Sam Storms > Quotes

“God's creative design was that your ravenous appetite for pleasure find fulfillment in Him, for nothing more wonderfully reveals His glory than the joy the creature has in its Creator.”
― Sam Storms , Pleasures Evermore: The Life-Changing Power of Enjoying God

“We say we want revival . . . but on our terms. We don’t pray this way, but this is what our hearts are saying to God: “Come Holy Spirit . . . but only if you promise in advance to do things the way we have always done them in our church.” “Come Holy Spirit . . . but only if I have some sort of prior guarantee that when you show up you won’t embarrass me.” “Come Holy Spirit . . . but only if your work of revival is one that I can still control, one that preserves intact the traditions with which I am comfortable.” “Come Holy Spirit . . . but only if your work of revival is neat and tidy and dignified and understandable and above all else socially acceptable.” “Come Holy Spirit . . . but only if you plan to change others; only if you make them to be like me; only if you convict their hearts so they will live and dress and talk like I do.” “Come Holy Spirit . . . but only if you let us preserve our distinctives and retain our differences from others whom we find offensive.”
― Sam Storms, Practicing the Power: Welcoming the Gifts of the Holy Spirit in Your Life

“Earthly refreshment is at best a sipping from intermittent springs, but God is the ocean!”
― Sam Storms, The Hope of Glory: 100 Daily Meditations on Colossians

“When the world tells us, as it does, that everyone has a right to a life that is easy, comfortable, and relatively pain-free, a life that enables us to discover, display, and deploy all the strengths that are latent within us, the world twists the truth right out of shape. That was not the quality of life to which Christ’s call led him, nor was it Paul’s calling, nor is it what we are called to in the twenty-first century. For all Christians, the likelihood is rather that as our discipleship continues, God will make us increasingly weakness-conscious and pain-aware, so that we may learn with Paul that when we are conscious of being weak, then—and only then—may we become truly strong in the Lord. And should we want it any other way?”
― Sam Storms, Packer on the Christian Life: Knowing God in Christ, Walking by the Spirit

“Where is the person whose heart is so passionately in love with the promised glory of heaven that he feels like an exile and a sojourner on the earth? Where”
― Sam Storms, The Hope of Glory: 100 Daily Meditations on Colossians

“Earthly joys are fragmented beams, but God is the sun. Earthly refreshment is at best a sipping from intermittent springs, but God is the ocean!”
― Sam Storms, The Hope of Glory: 100 Daily Meditations on Colossians

“...the Spirit comes to us as a fire, either to be fanned into full flame and given the freedom to accomplish his will or to be doused and extinguished by the water of human fear, control, and flawed theology.”
― Sam Storms, Practicing the Power: Welcoming the Gifts of the Holy Spirit in Your Life

“People can live in other spheres (cf. 2:1-3), but Christians live in Christ.”
― Sam Storms, The Hope of Glory: 100 Daily Meditations on Colossians

“Earthly joys are fragmented beams, but God is the sun. Earthly”
― Sam Storms, The Hope of Glory: 100 Daily Meditations on Colossians

“You may be at paradise or in prison, at the movies or in Chicago, but you are always and unchangeably in Christ.”
― Sam Storms, The Hope of Glory: 100 Daily Meditations on Colossians

“The security is in the realization that my life cannot extend beyond God's grace or capacity to redeem all things for his glory and my good.”
― Sam Storms, The Hope of Glory: 100 Daily Meditations on Colossians

“...we must be careful to avoid the error of reductionism, as if the whole of the Spirit’s ministry can be reduced to Christology, as if the Spirit does nothing but glorify Christ. It’s the mistake of arguing that the primary purpose of the Spirit’s coming is the sole purpose of his coming. The principal aim of the Spirit in what he does is to awaken us to the glory, splendor, and centrality of the work of Christ Jesus. But this does not mean that it is less than the Spirit at work when he awakens us also to his own glory and power and abiding presence.”
― Sam Storms, Practicing the Power: Welcoming the Gifts of the Holy Spirit in Your Life

“Of what good is it, in the ultimate sense, to shower someone with affection in the absence of a robust confidence in Jesus and the courage to proclaim him as the sinner's only hope?”
― Sam Storms, The Hope of Glory: 100 Daily Meditations on Colossians

“True love is something seen and known by others.”
― Sam Storms, The Hope of Glory: 100 Daily Meditations on Colossians

“The object of faith always determines its quality and worth.”
― Sam Storms, The Hope of Glory: 100 Daily Meditations on Colossians

“One way of judging the quality of theologies,” he explains, “is to see what sort of devotion they produce.”32”
― Sam Storms, Packer on the Christian Life: Knowing God in Christ, Walking by the Spirit

“Beginning with the incarnation and consummating in the resurrection of Jesus Christ, together with the progressive building of his spiritual body, the Church, God is fulfilling his promise of an eschatological temple in which he will forever dwell.”
― Sam Storms, Kingdom Come: The Amillennial Alternative

“the Old Testament must always be read in light of the New. I never read such Old Testament texts without immediately asking, “Does the New Testament shed additional light on how I am to understand the nature of such promises and their recipients?”
― Sam Storms, Kingdom Come: The Amillennial Alternative

“set your hope fully on the grace that will be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ" (1 Pet. 1:13). This”
― Sam Storms, The Hope of Glory: 100 Daily Meditations on Colossians

“When the Word, by the power of the Spirit, is heard, embraced, and enjoyed, we are strengthened to resist the flesh and to savor the Son.”
― Sam Storms, The Hope of Glory: 100 Daily Meditations on Colossians

“Jesus’s disciples have faith, but their worry proves the weakness of their faith. Great faith comes not by looking inward, to the believing self, but by looking upward, to God. By faith we stop thinking like pagans, filled with anxiety about food and clothing. Pagans, thinking like orphans, worry. Disciples, thinking like children, relax.”
― Sam Storms, Daily Strength: A Devotional for Men

“Mere sincerity, passionate devotion, clarity of conviction, and depth of insight are all ultimately useless unless they are rooted in and focused on the person and work of Jesus.”
― Sam Storms, The Hope of Glory: 100 Daily Meditations on Colossians

“Second, this passage shows us that rarely, if ever, will Satan confront you as Satan. He will almost always approach you indirectly, disguised as someone or something more likely to win your trust (such as when Peter opposed Jesus’s going to Jerusalem in Matthew 16). He will come to you through something you hear or see, perhaps a movie; a lecture by a brilliant, articulate, but pagan professor; through a well-meaning friend; or as an angel of light. After all, if you knew it was Satan, you’d be less inclined to listen or say yes.”
― Sam Storms, Understanding Spiritual Warfare: A Comprehensive Guide

“The biblical view of the body, on the other hand, is quite positive. God created us as physical beings. We are both material and immaterial (see Genesis 2:7). The importance of the body is extensively illustrated in 1 Corinthians chapter 6. Our bodies were redeemed by the blood of Christ, no less than our souls (v. 20). Our bodies are the temples of the Holy Spirit (v. 19). Our bodies are designed “for the Lord” (v. 13). Our bodies are members of Christ himself (v. 15). Our bodies are capable of being sinned against (v. 18). Our bodies are to be used to honor God (v. 20). Finally, our bodies will be resurrected and glorified. In other words, we will spend eternity as physically glorified beings (see Romans 8:11, 23; 1 Corinthians 15:35–49). At the judgment seat of Christ, we will have to give an account for what we have done in our bodies. There is no escaping the fact that spirituality is physical. Although God is spirit, he created the physical, material world and pronounced it good (Genesis 1:4, 12, 18, 21, 25). When God created us in his image, he gave us bodies. On”
― Sam Storms, Practicing the Power: Welcoming the Gifts of the Holy Spirit in Your Life

“this is what we hope for, the objective reality of our future inheritance, not the feeling of hope or expectation in our hearts. So”
― Sam Storms, The Hope of Glory: 100 Daily Meditations on Colossians

“Where is the person who has so tasted the beauty of the age to come that the diamonds of the world look like baubles, and the entertainment of the world is empty, and the moral causes of the world are too small because they have no view to eternity? Where is this person?”
― Sam Storms, The Hope of Glory: 100 Daily Meditations on Colossians

“faith is only as good as its object.”
― Sam Storms, The Hope of Glory: 100 Daily Meditations on Colossians

“Gazing at the grandeur of heavenly glory transforms our value system. In”
― Sam Storms, The Hope of Glory: 100 Daily Meditations on Colossians

“But we must never read such promises, or anything in the Old Testament, as if Jesus had not come and the New Testament had not been written.”
― Sam Storms, Kingdom Come: The Amillennial Alternative

“Packer often reminds us that the Christian life is more than merely a physical journey from the cradle to the grave. It is also, and more importantly, an inner spiritual journey into the knowledge of God and Christ. Moreover, it is a journey that requires we steer a careful course “between two opposite extremes of disaster. On the one hand, there is the legalistic hypocrisy of pharisaism (God-serving outward actions proceeding from self-serving inward motives), and on the other hand, there is the antinomian idiocy that rattles on about love and liberty, forgetting that the God-given law remains the standard of the God-honoring life.”2”
― Sam Storms, Packer on the Christian Life: Knowing God in Christ, Walking by the Spirit