Rebecca Manley Pippert > Quotes

“If you say there is no such thing as morality in absolute terms, then child abuse is not evil, it just may not happen to be your thing.”
― Rebecca Manley Pippert

“Whatever controls us is our lord. The person who seeks power is controlled by power. The person who seeks acceptance is controlled by acceptance. We do not control ourselves. We are controlled by the lord of our lives.”
― Rebecca Pippert, Out of the Saltshaker

“We tend to be taken aback by the thought that God could be angry. how can a deity who is perfect and loving ever be angry?...We take pride in our tolerance of the excesses of others. So what is God's problem?... But love detests what destroys the beloved. Real love stands against the deception, the lie, the sin that destroys. Nearly a century ago the theologian E.H. Glifford wrote: 'Human love here offers a true analogy: the more a father loves his son, the more he hates in him the drunkard, the liar, the traitor.'... Anger isn't the opposite of love. Hate is, and the final form of hate is indifference... How can a good God forgive bad people without compromising himself? Does he just play fast and loose with the facts? 'Oh, never mind...boys will be boys'. Try telling that to a survivor of the Cambodian 'killing fields' or to someone who lost an entire family in the Holocaust. No. To be truly good one has to be outraged by evil and implacably hostile to injustice.”
― Rebecca Pippert

“Our problem in evangelism is not that we don’t have enough information—it is that we don’t know how to be ourselves. We forget we are called to be witnesses to what we have seen and know, not to what we don’t know. The key on our part is authenticity and obedience, not a doctorate in theology. We haven’t grasped that it really is OK for us to be who we are when we are with seekers, even if we don’t have all the answers to their questions or if our knowledge of Scripture is limited.”
― Rebecca Manley Pippert, Out of the Saltshaker & into the World: Evangelism as a Way of Life

“The problem stems from our great difficulty in believing that God is glorified in our utter humanity rather than in our spiritually programmed responses.”
― Rebecca Manley Pippert, Out of the Saltshaker & into the World: Evangelism as a Way of Life

“what do you do with a man who is supposed to be the holiest man who has ever lived and yet goes around talking with prostitutes and hugging lepers? What do you do with a man who not only mingles with the most unsavory people but actually seems to enjoy them? The religious accused him of being a drunkard, a glutton and having tacky taste in friends. It is a profound irony that the Son of God visited this planet and one of the chief complaints against him was that he was not religious enough.”
― Rebecca Manley Pippert, Out of the Saltshaker & into the World: Evangelism as a Way of Life

“The person who seeks power is controlled by power. The person who seeks acceptance is controlled by the people he or she wants to please. We do not control ourselves. We are controlled by the lord of our life.”
― Rebecca Manley Pippert, Out of the Saltshaker & into the World: Evangelism as a Way of Life

“For the essence of sin is man substituting himself for God, while the essence of salvation is God substituting himself for man. Man asserts himself against God and puts himself where only God deserves to be; God sacrifices himself for man and puts himself where only man deserves to be. Man claims prerogatives that belong to God alone; God accepts penalties that belong to man alone.” (The Cross of Christ, page 160)”
― Rebecca Manley Pippert, Stay Salt: The World Has Changed: Our Message Must Not

“Will you pray each day, “Show me where you are at work today, Lord. Let me have a conversation about you with someone in my life that you are seeking. Don’t let me miss what the Spirit is doing!”?”
― Rebecca Manley Pippert, Stay Salt: The World Has Changed: Our Message Must Not