David Mathis > Quotes

“This is the heart of prayer—not getting things from God, but getting God.”
― David Mathis, Habits of Grace: Enjoying Jesus through the Spiritual Disciplines

“You should marvel that no matter how remarkable your giftings or how simple your understanding, the message you proclaim is sheer stupidity to the world. Intellectual proficiency takes a back seat when your only hope is in what some call offensive and others call folly. Therefore, determine to be known less for your strengths in academic rigor and more for how that rigor helps you grasp what it means that the God-man was crucified to save the world. Embrace your weakness. Bring it all back to grace.”
― David Mathis, How to Stay Christian in Seminary

“God, keep me warm to your grace. Help me to be endlessly astounded that in Jesus you’ve shown such amazing favor to such an undeserving rebel as me.”
― David Mathis, How to Stay Christian in Seminary

“When our life in him is healthy and vibrant, we do not only ache to keep sinking our roots down deep in him, but we also want to stretch out our branches and extend his goodness to others.”
― David Mathis, Habits of Grace: Enjoying Jesus through the Spiritual Disciplines

“…A good instinct to develop on the threshold of significant purchases is to ask what this expenditure reveals about our heart. What desire am I trying to fulfill?”
― David Mathis, Habits of Grace: Enjoying Jesus through the Spiritual Disciplines

“The kind of perfection that Jesus says comes from his Father—and the kind he calls his disciples to pursue—does not find its sense of completion in delivering retribution for wrongs done. Rather, it is the perfection of a heart that finds so much fulfillment and satisfaction in the God of grace that it is able to extend grace to those who don't deserve it.”
― David Mathis

“Chosen before time. Called with effect. United to Jesus in faith and repentance. Adopted and forgiven. Justified. Sanctified. Glorified. And satisfied forever. This is grace gone wonderfully wild. This is the flood of God’s favor in which we discover the power and practice of the means of grace. Put”
― David Mathis, Habits of Grace: Enjoying Jesus through the Spiritual Disciplines

“I fear many imagine God as far too small. Even if you say the right words and articulate good doctrine, if you are not somehow unsettled by God’s mystery, somehow overcome by his greatness, it’s probably because you have domesticated him. Accessibility to information about him has inoculated you to his grandeur.”
― David Mathis, How to Stay Christian in Seminary

“There are things you cannot know without suffering. God has special tutorials in tribulation for his shepherds. Do not begrudge the seminars of suffering. His aim is to make you, like Jesus, a sympathetic shepherd. It’s scary. Paul prayed that he would share Christ’s sufferings and become like him in his death (Phil. 3:10). God answered him. He was forsaken at his last trial (2 Tim. 4:16), and the Romans took him out. We are not playing games.”
― David Mathis, How to Stay Christian in Seminary

“But we must see his listening to us in prayer in relation to our listening to him in his word.”
― David Mathis, Habits of Grace: Enjoying Jesus through the Spiritual Disciplines

“It is grace to be forgiven of sinful acts, and grace to be supplied the heart for righteous ones.”
― David Mathis, Habits of Grace: Enjoying Jesus through the Spiritual Disciplines

“An otherwise impressive theology degree is utterly unimpressive if your soul has shriveled in the course of study.”
― David Mathis, How to Stay Christian in Seminary

“…Take every word as spoken to yourself, with this essential anchor in place: Seek to understand first how God’s words fell on the original hearers, and how they relate to Jesus’ person and work, and then bring them home to yourself.”
― David Mathis, Habits of Grace: Enjoying Jesus through the Spiritual Disciplines

“Weakness means we don't have what it takes. It means we are not sovereign, omniscient, or invincible. We are not in control, we don't know everything, and we can be stopped. Weakness means that we desperately need God.

P. 52

Most of you didn't come to faith in Jesus with the intellectual endorsement of secular scholars or the accolades of worldly fame. The truth is, you are weak all around. You are weak, plain and simple. But in your weakness, God has called you, and therefore you have entered seminary for theological training. You go to seminary to grow, yes. You go to seminary to learn and steward your gifts, absolutely. But here's the thing: the goal of seminary is not to become unweak.

P. 52-53”
― David Mathis

“The grace of God cannot be quarantined to individuals.”
― David Mathis, Habits of Grace: Enjoying Jesus through the Spiritual Disciplines

“The Bible is gloriously for us, but it is not mainly about us.”
― David Mathis, Habits of Grace: Enjoying Jesus through the Spiritual Disciplines

“Christian meditation is less about the posture of our bodies and more about the posture of our souls.”
― David Mathis, Habits of Grace: Enjoying Jesus through the Spiritual Disciplines

“The battleground is between our ears. What is it that is capturing your idle thoughts? What fear or frustration is filling your spare moments? Will you just listen to yourself, or will you start talking? No, preaching—not letting your concerns shape you, but forming your concerns by the power of the gospel.”
― David Mathis, Habits of Grace: Enjoying Jesus through the Spiritual Disciplines

“Nothing shows our hearts like sacrifice. When we are willing not only to give from our excess, but to embrace some personal loss or disadvantage for the sake of showing generosity toward others, we say loudly and clearly…that we have a greater love than ourselves and our comforts.”
― David Mathis, Habits of Grace: Enjoying Jesus through the Spiritual Disciplines

“Prayer is where we agree with God that he is who he says he is and we are who he says we are.”
― David Mathis, How to Stay Christian in Seminary

“The waters of good preaching are always running downhill to the stream of Christ, who he is, and how he has loved us.”
― David Mathis, Habits of Grace: Enjoying Jesus through the Spiritual Disciplines

“The very fact that we know that God is incomprehensible is itself an evidence of what he has graciously let us comprehend.”
― David Mathis, How to Stay Christian in Seminary

“It shouldn’t surprise us…to find that prayer is not finally about getting things from God, but getting God.”
― David Mathis, Habits of Grace: Enjoying Jesus through the Spiritual Disciplines

“There were afternoons I put my elbows on my desk, face in my hands, and wept over the theological confusion in my head. I think that is the price of dismantling joy-defeating doctrines. It is ironic that so many tears should be shed on the way to the fullness of joy. But that’s the way it is. Truth must make room for itself. And that may mean demolishing the mental tenements where you have lived comfortably for a long time.”
― David Mathis, How to Stay Christian in Seminary

“The message of the gospel is not meant to be something you “get,” carve into canned lines, and tell yourself over and over for a lifetime as some sort of magic mantra to fight sin. God means for you to be regularly pushed and formed, hurt and healed, challenged and encouraged by passages you’ve never heard before, haven’t given enough attention to, or haven’t considered in a while.”
― David Mathis, How to Stay Christian in Seminary

“God designed the church to be a community of lifelong learners under the earthly guidance of leaders who are teachers at heart. The Christian faith is not a finite course of study for the front-end of adulthood. Our mind-set shouldn’t be to first do our learning and then spend the rest of our lives drawing from that original deposit of knowledge. Rather, ongoing health in the Christian life is inextricably linked to ongoing learning.”
― David Mathis, Habits of Grace: Enjoying Jesus through the Spiritual Disciplines

“Prayer, for the Christian, is not merely talking to God, but responding to the One who has initiated toward us. He has spoken first. This is not a conversation we start, but a relationship into which we’ve been drawn. His voice breaks the silence. Then, in prayer, we speak to the God who has spoken. Our asking and pleading and requesting originate not from our emptiness, but his fullness. Prayer doesn’t begin with our needs, but with his bounty. Its origin is first in adoration, and only later in asking. Prayer is a reflex to the grace he gives to the sinners he saves. It is soliciting his provision in view of the power he has shown. Prayer”
― David Mathis, Habits of Grace: Enjoying Jesus through the Spiritual Disciplines

“Meditating on God’s words shapes our soul. Sometimes”
― David Mathis, Habits of Grace: Enjoying Jesus through the Spiritual Disciplines

“Work out your salvation, because God is at work in you” (see Phil. 2:12–13). God’s work does not make our work unnecessary; it makes it possible. “I worked harder than any of them, though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me” (1 Cor. 15:10). Grace does not just pardon our failures; it empowers our successes—like successfully enjoying Jesus more than life.”
― David Mathis, Habits of Grace: Enjoying Jesus through the Spiritual Disciplines

“Don’t be under the delusion that seminary automatically makes you grow in grace (2 Pet. 3:18). In fact, it can have quite the opposite effect. Beware lest frequent handling of holy things, such as the Scriptures, good doctrine, and the gospel itself, causes you to lose your wonder about them. And especially don’t be flippant with grace. For God’s sake, your own sake, and the sake of the people you’ll one day serve, never take grace for granted.”
― David Mathis, How to Stay Christian in Seminary