Joel Halpin

“our nation’s challenges do not stem from the church’s inability to convince unbelievers to behave like believers. Our challenges stem from the church’s inability to inspire believers to behave like believers.”
― Andy Stanley, Not in It to Win It: Why Choosing Sides Sidelines The Church

“To be called to a life of extraordinary quality, to live up to it, and yet to be unconscious of it is indeed a narrow way. To confess and testify to the truth as it is in Jesus, and at the same time to love the enemies of that truth, his enemies and ours, and to love them with the infinite love of Jesus Christ, is indeed a narrow way. To believe the promise of Jesus that his followers shall possess the earth, and at the same time to face our enemies unarmed and defenceless, preferring to incur injustice rather than to do wrong ourselves, is indeed a narrow way. To see the weakness and wrong in others, and at the same time refrain from judging them; to deliver the gospel message without casting pearls before swine, is indeed a narrow way. The way is unutterably hard, and at every moment we are in danger of straying from it. If we regard this way as one we follow in obedience to an external command, if we are afraid of ourselves all the time, it is indeed an impossible way. But if we behold Jesus Christ going on before step by step, we shall not go astray.”
― Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship

“Tim Keller writes, “When the church as a whole is no longer seen as speaking to questions that transcend politics, and when it is no longer united by a common faith that transcends politics, then the world sees strong evidence that Nietzsche, Freud, and Marx were right, that religion is really just a cover for people wanting to get their way in the world.”13”
― Andy Stanley, Not in It to Win It: Why Choosing Sides Sidelines The Church

“Paul says that “they exchanged the truth about God for [the] lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator” (Rom 1:25).24 I read that verse many times before I realized that Paul was declaring the existence of only two ways to live and think—only two ways to believe. Human beings, he says, worship and serve either “the creature” or “the Creator.” Such a simple yet profound contrast, Paul!”
― Peter Jones, The Other Worldview: Exposing Christianity's Greatest Threat