James MacDonald > Quotes

“God brings tests into your life because your faith in Him--your belief that He is in control and that He is good--can be proved only in times when life is hard.”
― James MacDonald, When Life Is Hard

“The biggest obstacle to making Christ magnificent is the refusal to make yourself small.”
― James MacDonald, Vertical Church: What Every Heart Longs for. What Every Church Can Be.

“Let God Himself be the main attraction at church again, and let us be tireless in our insistence that church is for God, about God, through God, and to the glory of His great Son.”
― James MacDonald, Vertical Church: What Every Heart Longs for. What Every Church Can Be.

“You can't teach a person to love something. But you can get him to feel the heat of your love for something.”
― James MacDonald, Christ-Centered Biblical Counseling: Changing Lives with God's Changeless Truth

“The reason God responds to persistence is because prayer is changing the one who prays. As we pray, God is making us spiritually fit to receive what He is already willing to do.”
― James MacDonald, Vertical Church: What Every Heart Longs for. What Every Church Can Be.

“The entity God created to traffic His transcendence has fallen far from its mission when it chooses instead to traffic what can be found on any street corner or at the local mall. You may ask, "But how has the church done that?"

* By offering secularists what they find mildly interesting and calling it church.
*By submitting to self-help sermons where encounter with God is not even on the agenda.
* By letting the horizontal excellence of the show stand in for Vertical impact.
*By substituting the surprise or shock of superficial entertainment for the supernatural.

Church was designed to deliver what we were created to long for. Church must again be about a Vertical encounter that interrupts and alters everything.”
― James MacDonald, Vertical Church: What Every Heart Longs for. What Every Church Can Be.

“Church leaders raised on rationalism lead ministries where the supernatural, the Vertical, is suppressed and where God Himself is at best an observer and certainly seldom, if ever, and obvious participant in church.”
― James MacDonald, Vertical Church: What Every Heart Longs for. What Every Church Can Be.

“The problem in the church today is that we treat God's glory as a by-product and the missional activities of the church as the primary thing when the opposite is what Scripture demands. We don't proclaim the gospel and feed the poor and shepherd the flock in hopes that God's glory will be the by-product of those activities. We seek the revealing of the glory of God through the methods He prescribes so that His glory is revealed in the church. When that happens, the lost are converted, the poor are fed, the saints live in unity, and much more, all as by-products of God's manifest presence in the church.”
― James MacDonald, Vertical Church: What Every Heart Longs for. What Every Church Can Be.

“When we ask people what they want in church instead of giving them what they were created to long for, we play in the very idolatry that church was created to dismantle.”
― James MacDonald, Vertical Church: What Every Heart Longs for. What Every Church Can Be.

“Most of the church landscape in my lifetime has been heavily invested in trying to do something for Jerry or Sherri or some other icon of unchurchness. The problem is that they have been only about themselves from the moment they could wail for their mothers, and the decision to give them at church what they can find in any self-help book appears now as a choice to abandon the One in whose honor the church gathers. What they need is to be set free from themselves with finality and to be lost in the awesome wonder of the manifest presence of God. It was never God’s desire that He would sit on the sideline and watch us frantically devise impressive ways to reach people or simply hold the line on orthodoxy as though faithfulness can exist in a vacuum apart from fruitfulness. God is the Matter of first importance! Can you say that about your current weekly encounter with church?”
― James MacDonald, Vertical Church: What Every Heart Longs for. What Every Church Can Be.

“In a society where rationality has ruled so long, the church frequently fails to see that in forsaking the weekly pursuit of the transcendent, we have given up the only ground that was uniquely ours in this world. In attempting to make the church something that can attract and add value to secular mind-sets, we have turned our backs on our one true proposition - transcendence.”
― James MacDonald, Vertical Church: What Every Heart Longs for. What Every Church Can Be.

“At the end of life, each of us must answer the question, Whose story captured my soul?”
― James MacDonald, Christ-Centered Biblical Counseling: Changing Lives with God's Changeless Truth

“Remember, it’s not “stand firm for the faith” but “stand firm in the faith.” You’ve got to own it and live it.”
― James MacDonald, Act Like Men: 40 Days to Biblical Manhood

“To disrespect a person made in the image and likeness of God is a lot worse than desecrating a flag. We should be offended and repulsed in the same way when God's image bearers are desecrated – abused, beaten, neglected, discriminated against, and not loved and taken care of as they should be.”
― James MacDonald, Christ-Centered Biblical Counseling: Changing Lives with God's Changeless Truth

“The fundamental question in everything we do must be: Will this honor God? Does this display Jesus Christ? Does this make people see how awesome the LORD is? Failure to answer “Yes!” invites Ichabod. I have many, many wonderful”
― James MacDonald, Vertical Church: What Every Heart Longs for. What Every Church Can Be.

“Sin does not remain a contented servant; it seeks to seize and master its participants.”
― James MacDonald, Christ-Centered Biblical Counseling: Changing Lives with God's Changeless Truth

“Satan's kryptonite is separation through slander. He slanders God to us and us to God.”
― James MacDonald, Christ-Centered Biblical Counseling: Changing Lives with God's Changeless Truth

“God’s Word doesn’t change, the message doesn’t shift. It can’t be compromised in any way. It’s where we stand firm.”
― James MacDonald, Act Like Men: 40 Days to Biblical Manhood

“Satan mounts his mutiny against God through a deceitful stronghold: God is untrustworthy. In subtle and not-so-subtle ways, he places God's heart on trial by whispering insidious lies: "God is holding back on you. He wants you to jump through hoops in order to earn His love. He's stingy. He doesn't have your best interest in mind. You're better off trusting in yourself. Your resources and functional saviors work better then waiting and trusting in Him.”
― James MacDonald, Christ-Centered Biblical Counseling: Changing Lives with God's Changeless Truth

“Most of what is wrong in horizontal church flows from attempts to get green apples interested in Jesus. Green apples are very articulate about that they do and don't want in church. They don't want to hear about money, because that is one of their idols; they don't want to be told about sin, because that assaults pride; no interest in pressure to decide for Jesus, because that threatens their autonomy. Sadly when church becomes what green apples must have or they won't come. It ceases to be what it must be for God to attend. Church needs to be offensive to green apples or it can be helpful to those who are ripe.”
― James MacDonald, Vertical Church: What Every Heart Longs for. What Every Church Can Be.

“This is God's world, so everything, even if it intends to efface God, bears witness to God – understood and interpreted through biblical eyeglasses.”
― James MacDonald, Christ-Centered Biblical Counseling: Changing Lives with God's Changeless Truth

“We must rip the foundations out from under all the bastions of human reasoning that say, "I don't need God!" We must demolish every non-God story of life. We must pulverize every God-is-not-good life narrative.”
― James MacDonald

“Counseling is ultimately not about the counselee or the counselor, but about the Divine Counselor.”
― James MacDonald, Christ-Centered Biblical Counseling: Changing Lives with God's Changeless Truth

“If you don’t tell your kids/grandkids what God has done for you, don’t expect their hearts to be captured by your God! Worst”
― James MacDonald, Vertical Church: What Every Heart Longs for. What Every Church Can Be.

“Suffering always reveal idols of the heart.”
― James MacDonald, Christ-Centered Biblical Counseling: Changing Lives with God's Changeless Truth

“God forgive the church of Jesus Christ for trading its birthright access to the transcendent for the pot of stew that is horizontal helpfulness. How shortsighted and human centered. The outcome of this disaster is that we have created a Creator in our own image who weeps, cares, and longs to help, but in the end we doubt He can because we have made Him so much like ourselves. In making God our buddy, we find Him nice for cuddling but not much help when the hurricane comes.”
― James MacDonald, Vertical Church: What Every Heart Longs for. What Every Church Can Be.

“Praying is what confirms our true belief that we cannot succeed without God, and its absence confirms the exact opposite.”
― James MacDonald, Vertical Church: What Every Heart Longs for. What Every Church Can Be.

“If all you are doing is spending time with the struggling members of your church and you are not building proactively into your church's culture, and you are being shortsighted and limiting the effectiveness of your ministry.”
― James MacDonald, Christ-Centered Biblical Counseling: Changing Lives with God's Changeless Truth

“The body of Christ is about doing life together, and by doing life together sin is revealed.”
― James MacDonald, Christ-Centered Biblical Counseling: Changing Lives with God's Changeless Truth

“One of the most frequent sins of omission is the failure to get adequate rest.”
― James MacDonald, Christ-Centered Biblical Counseling: Changing Lives with God's Changeless Truth