Quotes from Thabiti M. Anyabwile

If we allow ourselves even for a moment to contemplate the vast weight of suffering in the world, we will easily be overwhelmed with grief. This is why we develop the habit and self-protective instinct of overlooking the suffering around us.

Sometimes God comforts us directly, but that's not His only strategy. Normally He comforts us through His people—so if our lives aren't open to one another, they're closed to the Father's comfort. Let's share our lives; let's fellowship in suffering so that we can fellowship in His mercy.

We do some of our best work in evangelism when we make sure people understand the wrath of God against them, that their plight is desperate because God is angry. The problem of unreached and unengaged peoples is not that they don't have the gospel - that's the solution. Their plight is that they face a God who is rightly angry with them because of their sin. ("Cross", p. 35)

Where is God in suffering? He's in it with us, and in it for us.

Is the Black Church Dead? Or, Can These Bones Live?

If churches are to be healthy, then pastors and teachers must be committed to discovering the meaning of Scripture and allowing that meaning to drive the agenda with their congregations.

The mark of Christian discipleship is love—love of the kind that Jesus exercised toward his followers, love visible enough that men will recognize it as belonging to those people who follow Jesus.

As we tune our ears to the kind of preaching that makes the primary point of the sermon the primary point of a particular passage of Scripture, we grow accustomed to listening to God.

In all things essential, unity; in all things nonessential, liberty; and in all things, love.

Serving brings great rewards, but sometimes those rewards come gift-wrapped in trying situations. Those who lovingly serve others can end up feeling like crash dummies designed specifically to discover the heat, force, and pain tolerance of some new product.

Fools despise wisdom and instruction" (Prov. 1:7), but it is the nature of true godliness, maturity, and health in church members to accept the loving instruction and rebuke of others.

If we want to know and reverence God truly, we will dedicate ourselves to becoming biblical theologians who understand the narrative and themes of Scripture.