Adam Mabry > Quotes

“The art of rest is about learning how to rest with Jesus, not from Jesus.”
― Adam Mabry, The Art of Rest: Faith to hit pause in a world that never stops

“Rest is not a religious action item to be added to a list. It isn’t a duty to be performed; it’s a delight to be enjoyed.”
― Adam Mabry, The Art of Rest: Faith to hit pause in a world that never stops

“And we express the glory of God as we experience relationship with God. We won’t declare him if we do not know him. But if we never have any time to enjoy being with him—if we’re never resting with him—then what have we to express to the world? “Come meet Jesus! I barely have time to be with him, but trust me, he’s great.”
― Adam Mabry, The Art of Rest: Faith to hit pause in a world that never stops

“If anxiety is what unbelief feels like, then restful peace is the inheritance of those who trust Jesus.”
― Adam Mabry, The Art of Rest: Faith to hit pause in a world that never stops

“Anxiety is what unbelief feels like.”
― Adam Mabry, The Art of Rest: Faith to Hit Pause in a World that Never Stops

“We're a tragic mix of imago dei and total depravity. Holding this tension rescues you from utopianism and hedonism, nihilism and cynicism. If you want to treat humans well, you must understand what we humans are. And what we are all, right now, is a mashup of these twin natures. The best person you know is a seat of depravity. The worst person you know is an image-bearer of our Creator.”
― Adam Mabry, Stop Taking Sides: How Holding Truths in Tension Saves Us from Anxiety and Outrage

“I know that what God’s doing is good, but I don’t know how right now” is usually wisdom. Guessing at anything deeper is often folly—”
― Adam Mabry, Stop Taking Sides: How Holding Truths in Tension Saves Us from Anxiety and Outrage

“When human depravity looms large in your view, remember imago dei, and that through Christ goodness will one day win. Never place your hope in a program to fix humanity.”
― Adam Mabry, Stop Taking Sides: How Holding Truths in Tension Saves Us from Anxiety and Outrage

“Incomprehension is a prerequisite of passionate praise.”
― Adam Mabry, Stop Taking Sides: How Holding Truths in Tension Saves Us from Anxiety and Outrage

“We’re made in God’s image to think in the way he thinks. Yet sin corrupts our minds to such deep degrees that our reason is tainted by the irrationality of sin.”
― Adam Mabry, Stop Taking Sides: How Holding Truths in Tension Saves Us from Anxiety and Outrage

“The best person you know is a seat of depravity. The worst person you know is an image-bearer of our Creator.”
― Adam Mabry, Stop Taking Sides: How Holding Truths in Tension Saves Us from Anxiety and Outrage

“The problems of life are real, not imaginary. Eastern meditation starts with the presupposition that pain in this world is illusory, but the gospel tells us that we don't have to pretend that what hurts does not, or should not. Life does hurt. Yet the gospel doesn't leave us there. Rest with God grows our ability to say, "I know God, and I know he will deliver me." It enables us to face problems with both honesty and hope.”
― Adam Mabry, The Art of Rest: Faith to Hit Pause in a World that Never Stops

“And so the church—Christians, including you and me—misses out on the unity Christ prayed for, on the experience of life Christ died and rose for, and the compelling witness that Christ called for.”
― Adam Mabry, Stop Taking Sides: How Holding Truths in Tension Saves Us from Anxiety and Outrage

“It is a great and glorious truth that we humans were made for the glory of God. To experience and express all the wonders of his manifold attributes is the delightful vocation of his people.”
― Adam Mabry, The Art of Rest: Faith to Hit Pause in a World that Never Stops

“But such deep fellowship with God and others can't be microwaved. It takes time. And when we carve out the time, we're rewarded with the relational fellowship for which we were made. We find ourselves loving to carve out the time to focus on our relationship, rather than having to do so. Duty gives way to delight.”
― Adam Mabry, The Art of Rest: Faith to Hit Pause in a World that Never Stops

“If you’re closed, listening is going to be necessary—especially listening to the more open among us or those who aren’t already saying what you want to hear, remembering that they often have a point and a helpful perspective.”
― Adam Mabry, Stop Taking Sides: How Holding Truths in Tension Saves Us from Anxiety and Outrage

“This is the Gordian knot of human nature—you and me. Simultaneously, we bear the image of our Creator and the curse of our rebellion. Capable of great wonders and great woes, this is who we are. But it is not who we will always be.”
― Adam Mabry, Stop Taking Sides: How Holding Truths in Tension Saves Us from Anxiety and Outrage

“if you’re more judging, then you like your lines nice and neat, and your doctrine all sewn up—so you’ll need to consciously, willingly embrace paradox and mystery. For, while God knows all things, you don’t, and you can’t. You must learn to trust him, not your ability to understand him.”
― Adam Mabry, Stop Taking Sides: How Holding Truths in Tension Saves Us from Anxiety and Outrage

“Accept Responsibility God’s sovereignty doesn’t get rid of human responsibility; it grounds it.”
― Adam Mabry, Stop Taking Sides: How Holding Truths in Tension Saves Us from Anxiety and Outrage

“Our bodies get tired, so we sleep. If I refuse sleep on the basis that I need to train for a marathon, I will fail to run a marathon, because my body needs rest in order to train. So why would we think it should be all that different with our souls? When our souls are tired, why wouldn't we rest? Jesus seems to have made a habit of this. Are we a bit more spiritually fit than the Lord?”
― Adam Mabry, The Art of Rest: Faith to Hit Pause in a World that Never Stops

“Worship Passionately Incomprehension is a prerequisite of passionate praise.”
― Adam Mabry, Stop Taking Sides: How Holding Truths in Tension Saves Us from Anxiety and Outrage

“In their Hidden Tribes study, More in Common—an international initiative trying to understand this phenomenon—found that “many of today’s most contentious issues are framed as us-versus-them identity-based struggles.”
― Adam Mabry, Stop Taking Sides: How Holding Truths in Tension Saves Us from Anxiety and Outrage

“Your thoughts on you are the foundation of your sense of self-worth, morality, parenting, politics, and almost everything else.”
― Adam Mabry, Stop Taking Sides: How Holding Truths in Tension Saves Us from Anxiety and Outrage

“Clarity, argumentation, listening, and mystery—these are the tools that will enable us to stop taking sides, embrace tensions, and for God’s sake be free from constant fear, proud tribalism, and sprawling anxiety.”
― Adam Mabry, Stop Taking Sides: How Holding Truths in Tension Saves Us from Anxiety and Outrage

“Now we’re not good or evil; we’re good and evil. Nothing we do erases God’s image in us, and nothing we do is untouched by our sinfulness. We each now live in the tension of imago dei and total depravity—a tension that every other origin-story misses, yet one which explains the data of human history.”
― Adam Mabry, Stop Taking Sides: How Holding Truths in Tension Saves Us from Anxiety and Outrage

“The Bible teaches that God is in control and that our decisions matter. His will will be done, and he will hold us responsible for ours. God chooses his people, and we are responsible for trusting God.”
― Adam Mabry, Stop Taking Sides: How Holding Truths in Tension Saves Us from Anxiety and Outrage

“Admit Ignorance Where Scripture is clear, we should be too. But where it’s not, we venture mere guesses.”
― Adam Mabry, Stop Taking Sides: How Holding Truths in Tension Saves Us from Anxiety and Outrage

“if we care more about being right about Jesus than following the way of Jesus, it won’t matter that we’re right about Jesus.”
― Adam Mabry, Stop Taking Sides: How Holding Truths in Tension Saves Us from Anxiety and Outrage

“Idol worship is not just displeasing to God (terrible though that is); sooner or later, the false god consumes the worshiper, too.”
― Adam Mabry, The Art of Rest: Faith to Hit Pause in a World that Never Stops

“Tensions, on the other hand, are ideas that feel as though they cannot be true at the same time, but are.”
― Adam Mabry, Stop Taking Sides: How Holding Truths in Tension Saves Us from Anxiety and Outrage