Jay E. Adams > Quotes

“Evil is powerful, but good is more powerful. In fact, evil is so powerful that only good has the power to overcome evil. Darkness can be driven away only by light.”
― Jay E. Adams, How to Overcome Evil

“The Christian is free from all other human beings. He does not have to live over against others, controlled by their actions and responses. Rather, he lives according to Christ's commands. This is Christian freedom. It is a freedom unknown by others. It is not just when others do the things that we like that we act properly toward them; we are free to do good even when they don't because our actions are not dependent on their responses. It is the Lord Christ when we serve!”
― Jay E. Adams, How to Overcome Evil

“I don't care what problem you face; it has no power to defeat the cross of Christ.”
― Jay E. Adams, How to Overcome Evil

“Love is not first a feeling. Though the feelings come later and grow thick in the basic loam of love, they don't constitute the sum and substance of love. Love is doing whatever good God says you must do for another, to please God, whether (at first) it pleases you or not. You must do so because He says so; and you don't wait until you feel like doing so. Love begins with obedience toward God in which one gives to another whatever the other needs. Love is not a gooey, sticky sentimental thing; it is hard to love. Often it hurts to love. Love meant going to the cross through the garden of Gethsemane. Christ did not feel like dying for your sins, Christian, but He did so nonetheless. The Scriptures teach that he endured the cross while focusing on the subsequent joy that it would bring.”
― Jay E. Adams, How to Overcome Evil

“As his counterpart, the woman completes or fills out a man's life, making him a larger person than he could have been alone, bringing into his frame of reference a new feminine dimension from which to view life that he could have known in no other way. Then, too, he also brings to his wife a masculine perspective that enlarges her life, making her a fuller, more complete person than she could have been apart from him. This marriage union by covenant solves the problem of loneliness not merely by filling a gap, but by overfilling it. More than mere presence is involved. The loneliness of mere masculinity or femininity is likewise met.”
― Jay Adams

“When is a train most free? Is it when it goes bouncing across the field off the track? No. It is free only when it is confined (if you will) to the track. Then it runs smoothly and efficiently, because that was the way that its maker intended for it to run. It needs to be on the track, structured by the track, to run properly. You too need to be on the track. God's track is found in God's Word.”
― Jay E. Adams, Godliness Through Discipline

“Maturation is fundamentally the process of learning to discipline one’s self and to carry personal responsibility.”
― Jay E. Adams, Competent to Counsel: Introduction to Nouthetic Counseling

“Counselors must recognize that too many Christians give up. They want the change too soon. What they really want is change without the daily struggle. Sometimes they give up when they are on the very threshold of success. They stop before receiving. It usually takes at least three weeks of proper daily effort for one to feel comfortable in performing a new practice. And it takes about three more weeks to make the practice part of oneself. Yet, many Christians do not continue even for three days. If they do not receive instant success, they get discouraged. They want what they want now, and if they don’t get it now, they quit.”
― Jay E. Adams, The Christian Counselor's Manual: The Practice of Nouthetic Counseling

“So then, the command "Do not be overcome by evil but overcome evil with good" is a clear witness to the fact that you can be a winner in the battle against evil. No matter where or when it occurs, regardless of it's impact or force, there is no attack that can be made that you cannot withstand if you do so by using God's weapons, according to God's revealed strategy and are energized by His powerful Spirit.”
― Jay E. Adams, How to Overcome Evil

“The word grace has several meanings in the Bible, one of which is help. The Holy Spirit gives help when His people read His Word and then step out by faith to do as He says. He does not promise to strengthen unless they do so; the power often comes in the doing.”
― Jay E. Adams, The Christian Counselor's Manual: The Practice of Nouthetic Counseling

“Feelings are up and down, they have peaks and troughs. Often, feelings generated by other causes get tangled up with a decision and color one’s vision. Nothing short of commandment living (often in spite of feelings) can keep life stable. The peaks and troughs grow larger as they are allowed to become the life motivating force;7 however, on the other hand, they tend to flatten out as life becomes commandment oriented.”
― Jay E. Adams, The Christian Counselor's Manual: The Practice of Nouthetic Counseling

“Christians never should fear change. They must believe in change so long as the change is oriented toward godliness. The Christian life is a life of continual change. In the Scriptures it is called a “walk,” not a rest. They never may say (in this life), “I have finally made it.” They must not think, “There is nothing more to learn from God’s Word, nothing more to put into practice tomorrow, no more skills to develop, no more sins to be dealt with.”
― Jay E. Adams, The Christian Counselor's Manual: The Practice of Nouthetic Counseling

“With a taproot sunk deeply in the unchangeable Christ, one can learn to live a relatively rootless life here with joy. Change is what the Christian ought to expect, ought to demand of himself, and ought to learn to live with. He knows that there is “no continuing city”26 here; his “citizenship is in heaven.”27 Counselors with this hope can undertake the task of counseling with joy and expectation. By the grace of God, there is every hope of change!”
― Jay E. Adams, The Christian Counselor's Manual: The Practice of Nouthetic Counseling

“We are to vigorously and violently demolish all the fortifications of the foe, winning the battle and talking him captive for Christ. The Church is not to assume a defensive posture, but may take aggressive action to overcome evil by means of good.”
― Jay E. Adams, How to Overcome Evil

“Notice, again, it is not what one does that saves him—when it is judged, the tree is already a good tree—that’s why it bears good fruit (its fruit-bearing doesn’t make it a good tree). One’s works identify him as a good tree, wheat, a sheep, a Christian. Conversely, the bad tree, goat, tare and the unsaved man (like a child) is also “known by his doings” (Prov. 20:11). See Romans 2:6-8 in the light of this principle.”
― Jay E. Adams, A Theology of Christian Counseling: More Than Redemption

“Paul is clear about what it is. Love is giving—giving of oneself to another. It is not getting, as the world says today. It is not feeling and desire; it is not something over which one has no control. It is something that one does for another. No one loves in the abstract. Love is an attitude that issues forth in something that actually, tangibly happens. Notice Christ loved the church and gave Himself for her (Ephesians 5:25). John 3:16 says, “God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son.”
― Jay E. Adams, The Christian Counselor's Manual: The Practice of Nouthetic Counseling

“The biblical picture of intimacy and love between the shepherd and the sheep is foreign to us. The oriental shepherd lived with his sheep. He slept with them out on the hillsides at night, as David must have done. He went out seeking the hundredth sheep, not satisfied with only ninety-nine in the fold.”
― Jay E. Adams, Competent to Counsel: Introduction to Nouthetic Counseling

“Corresponding to the two basic philosophies of life, then, hedonism and biblical theism, are two views of love. Everyone, of course, is for love. The hippies are for love, the situation ethicists are for love, the followers of Hari Krishna are for love, Christians are for love. But it is true of love, as it is of heaven, that “everybody talks about it ain’t got it.”
― Jay E. Adams, The Christian Counselor's Manual: The Practice of Nouthetic Counseling

“God’s Word changes people, changes their thinking, changes their decisions, and changes their behavior. Change is an important matter to nouthetic counselors. The Scriptures everywhere anticipate change. The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of change. His activity is everywhere represented as the dynamic and power behind the personality changes in God’s people.”
― Jay E. Adams, Competent to Counsel: Introduction to Nouthetic Counseling

“Man was created as a being whose very existence is derived from and dependent upon a Creator whom he must acknowledge as such and from whom he must obtain wisdom and knowledge through revelation. The purpose and meaning of his life, as well as his very existence, is derived and dependent. He can find none of this in himself. Man is not autonomous.”
― Jay E. Adams, A Theology of Christian Counseling: More Than Redemption

“Every change that God promises is possible. Every quality that God requires in His redeemed children can be attained. Every resource that is needed God has supplied.”
― Jay E. Adams, The Christian Counselor's Manual: The Practice of Nouthetic Counseling

“True love is always under control. It is commanded. Christ commands, “Love your enemies.” You can’t sit around whomping up a good feeling for your enemies. It doesn’t come that way. But if you give an enemy something to eat or give him something to drink, soon something begins to happen to your feelings. When you invest yourself in another, you begin to feel differently toward him. Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.”
― Jay E. Adams, The Christian Counselor's Manual: The Practice of Nouthetic Counseling

“Love, therefore, may be commanded (Luke 6:27 ff.; Ephesians 5:25) and taught (Titus 2:3-4). Love does not come naturally, it must be learned.21 But since it is the fruit of the Spirit, Christians may be sure that it will take the work of God’s Spirit in their lives to learn to love. The Spirit works through prayerful obedience to the Scriptures.”
― Jay E. Adams, The Christian Counselor's Manual: The Practice of Nouthetic Counseling

“Hope in the Scriptures always is a confident expectation; the word hope never carries even the connotation of uncertainty that adheres to our English term (as when we say cautiously, “I hope so”). There is no “hope so” about the biblical concept.”
― Jay E. Adams, The Christian Counselor's Manual: The Practice of Nouthetic Counseling

“Blameshifting is so easy; after all, it has such a long history—it goes back to the Garden. A person’s personal relationship to the counselee is discussed publicly without any knowledge of the fact on his part and without any opportunity for him to straighten out misunderstandings or balance off unfair judgments. His name and his actions are being discussed in an intimate way by a group of people who know nothing about him and have no right to know anything about him. Often the discussion is instigated by a bitter, resentful person who, according to Matthew 18, should have gone directly to the husband or parent or pastor to seek reconciliation if he felt that way.”
― Jay E. Adams, The Christian Counselor's Manual: The Practice of Nouthetic Counseling

“Week after week, counselors encounter one outstanding failure among Christians: a lack of what the Bible calls “endurance.” Perhaps endurance is the key to godliness through discipline. No one learns to ice skate, to use a yo-yo, to button shirts, or to drive an automobile unless he persists long enough to do so. He learns by enduring in spite of failures, through the embarrassments, until the desired behavior becomes a part of him. He trains himself by practice to do what he wants to learn to do. God says the same is true about godliness.”
― Jay E. Adams, The Christian Counselor's Manual: The Practice of Nouthetic Counseling

“Throughout the course of human history both godly and ungodly counsel always have been present, vying for man's acceptance. The history of individuals, families and even nations, has stemmed directly from whichever one of these two counsels was followed. There is no third counsel, as [Psalm 1] clearly indicates. There are just two ways to go: Satan's way or God's way. Man has no counsel that is strictly "his own." If he rejects God's counsel, whatever counsel he follows instead turns out to be Satan's counsel. Man was made to follow another's counsel; he will do so. He cannot throw off his dependency. Knowingly or unwittingly he always depends on Satan or God. He was made to be motivated and molded by counsel.”
― Jay E. Adams, Theology of Christian Counseling, A

“When Christ said, “take up your cross daily and follow me” (Luke 9:23), He put an end to all such thinking. He represented the Christian life as a daily struggle to change. The counselee can change if the Spirit of God dwells within him. Of course, if He does not, there is no such hope.”
― Jay E. Adams, The Christian Counselor's Manual: The Practice of Nouthetic Counseling

“It is a clever “wile” of Satan to tempt men to think that they cannot do what God requires because they do not feel like doing it, or that they must do what they feel like doing and cannot help themselves.”
― Jay E. Adams, The Christian Counselor's Manual: The Practice of Nouthetic Counseling

“Similarly, the Scriptures urge the believer to be what God has declared him to be in Christ.”
― Jay E. Adams, The Christian Counselor's Manual: The Practice of Nouthetic Counseling