Jim Berg > Quotes

“You have to be different to make a difference. You cannot change anything by adding more of the same. The greatest spiritual impact is made upon people by someone who is different from them. Others must see someone like Christ in us –- not someone like the rest of the world –- if we are to have any godly influence on them.”
― Jim Berg

“Every trial that ever burdened a mortal man, every temptation that ever stormed a human heart, and every blessing that ever delighted a needy soul have been skillfully designed by the Creator for one purpose: to draw men to Himself.”
― Jim Berg

“God-loving people have no trouble loving God's law since His laws are reflections of His nature.”
― Jim Berg, Changed into His Image: God's Plan for Transforming Your Life

“Our Lord did not come to this planet, live a perfect life, and become a worthy atonement for the sins of the world so that those who become His children can merely be well adjusted, live morally upright lives, and enjoy personal happiness and success. He died to redeem us from the penalty and power of a sinful heart that keeps us from being useful servants of the living God.”
― Jim Berg, Changed into His Image: God's Plan for Transforming Your Life

“Impatience is a particularly dangerous habit of the heart because everything worthwhile takes time. Good marriages take time. Spiritual maturity takes time. Financial stability takes time. Effective ministry takes time. Wisdom takes time. People who are not willing to take time cannot have any of the above.”
― Jim Berg, Created for His Glory

“Meditation is not hard to understand. Anyone who knows how to worry knows how to meditate. Worriers are skilled in the meditation process but are meditating on the wrong kind of thoughts.”
― Jim Berg, Changed into His Image: God's Plan for Transforming Your Life

“This is the real world, and only a believer walking in fellowship with His Creator and Redeemer can understand it. Everyone else is the world is experiencing a 'break with reality'.”
― Jim Berg, Changed into His Image: God's Plan for Transforming Your Life

“Modern culture anesthetizes the mind while mainlining the soul with emotional experiences that keep the worldling believing he is really living.”
― Jim Berg, Changed into His Image: God's Plan for Transforming Your Life

“The unbelieving world increasingly rejects the truth about God, while the believing world increasingly ignores the truth about God.”
― Jim Berg, God is More than Enough

“God has created in man the desire for Himself and has offered Himself as the object of man's desire. He is the only One sufficient to fill the God-shaped hole within man's soul.”
― Jim Berg, Changed into His Image: God's Plan for Transforming Your Life

“Wisdom is not having God's perspective of the whole matter before us, but having God's perspective about what next response will honor Him while keeping us still usable to Him.”
― Jim Berg, Changed into His Image: God's Plan for Transforming Your Life

“The fact is that if the Christian home, church, and school have done their job well and the student has learned well, he may be one of the few on the earth who understand the real world.”
― Jim Berg, Changed Into His Image

“The Christopher Columbus Aware: This award goes to those who, like good old Chris, when they set out to do something, don't know where they are going; neither do they know how to get there. When they arrive, they don't know where they are, and when they return, they don't know where they've been.”
― Jim Berg, Changed into His Image: God's Plan for Transforming Your Life

“She meditated upon a lie. This is the essence of temptation.”
― Jim Berg, Changed Into His Image

“A believer who has been giving in to the pull of his sinful heart never learns the extent of its power over him until he begins to do right. It is very much like the experience of one who is rowing a canoe. As long as he is going with the current, he has no idea how strong the current really is. Only when he decides to turn his canoe around and start rowing against the current does he experience its true strength.”
― Jim Berg, Changed into His Image: God's Plan for Transforming Your Life

“The important lesson here is that wisdom is not having God’s perspective of the whole matter before us, but having God’s perspective about what next response will honor Him while keeping us still usable to Him.”
― Jim Berg, Changed Into His Image

“Have you realized that most of your unhappiness in life is due to the fact that you are listening to yourself instead of talking to yourself?”
― Jim Berg, Created for His Glory

“despair is the inevitable hopelessness of life without light.”
― Jim Berg, Created for His Glory

“The believer can and will say no to any wrong desires when he has said a bigger yes to Christ's will for him.”
― Jim Berg

“Dr. Bob Jones, Sr. observed, "The Devil did not tempt Adam and Eve to steal, to lie, to kill, to commit adultery; he tempted them to live independently of God.”
― Jim Berg, Changed into His Image: God's Plan for Transforming Your Life

“Don’t miss the heart issues when dealing with the surface problems!”
― Jim Berg, Changed Into His Image

“God is fully aware of and has authorized every rebuke and every correction that comes into the life of a believer. It is truly God who “worketh in [us] both to will and to do of his good pleasure” (Phil. 2:13), and even when others “thought evil against [us]; . . . God meant it unto good” (Gen. 50:20).”
― Jim Berg, Changed Into His Image

“How frequently do we rush through our day making decision after decision, touching lives in this way or that, with no thought of what corruption has tainted those decisions?”
― Jim Berg, Changed Into His Image

“Strong Christian homes cannot be built out of weak Christians.”
― Jim Berg, Created for His Glory

“The main art in the matter of spiritual living is to know how to handle yourself. You have to take yourself in hand, you have to address yourself, preach to yourself, question yourself. You must say to your soul: “Why art thou cast down”—what business have you to be disquieted? You must turn on yourself, upbraid yourself, condemn yourself, exhort yourself, and say to yourself: “Hope thou in God”—instead of muttering in this depressed, unhappy way. And then you must go on to remind yourself of God, Who God is, and what God is and what God has done, and what God has pledged Himself to do. Then having done that, end on this great note: defy yourself, and defy other people [who discourage you], and defy the devil and the whole world, and say with this man: “I shall yet praise Him for the help of His countenance, who is [also] the health of my countenance, and my God.”
― Jim Berg, Created for His Glory

“In Hebrews 12:2, 'the race set before us' is not a sprint but a marathon. We are promised popularity, ease, and fun if we will pursue the lifestyles presented to us by the world. We are promised easy credit, 250 channels, unlimited minutes, all you can eat, no-fault divorce, free wireless, confidential abortions, and safe sex.
Those are the 'joys set before us' by the world, and most people trust these promises to deliver joy apart from God. But notice what is happening. The pursuit of the excellence of Jesus Christ is replaced by the pursuit of the lifestyles of the rich and famous. The knowledge of Jesus Christ is replaced with the ratings of what or who is most popular, and self-control is traded for self-indulgence. Consequently, there is no foundation for endurance. Even God's people quit jobs and marriages at the same rate as the world. More tragically, many of God's people quit trusting God. They have been stripped of Christian character.”
― Jim Berg, Essential Virtues: Marks of the Christ-Centered Life

“it is impossible to effectively parent from the driver’s seat of a minivan.”
― Jim Berg, God is More than Enough

“We must learn to interpret our experiences by what we know about God through His Word instead of interpreting what God is like by our experiences. If we do not ground our belief about the nature of God and His disposition to us in the Scriptures, we will reject much of what He says about Himself when we face difficulty.”
― Jim Berg, God is More Than Enough: Foundations for a Quiet Soul

“The point is that all of life is “pointless”—vanity or emptiness—unless something else is involved that transcends the pointlessness.”
― Jim Berg, Created for His Glory

“Wrong thinking leads to wrong emotions—discouragement and despair—and wrong thinking consequently leads to giving up.”
― Jim Berg, God is More than Enough