Preston Perry > Quotes

“On that day the goosebumps on our skin will read the braille of glory in God's presence. Slander and persecution will remember our names no more, and we will sing with our whole bodies a right now praise because we once gave the truth to a dying world.”
― Preston Perry, How to Tell the Truth: The Story of How God Saved Me to Win Hearts--Not Just Arguments

“When we're more invested in politics than we are in people--when someone shares their story--we won't hear a testimony, but a position. We won't hear a cry, but a stance.”
― Preston Perry, How to Tell the Truth: The Story of How God Saved Me to Win Hearts--Not Just Arguments

“The definition of a coward is one who lacks courage to endure dangerous or unpleasant things—things like a cross and the weight of carrying one.”
― Preston Perry, How to Tell the Truth: The Story of How God Saved Me to Win Hearts--Not Just Arguments

“You see, the most dangerous time to follow Jesus was not when he was alive; it was after he had been crucified, after he was considered a curse and a criminal, a blasphemer and a false prophet.”
― Preston Perry, How to Tell the Truth: The Story of How God Saved Me to Win Hearts--Not Just Arguments

“The knowledge we have of God is essential to our faith, and God’s Word tells us His people perish for lack of it (see Hosea 4:6). But what if it’s possible for us to trust so much in what we know that we become insensitive to what the Holy Spirit wants to say?”
― Preston Perry

“The way we do apologetics looks different when we are motivated not by our desire to conquer the other person, but by our genuine love and compassion, and by our desire to see people discover God's lifegiving truth.”
― Preston Perry, How to Tell the Truth: The Story of How God Saved Me to Win Hearts--Not Just Arguments

“Don't let your pride murder your message.”
― Preston Perry, How to Tell the Truth: The Story of How God Saved Me to Win Hearts--Not Just Arguments

“I believe in the last days, God will use His people to set the most rebellious souls free. If we remain faithful with God's truth, He will use us to soften the most hardened hearts. Angry fists will bloom into open palms of praise when we speak.”
― Preston Perry, How to Tell the Truth: The Story of How God Saved Me to Win Hearts--Not Just Arguments

“When Peter tells believers that they should always be prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you (1 Peter 3:15), he isn't telling us to start arguing with people…He's simply telling us that we need to be prepared when the opportunity to defend our faith arises, because make no mistake, no matter where you live, at some point, you will be called upon to share or defend your faith with someone who is operating from a different belief system than you.”
― Preston Perry, How to Tell the Truth: The Story of How God Saved me to Win Hearts, Not Just Arguments

“The way we represent Christ matters. We should never walk away from a conversation confident that we told the truth, but not confident in how we told that truth. The truth of the gospel is offensive enough. We don't have to add to the offense with our bad conduct.”
― Preston Perry, How to Tell the Truth: The Story of How God Saved me to Win Hearts, Not Just Arguments

“After my first conversation with John, what I should've done was go home and pray. I should've sought the Father with a fistful of humility, and asked Him to help lead me in showing John the truth. God's divine wisdom will always lead us to where we need to go IF we would just pause and ask Him the way.”
― Preston Perry, How to Tell the Truth: The Story of How God Saved me to Win Hearts, Not Just Arguments

“Imagine walking around every day of your life and all you see is people dying of thirst, but you know where they can get free water. In fact the person who has free water has given you access to the water. This is the hard part though: the people around you don't know that they're dying. They don't even know that they're thirsty. No only do they need you to offer them water, but many of them also need you to prove to them that water is what they need to live. Do you not offer the water because you feel like people will reject you? Or, do you find ways to show them that they are thirsty and that someone wants to give them a drink?”
― Preston Perry, How to Tell the Truth: The Story of How God Saved me to Win Hearts, Not Just Arguments

“Jesus told his disciples that they should be wise as serpents and harmless as doves (see Matthew 10:16). Both doves and serpents are quiet creatures, but notice how often when we gain knowledge, that can make us very loud. I believe Jesus is pointing us to a wisdom that creates quiet calmness with those who do not know him. Jesus told his disciples to be like serpents, cunning and stealth-like, not to do evil like a serpent (we all know about the Garden of Eden), but to do good under people's noses without them even realizing what's happening. He also told his disciples to be as harmless as doves, to leave each person better off. My heart in this book is to help you see that when we tell the truth of the gospel, what we say is not the only thing that matters. How we tell it holds just as much weight.”
― Preston Perry, How to Tell the Truth: The Story of How God Saved me to Win Hearts, Not Just Arguments

“Man, Christians always struck me as being kind of lazy, you know?" he said. "You're the first one I've met that actually studies scripture.”
― Preston Perry, How to Tell the Truth: The Story of How God Saved me to Win Hearts, Not Just Arguments

“I've been an evangelist and apologist for more than a decade now and if there's one thing I've learned it's that people don't make you do anything They just bring out what's already inside you.”
― Preston Perry, How to Tell the Truth: The Story of How God Saved me to Win Hearts, Not Just Arguments

“Let us ask God to kill our pride and all the other sin inside us that might be in the way of the gospel. We don't ever want our personal conduct or behavior to be the reason someone rejects the gospel.”
― Preston Perry, How to Tell the Truth: The Story of How God Saved Me to Win Hearts--Not Just Arguments

“Jesus didn't just present facts. He asked questions. He told stories. He didn't focus on information. He focused on people. He spent time with them. He talked with them. He prayed with them. He ate with them. Most importantly, he loved them, and he loved them well.”
― Preston Perry, How to Tell the Truth: The Story of How God Saved me to Win Hearts, Not Just Arguments

“Context matters when it comes to evangelism. No offense to the Christians that came before Gary, but their lives weren't as effective with me as Gary's was. And that's because representation matters, especially when it comes to seeing someone live holy. I needed to see that God calls people like me too. People need to see what it's like for God to change a life, they need to see a before and after that they can understand. It's hard to imagine our lives being a certain way if nobody that looks like us lives this way.”
― Preston Perry, How to Tell the Truth: The Story of How God Saved me to Win Hearts, Not Just Arguments

“There's a difference between defending your faith and defending an identity that you put too much pride in, an identity that you use to hide your faith behind. It could become so easy for Christians to get caught up in what we DO for the Lord instead of being content in who we are IN the Lord.”
― Preston Perry, How to Tell the Truth: The Story of How God Saved me to Win Hearts, Not Just Arguments

“You don't have to be studied up in every part of Christian faith and doctrine to be able to talk to other's about Jesus. But you should have a clear handle on the foundations of beliefs on who Jesus is, and salvation by faith alone in Christ alone…If you can't explain who Jesus is and why He is Lord, everything else falls apart. The reason why Jesus is the lynchpin in any discussion about faith, is because he brings everybody to a decision. You can say you believe in God all day long, and atheists aside, most religions won't question it. But once you say "I believe JESUS is God", bruh is on.”
― Preston Perry, How to Tell the Truth: The Story of How God Saved me to Win Hearts, Not Just Arguments

“But when we go and make disciples of all nations, we can set ourselves up for failure if we don't understand that God moves in more ways than what we're used to seeing. This is why some of us may shy away from evangelism. We don't want people to reject our efforts. We don't want to feel like failures. But what is failure when we're working for the God who created the universe? People don't reject us. They reject the God we serve. But more than that, what looks like failure isn't always. And even more than that, if we look at our own stories of how we came to believe in Christ, we'll see that it was usually more of a slow cook than we thought.”
― Preston Perry, How to Tell the Truth: The Story of How God Saved me to Win Hearts, Not Just Arguments

“When we don't see that God has a divine purpose for the people he created, our evangelism will lack grace. When Jesus looked at people, he didn't see their sin only, but a story. Because he saw people not as their sin but as stories, he always met them with compassion. Jesus is the best one to look to when learning how to engage the world around us with the Gospel. But we can also learn how not to engage with others by looking at the Pharisees.”
― Preston Perry, How to Tell the Truth: The Story of How God Saved me to Win Hearts, Not Just Arguments

“The goal of always being prepared isn't to become some sort of Bible Jedi Master, ready to take on any and all objections at once. The goal is to tell the truth of the gospel to others to win hearts, not arguments. It's to tell the truth in a way that represents God well, without it turning into a shouting match, without you completely turning people off, and without you sounding like you don't know what you're talking about.”
― Preston Perry, How to Tell the Truth: The Story of How God Saved me to Win Hearts, Not Just Arguments

“Yeah, man. But don't get so caught up in arguing with the dude that you forget why you're trying to witness to him in the first place. Remember Pete, the goal isn't to beat him in a fight, it's to win his heart for the Lord. Apologetics ain't about defeating people, it's about reaching them.”
― Preston Perry, How to Tell the Truth: The Story of How God Saved me to Win Hearts, Not Just Arguments

“Peter is writing to Gentiles, non-Jews who are being persecuted for their faith, and in this part of the letter he is reminding them of the powerful witness that comes through suffering. After all, you see someone who seems happy in spite of horrendous circumstances. You kind of want to know why, right? That's what Peter means when he says to be prepared to make a defense for the hope that is in you. It's not so much a defense like somebody is coming after you and you have to fight back. It's more of a reason, an explanation. How can you be so hopeful? I mean, look around. There's poverty, crime, sickness, hatred, war, death, destruction. Man, what do you know that I don't? Peter's posture here isn't combative. It's instructive. He's not saying take him down. He's saying help people understand why you are so hopeful. Share the good news. In fact, before he even gets into that, he tells them, "Have unity of mind, sympathy, brotherly love, a tender heart, and a humble mind. Do not repay evil for evil, or reviling for reviling, but on the contrary, bless. For to this you were called that you may obtain a blessing" 1 Peter 3:8-9.”
― Preston Perry, How to Tell the Truth: The Story of How God Saved me to Win Hearts, Not Just Arguments

“How could I make John, a Jehovah's witness, see the truth about Jesus if I didn't understand the false ways he was seeing him? As I learned from Gary, this is the work of apologetics. Yet, whenever the word apologetics get used, I think Christians get intimidated, thinking they have to know Scripture backwards and forwards, or have read the Bible from cover to cover ten times over, or have studied all there is to know about a subject. But that's not really necessary. Apologetics is really about loving the Lord and being willing to tell other people about it. In fact, apologetics, defending the faith, has its roots in evangelism, sharing our faith. The truth aren't synonymous, but they definitely hold hands. You can't really do one without the other.”
― Preston Perry, How to Tell the Truth: The Story of How God Saved me to Win Hearts, Not Just Arguments

“When Jesus tells us that we are to make disciples of all nations, what he is really saying is that we need to make disciples of ALL PEOPLE. Well, people from different backgrounds, who subscribe to all kinds of religious doctrines are included in these people. We didn't avoid them because we were unfamiliar with their gods. We talked to them and studied what they believed, and the more we understood what they believed, the easier it was to know how to approach them with the truth.”
― Preston Perry, How to Tell the Truth: The Story of How God Saved me to Win Hearts, Not Just Arguments

“Using the gifts and personality God has given you, through your fears and discouragement, be bold in how you tell the truth to others.”
― Preston Perry, How to Tell the Truth: The Story of How God Saved Me to Win Hearts--Not Just Arguments

“To top it off, because I thought I was doing the Lord's work, I just knew God would be my shield. With the Lord on my pride--I mean, my side--I was ready to take John down.”
― Preston Perry, How to Tell the Truth: The Story of How God Saved me to Win Hearts, Not Just Arguments

“Will my love for Jesus still be as loud when I’m surrounded by people who hate him?”
― Preston Perry, How to Tell the Truth: The Story of How God Saved Me to Win Hearts--Not Just Arguments