Kyle Strobel > Quotes

“Prayer is not a place to be good, it is a place to be honest. Prayer is not a place to perform, it is a place to be present. Prayer is not a place to be right, it is a place to be known. Prayer is not a place to prove your worth, it is a place to receive worth and offer yourself in truth.”
― Kyle Strobel, Where Prayer Becomes Real: How Honesty with God Transforms Your Soul

“While our sight is limited, so is our formation. While salvation entails many things (forgiveness, imputation of righteousness and so on), ultimately, it entails a new relationship. The sinner, cut off from the Father by his wrath now stands before him as child. She who was once rejected before God is now the beloved before him.”
― Kyle Strobel, Formed for the Glory of God: Learning from the Spiritual Practices of Jonathan Edwards

“Therefore, instead of using the term spiritual disciplines, which points to a stance of independence and self-help, it would be better to use the term spiritual postures. These means of grace are ways to posture ourselves in the Spirit to God in Christ. Our “discipline” is really just a posturing.”
― Kyle Strobel, Formed for the Glory of God: Learning from the Spiritual Practices of Jonathan Edwards

“The Spirit’s work of illumination takes what someone knows and shows it to be beautiful so that the heart of the person is drawn out in love and devotion to the beauty perceived. If the person fails to see beauty as beautiful, no amount of convincing can help. They are, we might say, broken. To see true beauty as beautiful, Jesus as the image of the invisible God, fallen humans need to have their souls altered by the Spirit. Only then can we pray with the psalmist that we may “gaze upon the beauty of the LORD” (Ps 27:4). God’s response is to point to Christ.”
― Kyle Strobel, Formed for the Glory of God: Learning from the Spiritual Practices of Jonathan Edwards

“Unlike our current depictions of the church’s relationship to Christ, which are often stoic—emotionless and without poetic imagination—Edwards refuses to hold back: “the soul shall, as it were, all dissolve in love in the arms of the glorious Son of God and breath itself wholly in ecstasies of divine love into his bosom.”[5] People are fully alive in heaven, and being fully alive entails being saturated with love:”
― Kyle Strobel, Formed for the Glory of God: Learning from the Spiritual Practices of Jonathan Edwards

“The focus on the present reality of heaven and hell does not, in some way, raise the question of their existence. Far from it. The present realities of love and hate are proof that heaven and hell are real—so real, in fact, that their ways of life bleed into ours.”
― Kyle Strobel, Formed for the Glory of God: Learning from the Spiritual Practices of Jonathan Edwards

“Allow your heart to respond to God’s kindness in the midst of your brokenness.”
― Kyle Strobel, Where Prayer Becomes Real: How Honesty with God Transforms Your Soul

“Worry is when our fears move us to ourselves and our own resources to fix our problems. We believe that if we take our eyes off the problem, no one, including God, will attend to it. The essence of worry is distrust in God; distrust is the intention of the heart trained in worry.”
― Kyle Strobel, Where Prayer Becomes Real: How Honesty with God Transforms Your Soul

“If your mind wanders to your worries or your weekly calendar, then be open with the Lord about why your heart turns to these places. Do you feel like you don’t have control in God’s presence, so you turn to something you can control? Do you feel like prayer isn’t productive, so you turn to something that is? Talk to God about these matters.”
― Kyle Strobel, Where Prayer Becomes Real: How Honesty with God Transforms Your Soul

“For those who do not know God, selfishness will eventually win out in their hearts; the forces of hell will run rampant in and through them to the world.”
― Kyle Strobel, Formed for the Glory of God: Learning from the Spiritual Practices of Jonathan Edwards

“Self-examination isn’t, therefore, a practice in itself, but an aspect of many different kinds of practices. The emphasis is to know yourself truly in light of who God is and what God is calling you to. This is why self-examination, without a proper notion of God and salvation, can be very dangerous. The goal is not to lead someone to depression, so that they are so overwhelmed by their sin that they cannot move. Rather, the goal is to turn and abide in Christ. Edwards provides some pastoral advice regarding this: “Draw up no dark conclusions against yourself. Don’t give yourself over when God has not given you over.”[28] The goal is not to show God that you know you are a sinner and then beat yourself up for it. Many attempt to make penance through examination, showing that they still try to save themselves rather than turning to the cross. Rather, the goal is to be who you are with the God who died for you in the midst of your sin. The goal is to grasp grace as you are rather than as you wish you were.”
― Kyle Strobel, Formed for the Glory of God: Learning from the Spiritual Practices of Jonathan Edwards

“Our prayer life is our Christian life miniaturized. What we believe about life with God reveals itself in how we pray.”
― Kyle Strobel, Where Prayer Becomes Real: How Honesty with God Transforms Your Soul

“Mind wandering is a gift; by it, the Lord shows us the treasures of our hearts. Our call is to bring this to the Lord, who meets us in the truth of ourselves as ones who need grace and mercy in these very places.”
― Kyle Strobel, Where Prayer Becomes Real: How Honesty with God Transforms Your Soul