the Body of Christ Is Essential

“Only when you judge yourself a sinner, God will judge you faithful.
Only when you confess your disobedience, God will make you an example for others seeking eternal life.
Only when you understand God's mercy towards you, you can extend mercy toward others.
Only in your ignorance can God make you wise to salvation.
So what is wrong with the world. I am.”
― Collin Hansen

“Few of us are tempted today to dream too big. Rather, our vision shrinks to the size of our limited experience. Yet all things are possible for those who believe in the God who created the heavens and the earth. In our disbelief, we can ask God for inspiration to believe. Then he may give us a vision of divine size.”
― Collin Hansen, A God-Sized Vision: Revival Stories that Stretch and Stir

“In no one could there be the contrast that our Lord experienced between total trust and total knowledge of all the Lord’s goodness and mercy and the total horror of abandonment by God,” Clowney said. “For only Jesus Christ really trusted the Lord, you know, and only Jesus Christ really trusted in all the fullness of broken, unblemished, undeviating trust. And it’s the one who only trusted who is completely abandoned.”
― Collin Hansen, Timothy Keller: His Spiritual and Intellectual Formation

“Roberts called upon Christians to pray for Wales. He believed the church of Jesus Christ on its knees is invincible. Roberts exhorted audiences toward greater faith and spiritual power. He urged them to confess all known sins and reconcile immediately with anyone they had wronged. He spurred Christians to shed any lingering doubt that hindered their relationship with God. He called on them to obey the Holy Spirit without flinching. And he urged all believers to make public profession of their faith in Christ. His messages were not noted for their expert handling of God’s Word, even if they were consistent with its message.”
― Collin Hansen, A God-Sized Vision: Revival Stories that Stretch and Stir

“The effects following this movement are wholly good — the church raised up to a higher spiritual level, almost entire absence of fanaticism because of previous careful instruction in the Bible; not one case of insanity, but many thousands clothed in their right mind; scores of men called to the holy ministry; greater congregations, searching the Word, as many as two thousand meeting in one place for the study of the Bible; many thousands learning to read, and making inquiries; multitudes of them pressing upon the tired missionary and native pastors praying, “Give us to eat.” I beseech you do not listen to any word suggestions of doubt as to the vitality and reality of this. Drunkards, gamblers, thieves, adulterers, murderers, self-righteous Confucianists and dead Buddhists, and thousands of devil-worshipers have been made new men in Christ, the old things gone forever.29”
― Collin Hansen, A God-Sized Vision: Revival Stories that Stretch and Stir

“Presbyterian missionary William Blair remembered. The prayer sounded to me like the falling of many waters, an ocean of prayer beating against God’s throne. It was not many, but one, born of one Spirit, lifted to one Father above. Just as on the day of Pentecost, they were all together in one place, of one accord praying, “and suddenly there came from heaven the sound as of the rushing of a mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they were sitting.” God is not always in the whirlwind, neither does he always speak in a still small voice. He came to us in Pyongyang that night with the sound of weeping. As the prayer continued, a spirit of heaviness and sorrow for sin came down upon the audience. Over on one side, someone began to weep, and in a moment the whole audience was weeping.21”
― Collin Hansen, A God-Sized Vision: Revival Stories that Stretch and Stir

“I arrived back to find Revival in over twenty villages with the same accompaniments as we had on the station, conviction and confession of sin under great emotional stress, followed by great joy and zeal to win others,” Brazier wrote on December 12, 1936. “It was a common practice for the whole congregation to spend the whole night in the village church, chiefly in prayer and praise. A feature of this conviction was that it came as a result of prayer and not as a result of preaching. These ‘revived’ people are a joy to question for Baptism. Whereas it is often hard work to draw anything spontaneous from the average candidate, these are just full of what the Lord has done for them.”
― Collin Hansen, A God-Sized Vision: Revival Stories that Stretch and Stir

“Lovelace wrote in Dynamics of Spiritual Life. He explained that when Christians don’t know God accepts them on Jesus’ behalf, they become insecure. “Their insecurity shows itself in pride, a fierce defensive assertion of their own righteousness and defensive criticism of others. They come naturally to hate other cultural styles and other races in order to bolster their own security and discharge their suppressed anger.”8 This”
― Collin Hansen, Timothy Keller: His Spiritual and Intellectual Formation

“By June the revival began to wane. But Roberts’s vision had been realized. An estimated 100,000 confessed Christ. The Congregationalists added 26,500 members. Another 24,000 Welsh joined the Calvinist Methodist Church. About 4,000 opted for the Wesleyan Church. The remainder were split between the Anglicans and several Baptist groups.13 The effect on Welsh society was undeniable. Output from the coal mines famously slowed because the horses wouldn’t move. Miners converted in the revival no longer kicked or swore at the horses, so the horses didn’t know what to do.14 Judges closed their courtrooms with nothing to judge. Christians wielded the revival as apologetic against the growing number of skeptics who derided religion. Stead argued: The most thoroughgoing materialist who resolutely and forever rejects as inconceivable the existence of the soul in man, and to whom “the universe is but the infinite empty eye-socket of a dead God,” could not fail to be impressed by the pathetic sincerity of these men; nor, if he were just, could he refuse to recognize that out of their faith in the creed which he has rejected they have drawn, and are drawing, a motive power that makes for righteousness, and not only for righteousness, but for the joy of living, that he would be powerless to give them.15”
― Collin Hansen, A God-Sized Vision: Revival Stories that Stretch and Stir

“The Post confirmed 100,000 conversions in Wales and said police found no crime to investigate amid “an almost complete realization of the Golden Rule in all affairs of daily life.”
― Collin Hansen, A God-Sized Vision: Revival Stories that Stretch and Stir

“Between 1906 and 1907, the Presbyterian churches grew from 54,987 members to 73,844. The Methodists grew from 18,107 in 1906 to 39,613 in 1907.24 Extending this range to a five-year period, Korean churches altogether added 80,000 converts, more than the total number of Christian converts during eighty years of missionary activity in neighboring China.”
― Collin Hansen, A God-Sized Vision: Revival Stories that Stretch and Stir

“Acts 5: “When God walks away from the church and lets the multiplying sin take its course, that is the worst judgment of all; it will inevitably end in irretrievable disaster. But when God responds to sin with prompt severity, lessons are learned, and the church is spared a worse drift.”
― Collin Hansen, 15 Things Seminary Couldn't Teach Me

“Having one hero would be derivative; having one hundred heroes means you've drunk deeply by scouring the world for the purest wells.”
― Collin Hansen, Timothy Keller: His Spiritual and Intellectual Formation

“The Bible is either about what we're supposed to do or what Jesus has done.”
― Collin Hansen, Timothy Keller: His Spiritual and Intellectual Formation

“If your church can’t offer a compelling alternative to professional football, golf, or sleep, your church will end up like the mom-and-pop general store after WalMart moves to town. So commissioned churches experiment with new methods to spread the gospel at a time when we cannot assume a broadly Christian understanding of sin or framework for responding to the message of salvation.”
― Collin Hansen, Blind Spots: Becoming a Courageous, Compassionate, and Commissioned Church

“Without a distinctly Christian understanding of mission, we offer them nothing better than what they can find on afternoon TV or a therapist’s couch. If your faith demands nothing, you will give nothing.”
― Collin Hansen, Blind Spots: Becoming a Courageous, Compassionate, and Commissioned Church

“The continental neo-Calvinism of Bavinck and Berkhof begins by assuming from Romans 1 that everyone already knows God and many things about him by general revelation that they suppress in sin (Romans 1). The job of the apologist, then, is to show nonbelievers how Christianity explains what they know in their hearts but deny with their lips.”
― Collin Hansen, Timothy Keller: His Spiritual and Intellectual Formation

“The best preacher for you is the preacher who is faithful to God’s Word. Even better if he’s willing to meet you over coffee or visit you in the hospital. There’s a reason we don’t only read Scripture together in each worship service. Preaching brings the authority of God’s Word to bear, through the mediating personality and experience of the teacher, on a contemporary context with particular local and personal demands.”
― Collin Hansen, Rediscover Church: Why the Body of Christ Is Essential

“The good news is, every gospel-preaching church is playing for the same kingdom team.”
― Collin Hansen, Rediscover Church: Why the Body of Christ Is Essential

“The story pairs two of Keller’s most important themes and suggests a way forward for the church in the twenty-first century and perhaps beyond. On the one hand, Dinesen exposes the joylessness of Christian obedience apart from the gospel of grace, which does more than save us from sin for eternity. Grace also prepares us to receive God’s gifts here and now. On the one hand, the gourmet feast symbolizes a kind of spiritual revival as the sectarians overcome their reluctance to enjoy the bounty of God’s creation. Over food and wine, they grow more honest with each other and reconcile through forgiveness. Years of bitter feuds melt away over turtle soup. Keller explained in a 1993 sermon at Redeemer: “The message is if you can’t enjoy a good feast, you are not ready for God’s future. We will eat and drink and we’ll sit down with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. God invented the physical. He became physical to redeem us.”55”
― Collin Hansen, Timothy Keller: His Spiritual and Intellectual Formation

“A gentleman once asked me whether I allowed my children to read the books of infidels. I told him yes: for they must become acquainted with them sooner or later, and while I am living I can confute the arguments they use,” Dwight explained. “I should be unwilling to have them find these arguments unawares, with nobody to meet them.”12”
― Collin Hansen, A God-Sized Vision: Revival Stories that Stretch and Stir

“Logic, when fired with captivating illustrations, changes hearts.”
― Collin Hansen, Timothy Keller: His Spiritual and Intellectual Formation

“If you’re a commissioned Christian, you know that we cannot simply expect neighbors to show up in church. We cannot even expect that our own children will feel obligated to carry on our religious traditions.”
― Collin Hansen, Blind Spots: Becoming a Courageous, Compassionate, and Commissioned Church

“When you pluck the string of the gospel, it never stops reverberating in your heart.”
― Collin Hansen, Timothy Keller: His Spiritual and Intellectual Formation

“Church membership offers the safety of the sheep pen, where Christ is shepherd. It offers the nourishment of being attached to a body, like an arm to a horse, where Christ is the head. It offers the love of a family, where Christ is the firstborn of many heirs. It offers the obligations and duties of citizenship in a holy nation, where Christ is the King.”
― Collin Hansen, Rediscover Church: Why the Body of Christ Is Essential

“The job of the apologist, then, is to show non-believers how Christianity explains what they know in their hearts but deny with their lips.”
― Collin Hansen, Timothy Keller: His Spiritual and Intellectual Formation

“Without courage you cannot love the unlovely. Without courage you cannot discipline your children, tell your friend she's making a destructive decision, or say no to temptation. Without courage you cannot talk about Jesus who don't have ears yet to hear.”
― Collin Hansen, Blind Spots: Becoming a Courageous, Compassionate, and Commissioned Church

“For Calvin, then, a God-sized vision constitutes far more than having a “big” vision of God’s capacity to display great power in the world. Rather, it calls us to completely reorient our frame of reference through which we look at the world. Someone who lives with a God-sized vision affirms that gaining knowledge of God precedes gaining knowledge of man. To acquire this knowledge of God, we turn to Scripture. There we see Christ, and in reflecting on Christ, we gain more knowledge of God the Father. As Martin Luther observes, Christ is a mirror of our heavenly Father’s loving heart. Yet this Father will also judge according to his own standards of righteousness, not ours. This God holds the nations in his hands. He alone empowers our ministry. We must not depend on methods, cultural exegesis, strategies, and techniques (helpful though some of them can be) as our end-all approach to doing ministry. We desperately need to depend on the power of the Holy Spirit in our day-to-day lives. A God-sized vision helps us to understand that the Lord really does love us and care for us. He provides for us. The doctrine of God’s providence gives us both courage and comfort. Trusting that God as our loving heavenly Father wants our good, we can even dare to pray the Lord’s Prayer with sincerity, including the phrase “Thy will be done.”
― Collin Hansen, A God-Sized Vision: Revival Stories that Stretch and Stir

“Lovelace introduced Keller to the cultural dynamics of revival and the way insecure Christians resent unfamiliar cultural styles and other races because animosity bolsters self-righteousness. Race, political party, and culture become means of superiority that stifle the inner whisper of doubt.”
― Collin Hansen, Timothy Keller: His Spiritual and Intellectual Formation