Quotes from Philip Yancey

People want to go back to those old days, but it's probably not going to happen.

It's too bad prayer comes bundled in a package of 'spiritual disciplines.' Really, we should see prayer as a spiritual privilege. We don't do it as a callisthenic exercise to gain points with God; we do it, because it is good for us in every way.

Most observers understand the difference between a committed Christian who accepts Jesus as a model for living and a 'cultural Christian' who happens to live in a nation with a Christian heritage. Most Muslims do not.

The New Testament persistently presses us upward, toward higher motives for being good.

You are free to reject God. Make sure that you're really rejecting God, not some caricature of God that the church has shown you. But I, one, respect a God who not only allows us to reject Him but includes the arguments we can use against Him in the Bible. I respect that.

No one ever converted to Christianity because they lost the argument.

I have yet to find any support in the Bible for an attitude of smugness: Ah, they deserve their punishment; watch them squirm.

When I don't know the answer to something, I write a book about it because it gives me a chance to explore it and go to some people who do have the answers.

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.

women much like this prostitute fled toward Jesus, not away from him. The worse a person felt about herself, the more likely she saw Jesus as a refuge. Has the church lost that gift?

We grow up hungry for love, and in ways so deep as to remain unexpressed we long for our Maker to love us.

At the heart of the gospel is a God who deliberately surrenders to the wild, irresistable power of love.