Jared C. Wilson > Quotes

“Because He lives, I can face yesterday.”
― Jared C. Wilson

“The Devil is like a rat in a jar that is filling with ether. We should expect that as his death gets ever-nearer, he will beat his claws more furiously against the glass.”
― Jared C. Wilson, The Pastor's Justification: Applying the Work of Christ in Your Life and Ministry

“Christ’s sacrifice on the cross and resurrection out of the grave are big enough, grand enough, effective enough, and eternal enough to cover your shoddy Christian life,”
― Jared C. Wilson, Gospel Wakefulness

“The god of the prosperity gospelists is a pathetic doormat, a genie. The god of the cutesy coffee mugs and Joel Osteen tweets is a milquetoast doofus like the guys in the Austen novels you hope the girls don’t end up with, holding their hats limply in hand and minding their manners to follow your lead like a butler—or the doormat he stands on. The god of the American Dream is Santa Claus. The god of the open theists is not sovereignly omniscient, declaring the end from the beginning, but just a really good guesser playing the odds. The god of our therapeutic culture is ourselves, we, the “forgivers” of ourselves, navel-haloed morons with “baggage” but not sin. None of these pathetic gods could provoke fear and trembling. But the God of the Scriptures is a consuming fire (Deut. 4:24). “It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God” (Heb. 10:31). He stirs up the oceans with the tip of his finger, and they sizzle rolling clouds of steam into the sky. He shoots lightning from his fists. This is the God who leads his children by a pillar of cloud and a pillar of fire. This is the God who makes war, sends plagues, and sits enthroned in majesty and glory in his heavens, doing what he pleases. This is the God who, in the flesh, turned tables over in the temple as if he owned the place. This Lord God Jesus Christ was pushed to the edge of the cliff and declared, “This is not happening today,” and walked right back through the crowd like a boss. This Lord says, “No one takes my life; I give it willingly,” as if to say, “You couldn’t kill me unless I let you.” This Lord calms the storms, casts out demons, binds and looses, and has the authority to grant us the ability to do the same. The Devil is this God’s lapdog. And it is this God who has summoned us, apprehended us, saved us. It is this God who has come humbly, meekly, lowly, pouring out his blood in infinite conquest to set the captives free, cancel the record of debt against us, conquer sin and Satan, and swallow up death forever. Let us, then, advance the gospel of the kingdom out into the perimeter of our hearts and lives with affectionate meekness and humble submission. Let us repent of our nonchalance. Let us embrace the wonder of Christ.”
― Jared C. Wilson, The Wonder-Working God: Seeing the Glory of Jesus in His Miracles

“The frightening thing is that, to enter hell, all one has to do is nothing.”
― Jared C. Wilson, The Storytelling God

“We are no more secure in Christ with a strong faith than with a small faith, so long as that small faith is true faith.”
― Jared C. Wilson, The Storytelling God

“if there is a God of the universe (and there is), and this God of the universe loved you and wanted to be in relationship with you (and he does), wouldn’t it be stupid not to talk to him?”
― Jared C. Wilson, The Imperfect Disciple: Grace for People Who Can't Get Their Act Together

“We will always prefer lesser satisfactions to the satisfaction of Christ, because the lesser ones appeal to the god of self—a ravenous, insatiable, fickle idol indeed—while satisfaction in Christ requires that we assassinate that god. We won’t know what it really means for the joy of the Lord to be our strength until we’ve had intravenous idolatry yanked out and all other crutches kicked away. For many of us, Jesus won’t be our absolute treasure until we are out of options.”
― Jared C. Wilson, Gospel Wakefulness

“Jesus wasn’t blowing smoke. His major contribution to the world was not a set of aphorisms. He was born in a turdy barn, grew up in a dirty world, got baptized in a muddy river. He put his hands on the oozing wounds of lepers, he let whores brush his hair and soldiers pull it out. He went to dinner with dirtbags, both religious and irreligious. His closest friends were a collection of crude fishermen and cultural traitors. He felt the spittle of the Pharisees on his face and the metal hooks of the jailer’s whip in the flesh of his back. He got sweaty and dirty and bloody—and he took all of the sin and mess of the world onto himself, onto the cross to which he was nailed naked.”
― Jared C. Wilson, The Imperfect Disciple: Grace for People Who Can't Get Their Act Together

“Where we always look for and request deliverance from suffering, the testimony of Scripture is mostly about what God wants to do for us in our suffering.”
― Jared C. Wilson, Gospel Wakefulness

“God razes us before he raises us.”
― Jared C. Wilson, Gospel Wakefulness

“I once led a church largely made up of young adults—twentysomethings and thirtysomethings, mostly. Many lamented that we weren’t more multigenerational (you know, like the church), but at the same time the married young people wanted to be in a separate small group from the single young people because they didn’t have anything in common with the singles. “You mean, besides Jesus?” I asked.”
― Jared C. Wilson, The Pastor's Justification: Applying the Work of Christ in Your Life and Ministry

“As with most things, context is everything. And in a religious context in which sin is rarely if ever mentioned (much less rebuked), the cross of Christ seems more a bug than a feature. The prevailing message is “live your best life now,” “become a better you,” and “think better, live better,” but the answer is no: God’s greatest pleasure isn’t our happiness. The Osteens and a handful of other prosperity gospel preachers have made this message their stock and trade. It is self-actualization masquerading as Christianity, and it resembles the spirituality of the New Age more than the spirituality of the Bible.”
― Jared C. Wilson, The Gospel According to Satan: Eight Lies about God that Sound Like the Truth

“Some days taking up your cross feels like putting up with an annoying coworker or a flat tire. And some days taking up your cross feels like what it is—death.”
― Jared C. Wilson, Gospel Wakefulness

“gospel wakefulness means treasuring Christ more greatly and savoring his power more sweetly.”
― Jared C. Wilson, Gospel Wakefulness

“Sometimes when God closes a door, it’s because he wants us inside when the building collapses.”
― Jared C. Wilson, Gospel Wakefulness

“He is no fool who believes the man who knows everything.”
― Jared C. Wilson, The Storytelling God

“Today, churches large and small (the small imitating the large) have unthinkingly adopted a marketing mentality that, it turns out, subverts rather than promotes the gospel. We inadvertently imply that the church benefits as much from the spiritual transaction as does the recipient. Marketing, by its very nature, contradicts the essence of the gospel lifestyle of Jesus, who came not to be served, but to expend his life for others—no exchange implied or expected.4”
― Jared C. Wilson, The Prodigal Church: A Gentle Manifesto against the Status Quo

“The cross is proof that God loves sinners.”
― Jared C. Wilson, Gospel Wakefulness

“The way some people read the parables reminds me of Aesop's Fables. And the way others read them reminds me of the way some discern clue after perplexing clue in their Beatle albums as evidence for a cover-up of Paul's having died in a car accident.”
― Jared C. Wilson, The Storytelling God

“In short, I am a riddle to myself; a heap of inconsistence. John Newton1 My”
― Jared C. Wilson, The Imperfect Disciple: Grace for People Who Can't Get Their Act Together

“There is more security, in fact, with Christ in the middle of a stormy sea than without Christ in the warm stillness of our bathtub.”
― Jared C. Wilson, The Imperfect Disciple: Grace for People Who Can't Get Their Act Together

“Money becomes a tool. Money is a tool. It’s a tool like rope. With money, you can pull a man out of the ditch or you can hang yourself.”
― Jared C. Wilson, The Pastor's Justification: Applying the Work of Christ in Your Life and Ministry

“If anything, we should be astounded they let us into the community. Given what we know of ourselves, given that we are the worst sinners we know, it is a staggeringly arrogant thing to begrudge any other repentant follower of Jesus a place at the dance. If the bar was low enough to allow our entry, what advantage is there to raising it?”
― Jared C. Wilson, The Imperfect Disciple: Grace for People Who Can't Get Their Act Together

“The gospel is a family meal. It is meant to be enjoyed regularly and intentionally in the presence of others and for the benefit of others.”
― Jared C. Wilson, The Imperfect Disciple: Grace for People Who Can't Get Their Act Together

“When we really see Christ as our saving security, the loss of all else seems a worthy risk.”
― Jared C. Wilson, The Storytelling God: Seeing the Glory of Jesus in His Parables

“It is the reality of the kingdom of God—and the gospel purpose in it to glorify Christ—that should comfort Christians today, not the rising and falling of popular opinion or the ways of the Supreme Court or the majority votes in the Congress or the moral sanity of the president. All those people are sinners. We can root for them and persuade them and pray for them and hope for them—but we cannot hope in them, because none of them is not a sinner. Only Jesus Christ’s kingdom comes with perfect grace and peace and justice. And only Jesus Christ’s kingdom will remain.”
― Jared C. Wilson, The Story of Everything: How You, Your Pets, and the Swiss Alps Fit into God's Plan for the World

“Therefore, a biblical understanding of the nature of the kingdom of God keeps in tension the reality that the kingdom is both “already” and “not yet.”
― Jared C. Wilson, The Storytelling God: Seeing the Glory of Jesus in His Parables

“Brothers, there are aspects of professionalism that make sense in our modern ministry contexts, but when all is said and done, we are not managers of spiritual enterprises; we are shepherds. And shepherds feed their sheep (Ezek. 34:2–3; John 21:15–17).”
― Jared C. Wilson, The Pastor's Justification: Applying the Work of Christ in Your Life and Ministry

“I am plum tuckered on Monday morning. I face ample temptation to wallow. But Jesus promises rest. I may be a shell of a pastor at this time each week, but God is no less God. His might is no less mighty. His gospel is no less power. His reach is no less infinite. His grace is no less everlasting. His lovingkindness is no less enduring.”
― Jared C. Wilson, The Pastor's Justification: Applying the Work of Christ in Your Life and Ministry