J.D. Greear > Quotes

“When something becomes so important to you that it drives your behavior and commands your emotions, you are worshipping it.”
― J.D. Greear, Gospel: Recovering the Power that Made Christianity Revolutionary

“My identity and my security are not in my spiritual progress. My identity and my security are in God’s acceptance of me given as a gift in Christ.”
― J.D. Greear, Gospel: Recovering the Power that Made Christianity Revolutionary

“Without love even the most radical devotion to God is of no value to Him. Let me make sure that sinks in… You can gain all the spiritual gifts in the world. You can take the most radical steps of obedience. You can share every meal with the homeless in your city. You can memorize the book of Leviticus. You can pray each morning for four hours like Martin Luther. But if what you do does not flow out of a heart of love - a heart that does those things because it genuinely desires to do them - it is ultimately worthless to God.”
― J.D. Greear, Gospel: Recovering the Power that Made Christianity Revolutionary

“Faith is not the absence of doubt; it is continuing to follow Jesus in the midst of doubt.”
― J.D. Greear, Stop Asking Jesus Into Your Heart: How to Know for Sure You Are Saved

“Gospel change is the Spirit of God using the story of God to make the beauty of God come alive in our hearts”
― J.D. Greear, Gospel: Recovering the Power that Made Christianity Revolutionary

“It is one thing to understand the gospel but is quite another to experience the gospel in such a way that it fundamentally changes us and becomes the source of our identity and security.”
― J.D. Greear, Gospel: Recovering the Power that Made Christianity Revolutionary

“Likewise, we continue to follow Jesus as we struggle with sin. Repentance ushers us into a life of greater struggle, not out of one.”
― J.D. Greear, Stop Asking Jesus Into Your Heart: How to Know for Sure You Are Saved

“The Gospel Prayer
In Christ, there is nothing I can do that would make You love me more, and nothing I have done that makes You love me less.
Your presence and approval are all I need for everlasting joy.
As You have been to me, so I will be to others.
As I pray, I'll measure Your compassion by the cross and Your power by the resurrection.”
― JD Greear

“Often the strongest evidence of my growth in grace is my growth in the knowledge of my need for grace.”
― J.D. Greear, Stop Asking Jesus Into Your Heart: How to Know for Sure You Are Saved

“If repentance were perfection, none of those people repented. Repentance, however, means recognizing Jesus' authority and submitting to it, even though you know your heart is weak, divided, and pulled in conflicting directions. Repentance includes a plea for God to change your inconsistent divided heart. (Psalm 86:11; Mark 9:24)”
― J.D. Greear, Stop Asking Jesus Into Your Heart: How to Know for Sure You Are Saved

“Repentance is not subsequent to belief; it is part of belief. It is belief in action-choice that flow out of conviction. Repentance literally means "a change of mind" (in Greek, metanoia; meta-"new", noia="mind") about Jesus. Repentance is not merely changing your action; it is changing your actions because you have changed your attitude about Jesus' authority and glory.”
― J.D. Greear, Stop Asking Jesus Into Your Heart: How to Know for Sure You Are Saved

“The gospel has done its work in us when we crave God more than we crave everything else in life and when seeing His kingdom advance in the lives of others gives us more joy than anything we could own. When we see Jesus as greater than anything the world can offer, we’ll gladly let everything else go to possess Him.”
― J.D. Greear, Gospel: Recovering the Power that Made Christianity Revolutionary

“Salvation is not a prayer you pray in a one-time ceremony and then move on from; salvation is a posture of repentance and faith that you begin in a moment and maintain for the rest of your life.”
― J.D. Greear, Stop Asking Jesus Into Your Heart: How to Know for Sure You Are Saved

“Being able to articulate the gospel with accuracy is one thing; having its truth captivate your soul is quite another.”
― J.D. Greear, Gospel: Recovering the Power that Made Christianity Revolutionary

“The Holy Spirit did not go into such detail about the Pharisees in the New Testament just so we could understand a group unique to the first century. Pharisaism is a poisonous weed that grows in every garden of orthodox religion. Pharisaism is every bit the threat to the orthodox today that it was then.”
― J.D. Greear, Humble Orthodoxy: Holding the truth high without putting people down

“What would your prayers look like if you believed that the cross really was the measure of God's compassion for someone?”
― J.D. Greear, Gospel: Recovering the Power that Made Christianity Revolutionary

“There are times, even now, when I look at my heart and wonder how I could possibly have been “born again.” Moments in which I care more about what’s coming on TV that night than I do the spread of the gospel in the world. Moments when God feels distant, almost like a stranger. My emotions for Him are lukewarm, if not downright cold. I don’t jump out of bed hungry for His Word, and my mind wanders all over the place when I pray. Or I fall to that same old temptation again. For the thousandth time. Or moments I doubt God’s goodness, even His existence. It’s not how I feel all the time, or even most of the time, but it is how I feel some of the time. And then the question hits me again: Wait a minute . . . Am I really saved? How could I be, and still have feelings like this? What do you do in that moment? Pray “the sinners’ prayer” again? Should I call my old church and have the pastor warm up the baptismal waters? The answer is relatively simple in that moment: keep believing the gospel. Keep your hand on the head of the Lord Jesus Christ. No matter how you feel at any given moment, how encouraged or discouraged you feel about your spiritual progress, how hot or cold your love for Jesus, what you should be doing is always the same—resting in the gospel. Rest in His finished work. That’s all you can do. It’s all you need to do. It’s all God has commanded you to do.”
― J.D. Greear, Stop Asking Jesus Into Your Heart: How to Know for Sure You Are Saved

“A Christianity that does not have as its primary focus the deepening of passions for God is a false Christianity, no matter how zealously it seeks conversions or how forcefully it advocates righteous behavior.”
― J.D. Greear, Gospel: Recovering the Power that Made Christianity Revolutionary

“There is One who remains faithful even when we doubt; One who is a firm foundation when our steps falter; One who holds on even when we let go. Keep your eyes on Him. He is faithful. He said, “It is finished.”
― J.D. Greear, Stop Asking Jesus Into Your Heart: How to Know for Sure You Are Saved

“Awe combined with intimacy is the essence of Christian worship.”
― J.D. Greear, Gospel: Recovering the Power that Made Christianity Revolutionary

“As we see the beauty of God and feel His weightiness in our hearts, our hearts begin to desire Him more than we desire sin. Before the Bible says, "Stop sinning," it says, "Behold your God.”
― J.D. Greear, Gospel: Recovering the Power that Made Christianity Revolutionary

“Repentance is belief in action.”
― J.D. Greear, Stop Asking Jesus Into Your Heart: How to Know for Sure You Are Saved

“Wanting to repent is the sign God hasn’t abandoned you. It is God, after all, who puts in us the desire to come to Him.”
― J.D. Greear, Stop Asking Jesus Into Your Heart: How to Know for Sure You Are Saved

“It’s not that I didn’t understand or believe the gospel before. I did. But the truth of the gospel hadn’t moved from my mind to my heart. There was a huge gap between my intellect and my emotions. The Puritan Jonathan Edwards likened his reawakening to the gospel to a man who had known, in his head, that honey was sweet, but for the first time had that sweetness burst alive in his mouth.”
― J.D. Greear, Gospel: Recovering the Power that Made Christianity Revolutionary

“Once saved, always saved but also, once saved, forever following.”
― J.D. Greear

“Unless we are actively preaching the gospel to ourselves daily, we fall back into “works-righteousness.”
― J.D. Greear, Gospel: Recovering the Power that Made Christianity Revolutionary

“Repentance Is Not the Absence of Struggle; It Is the Absence of Settled Defiance”
― J.D. Greear, Stop Asking Jesus Into Your Heart: How to Know for Sure You Are Saved

“Paul said that it is only as we are overwhelmed at the glory of Christ's sacrifice for us that we are transformed into glory ourselves-the glory of people who serve God because they crave God and who do righteousness because they love righteousness.”
― J.D. Greear, Stop Asking Jesus Into Your Heart: How to Know for Sure You Are Saved

“We are changed not by being told what we need to do for God, but by hearing the news about what God has done for us.”
― J.D. Greear, Gospel: Recovering the Power that Made Christianity Revolutionary

“Looking back, I see now that I’ve come to know God more in the pastures, and wildernesses, and white spaces, and valleys than I have on the mountaintops.”
― J.D. Greear, Jesus, Continued...: Why the Spirit Inside You Is Better than Jesus Beside You