Quotes from James MacDonald

God brings tests into your life because your faith in Him--your belief that He is in control and that He is good--can be proved only in times when life is hard.

The biggest obstacle to making Christ magnificent is the refusal to make yourself small.

You can't teach a person to love something. But you can get him to feel the heat of your love for something.

Let God Himself be the main attraction at church again, and let us be tireless in our insistence that church is for God, about God, through God, and to the glory of His great Son.

Church leaders raised on rationalism lead ministries where the supernatural, the Vertical, is suppressed and where God Himself is at best an observer and certainly seldom, if ever, and obvious participant in church.

Remember, it's not "stand firm for the faith" but "stand firm in the faith." You've got to own it and live it.

When we ask people what they want in church instead of giving them what they were created to long for, we play in the very idolatry that church was created to dismantle.

In a society where rationality has ruled so long, the church frequently fails to see that in forsaking the weekly pursuit of the transcendent, we have given up the only ground that was uniquely ours in this world. In attempting to make the church something that can attract and add value to secular mind-sets, we have turned our backs on our one true proposition - transcendence.

To disrespect a person made in the image and likeness of God is a lot worse than desecrating a flag. We should be offended and repulsed in the same way when God's image bearers are desecrated — abused, beaten, neglected, discriminated against, and not loved and taken care of as they should be.

At the end of life, each of us must answer the question, Whose story captured my soul?

The fundamental question in everything we do must be: Will this honor God? Does this display Jesus Christ? Does this make people see how awesome the LORD is? Failure to answer "Yes!" invites Ichabod.

Satan mounts his mutiny against God through a deceitful stronghold: God is untrustworthy. In subtle and not-so-subtle ways, he places God's heart on trial by whispering insidious lies: "God is holding back on you. He wants you to jump through hoops in order to earn His love. He's stingy. He doesn't have your best interest in mind. You're better off trusting in yourself. Your resources and functional saviors work better then waiting and trusting in Him.