Philip Yancey > Quotes

“I have learned that faith means trusting in advance what will only make sense in reverse.”
― Philip Yancey

“Yet as I read the birth stories about Jesus I cannot help but conclude that though the world may be tilted toward the rich and powerful, God is tilted toward the underdog.”
― Philip Yancey

“Power, no matter how well-intentioned, tends to cause suffering. Love, being vulnerable, absorbs it. In a point of convergence on a hill called Calvary, God renounced the one for the sake of the other.”
― Philip Yancey, The Jesus I Never Knew

“Grace, like water, flows to the lowest part.”
― Philip Yancey

“To some, the image of a pale body glimmering on a dark night whispers of defeat. What good is a God who does not control his Son's suffering? But another sound can be heard: the shout of a God crying out to human beings, "I LOVE YOU." Love was compressed for all history in that lonely figure on the cross, who said that he could call down angels at any moment on a rescue mission, but chose not to - because of us. At Calvary, God accepted his own unbreakable terms of justice.


Any discussion of how pain and suffering fit into God's scheme ultimately leads back to the cross. ”
― Philip Yancey

“Christians get very angry toward other Christians who sin differently than they do.”
― Philip Yancey

“God wants us to choose to love him freely, even when that choice involves pain, because we are committed to him, not to our own good feelings and rewards. He wants us to cleave to him, as Job did, even when we have every reason to deny him hotly. That, I believe, is the central message of Job. Satan had taunted God with the accusation that humans are not truly free. Was Job being faithful simply because God had allowed him a prosperous life? Job's fiery trials proved the answer beyond doubt. Job clung to God's justice when he was the best example in history of God's apparent injustice. He did not seek the Giver because of his gifts; when all gifts were removed he still sought the Giver.”
― Philip Yancey, Where Is God When It Hurts?

“When I pray for another person, I am praying for God to open my eyes so that I can see that person as God does, and then enter into the stream of love that God already directs toward that person.”
― Philip Yancey

“I have come to know a God who has a soft spot for rebels, who recruits people like the adulterer David, the whiner Jeremiah, the traitor Peter, and the human-rights abuser Saul of Tarsus. I have come to know a God whose Son made prodigals the heroes of his stories and the trophies of his ministry.”
― Philip Yancey

“God loves people because of who God is, not because of who we are.”
― Philip Yancey, What's So Amazing About Grace?

“Having spent time around "sinners" and also around purported saints, I have a hunch why Jesus spent so much time with the former group: I think he preferred their company. Because the sinners were honest about themselves and had no pretense, Jesus could deal with them. In contrast, the saints put on airs, judged him, and sought to catch him in a moral trap. In the end it was the saints, not the sinners, who arrested Jesus.”
― Philip Yancey, What's So Amazing About Grace?

“We tend to think, 'Life should be fair because God is fair.' But God is not life. And if I confuse God with the physical reality of life- by expecting constant good health for example- then I set myself up for crashing disappointment.”
― Philip Yancey, Disappointment with God

“I rejected the church for a time because I found so little grace there. I returned because I found grace nowhere else.”
― Philip Yancey

“Sometimes I feel like the most liberal person among conservatives, and sometimes like the most conservative among liberals.”
― Philip Yancey

“Faith means believing in advance what will only make sense in reverse.”
― Philip Yancey, Disappointment with God

“Grace is the most perplexing, powerful force in the universe, and, I believe, the only hope for our twisted, violent planet.”
― Phillip Yancey

“Grace is free only because the giver himself has borne the cost.”
― Philip Yancey, What's So Amazing About Grace?

“Endurance is not just the ability to bear a hard thing, but to turn it into glory.”
― Philip Yancey, Disappointment with God

“Thunderously, inarguably, the Sermon on the Mount proves that before God we all stand on level ground: murderers and temper-throwers, adulterers and lusters, thieves and coveters. We are all desperate, and that is in fact the only state appropriate to a human being who wants to know God. Having fallen from the absolute Ideal, we have nowhere to land but in the safety net of absolute grace.”
― Philip Yancey, The Jesus I Never Knew

“Love deems this world worth rescuing.”
― Philip Yancey

“In a nutshell, the Bible from Genesis 3 to Revelation 22 tells the story of a God reckless with desire to get his family back.”
― Philip Yancey, The Jesus I Never Knew

“If prayer stands as the place where God and human beings meet, then I must learn about prayer. Most of my struggles in the Christian life circle around the same two themes: why God doesn't act the way we want God to, and why I don't act the way God wants me to. Prayer is the precise point where those themes converge.”
― Philip Yancey

“If my activism, however well-motivated, drives out love, then I have misunderstood Jesus’ gospel. I am stuck with law, not the gospel of grace.”
― Philip Yancey

“I would far rather convey grace than explain it.”
― Philip Yancey, What's So Amazing About Grace?

“Power can do everything but the most important thing: it cannot control love.”
― Philip Yancey, Disappointment with God

“One more, final question came from the audience on my last night in Newtown, and it was the one I most did not want to hear: “Will God protect my child?”
I stayed silent for what seemed like minutes. More than anything I wanted to answer with authority, “Yes! Of course God will protect you. Let me read you some promises from the Bible.” I knew, though, that behind me on the same platform twenty-six candles were flickering in memory of victims, proof that we have no immunity from the effects of a broken planet. My mind raced back to Japan, where I heard from parents who had lost their children to a tsunami in a middle school, and forward to that very morning when I heard from parents who had lost theirs to a shooter in an elementary school.
At last I said, “No, I’m sorry, I can’t promise that.” None of us is exempt. We all die, some old, some tragically young. God provides support and solidarity, yes, but not protection—at least not the kind of protection we desperately long for. On this cursed planet, even God suffered the loss of a Son.”
― Philip Yancey, The Question That Never Goes Away

“Grace is everywhere, like lenses that go unnoticed because you are looking through them.”
― Philip Yancey, What's So Amazing About Grace?

“Prayer is a declaration of dependence upon God.”
― Philip Yancey

“Christians are not perfect, by any means, but they can be people made fully alive.”
― Philip Yancey, Soul Survivor: How My Faith Survived the Church

“Politics deals with externals: borders, wealth, crimes. Authentic forgiveness deals with the evil in a persons heart, something for which politics has no cure. Virulent evil (racism, ethnic hatred) spreads through society like an airborne disease, one cough infects a whole busload. When moments of grace do occur, the world must pause, fall silent, and acknowledge that indeed forgiveness offers a kind of cure.

There will be no escape from wars, from hunger, from misery, from rancid discrimination, from denial of human rights, if our hearts aren't changed.”
― Phillip Yancey, What's So Amazing About Grace? Study Guide