Dick Brogden > Quotes

“We have made Christmas about coming home and being comfortable. Jesus’ approach to Christmas was to leave home and be uncomfortable.”
― Dick Brogden, Live Dead Joy: 365 Days of Living and Dying with Jesus

“Small repeated steps of obedience produce immunity to large steps of temptation.”
― Dick Brogden, Live Dead Joy: 365 Days of Living and Dying with Jesus

“God’s great mercy and fierce wrath are both solid realities that stretch like railroad tracks to a point beyond our comprehension”
― Dick Brogden, Live Dead Joy: 365 Days of Living and Dying with Jesus

“Our limitation is that we can only see the edges of God’s ways and His character. He is so much bigger, so much better, so much purer, so much deeper than we can fathom, and His ways are not our ways.”
― Dick Brogden, Live Dead Joy: 365 Days of Living and Dying with Jesus

“God does not care about disappointing our celebrations even when the party is for Him.”
― Dick Brogden, Live Dead Joy: 365 Days of Living and Dying with Jesus

“DO NOT THINK ME MAD. IT IS NOT TO MAKE MONEY THAT I BELIEVE A CHRISTIAN SHOULD LIVE. THE NOBLEST THING A MAN CAN DO IS JUST HUMBLY TO RECEIVE AND THEN GO AMONGST OTHERS AND GIVE.” —David Livingstone”
― Dick Brogden, Live Dead Joy: 365 Days of Living and Dying with Jesus

“The person who has no reputation to protect is the most free. What a luxury not to care what people think of us. “Praise and blame equally are nothing to him who is dead and buried with Christ,” Father Macarius said.”
― Dick Brogden, Live Dead Joy: 365 Days of Living and Dying with Jesus

“How frustrating it must be to be the Devil. Whatever he means for evil (Gen. 50:20), God has the ability to turn for good. Time after time they have blown out the victory cigars in hell at the realization that certain defeat has once again been grasped from the jaws of victory. “This just in: The cross is still bloody, but the blasted tomb is now empty!” God’s unmatched ability to turn the schemes of the Enemy into the good of the saints has made both the Devil and demons insecure. Poor devils, their only certainty is defeat. God’s faithfulness has robbed them of their parties.”
― Dick Brogden, Live Dead Joy: 365 Days of Living and Dying with Jesus

“Sir Alexander Fraser Tytler (1747–1813) was a Scottish jurist and historian. It is thought that he wrote in 1801: “The average age of the world’s great civilizations has been 200 years. These nations have progressed through this sequence: from bondage to spiritual faith; from spiritual faith to great courage; from courage to liberty; from liberty to abundance; from abundance to selfishness; from selfishness to complacency; from complacency to apathy; from apathy to dependency; from dependency back to bondage.”
― Dick Brogden, Live Dead Joy: 365 Days of Living and Dying with Jesus

“We defeat the Devil by believing and obeying God.”
― Dick Brogden, Live Dead Joy: 365 Days of Living and Dying with Jesus

“A vacuum in the human spirit longs for the intimacy of a loving Father.”
― Dick Brogden, Live Dead Joy: 365 Days of Living and Dying with Jesus

“It is not in the nature of God to enjoy the misery of others—even when they deserve it. When the sinful suffer, our hearts must not harbor ease and apathy.”
― Dick Brogden, Live Dead Joy: 365 Days of Living and Dying with Jesus

“If you do not have joy in your suffering you are not suffering God’s way. You are just miserable.”
― Dick Brogden, Live Dead Joy: 365 Days of Living and Dying with Jesus

“When we are insulted or maligned, vindication and satisfaction come from sheltering in the presence of Jesus and being conformed to His image. The time we most want to defend ourselves is the time we should intentionally retreat to the presence of Jesus, shut our mouths, and let Him use the uncomfortable and embarrassing circumstances to stamp His image deeply upon us.”
― Dick Brogden, Live Dead Joy: 365 Days of Living and Dying with Jesus

“God stood on the court of history and surveyed those who could play alongside Him. He looked over the strong, capable, and obvious choices. Then His eyes went to the most insignificant people He could find—and that is who He picked. He wanted the weaklings for His team, and the reason is simple: All the glory would go to Him. When God assembles a team of insignificant people and wins with them, it is pretty obvious who is responsible for the victory.”
― Dick Brogden, Live Dead Joy: 365 Days of Living and Dying with Jesus

“These are the consolations of God (15:11): that in His mercy He loves us enough to shatter us. That is why we declare steadfastly with Job, “Though He slay me, yet will I trust Him” (13:15).”
― Dick Brogden, Live Dead Joy: 365 Days of Living and Dying with Jesus

“Lord, in my infrequent moments of eternal clarity, I declare I need you to reform, reconstruct, purge, cleanse, and make me holy.”
― Dick Brogden, Live Dead Joy: 365 Days of Living and Dying with Jesus

“Just as truth without mercy kills, mercy without truth corrupts. Let us not forget that God’s holiness and purity demand the death of all who sin, which means all who are born, not just the firstborn of the wicked. I and my sons deserve to die. The blood of Jesus shed on the cross protects us from the justice of God, which demands our death. To “stay under the blood” is to stay protected from the wrath of God. It is the mercy of God that keeps us immovable, rooted in safety (Ps. 21:7).”
― Dick Brogden, Live Dead Joy: 365 Days of Living and Dying with Jesus

“Our countries cannot protect us from the advance of Islam. Homeschooling does not protect us from worldliness. The church bubble does not protect us from humanism. If we are not proactive, we will perish.”
― Dick Brogden, Live Dead Joy: 365 Days of Living and Dying with Jesus

“God is just as good to us in His denials as He is in His approvals. The denials of God are immeasurable mercies. If God answered all our prayers with a positive response, how miserable we would be. Thank heaven that heaven says no! Negations, restrictions, refusals, denials, and rejections are all divine mercies. May we be as thankful when God says no as when He says yes.”
― Dick Brogden, Live Dead Joy: 365 Days of Living and Dying with Jesus

“It starts small but ever rises: “I know that my Redeemer lives, and He shall stand at last on the earth; and after my skin is destroyed, this I know, that in my flesh I shall see God” (Job 19:25–26, emphasis added). My tears are mingled and then lost in His. He wipes them away by swallowing them up in Resurrection victory (Rev. 7:17).”
― Dick Brogden, Live Dead Joy: 365 Days of Living and Dying with Jesus

“In classical philosophy, justice was not understood as treating everyone the same. It was understood as treating people who were equals equally and people who were not equal unequally. In other words, the righteous were treated equally, but the unrighteous were not treated equally. God’s view of justice is to treat everyone as they deserve (reward) and to treat everyone as they do not deserve (mercy).”
― Dick Brogden, Live Dead Joy: 365 Days of Living and Dying with Jesus

“Man was made for joy and woe; And when this we rightly know, Thro’ the world we safely go. Joy and woe are woven fine, A clothing for the soul divine. Under every grief and pine Runs a joy with silken twine.”
― Dick Brogden, Live Dead Joy: 365 Days of Living and Dying with Jesus

“People want reasons; God grants His presence. The great things of God are considered strange and difficult, not because they are complex but because they are so delightfully simple. God is good. “But what about evil?” God is good. “But what about those who have never heard?” God is good. “Then why do the innocent suffer?” God is good. “Then what about sickness, injustice, and disaster?” Our questions are unending, and the kindest way God answers them is simply to overwhelm us with His presence.”
― Dick Brogden, Live Dead Joy: 365 Days of Living and Dying with Jesus

“Dying to self gives us an appetizer of the glorious joy that will be ours forever when we awake from this earthly slumber. It is a preview, if you will, of the joy set before us.”
― Dick Brogden, Live Dead Joy: 365 Days of Living and Dying with Jesus

“Let us live a lifestyle of repentance, always conscious and sorry for our ugliness, always thankful and amazed at God’s generous mercy that beautifies the humble.”
― Dick Brogden, Live Dead Joy: 365 Days of Living and Dying with Jesus

“SONAR HINDUS OF INDIA (7,199,000; 0.0% EVANGELICAL) PRAY THAT CHRISTIANS FROM AROUND THE WORLD WOULD WORK TOGETHER TO REACH THE SONAR AND THAT THE SONAR WOULD BE JOINED TO THE BODY OF CHRIST (JOHN 17:20”
― Dick Brogden, Live Dead Joy: 365 Days of Living and Dying with Jesus

“Finishing Well Requires Mountains of Grace. The mountainous problems that surround us are made flat in the end by God’s grace (4: 7). Our salvation is by grace through faith, as is our completion. Only God’s grace gets us through this fallen world pure. Grace never denies or circumvents our efforts and intentional discipline, but neither can we rely on our efforts to get us to the end sin-free. Those who finish well have not had more luck or been more determined than those who stumbled at the end. They have simply been graced by God. When we breathe our last breath, we should use it to shout “Grace!”
― Dick Brogden, Live Dead Joy: 365 Days of Living and Dying with Jesus

“As mortals, bound by time, we consider Christ’s agony on the cross to be confined to one day. And yet, God, who is outside of time, knew from the foundation of the world that the Lamb would be slain. The Son of God, who knew no suffering in eternity, entered time with the foreknowledge and intent to suffer for us. Our suffering overtakes us like a thief in the night. The Lamb of God was not taken by surprise, however. From all eternity, from the moment He was born in Bethlehem, Calvary was ever before Him. What kind of God is this? What kind of God does this … for us?”
― Dick Brogden, Live Dead Joy: 365 Days of Living and Dying with Jesus

“We can get this shame into the light (1 John 1: 7). Bringing dark things into the light breaks the back of sin and brings us into fellowship not only with God but with one another.”
― Dick Brogden, Live Dead Joy: 365 Days of Living and Dying with Jesus