Quotes from Philip Yancey

Though wrong does not disappear when I forgive, it loses its grip on me and is taken over by God, who knows what to do. Such a decision involves risk, of course: the risk that God may not deal with the person as I would want.

Church is a place where I can say, unashamedly, I don't need to sin. I need another sinner.

Never live as though God does not exist." Or, stated positively, "Always live in awareness of God's existence.

I have marveled at, and sometimes openly questioned, the self-restraint God has shown throughout history, allowing the Genghis Khans and the Hitlers and the Stalins to have their way. But nothing - nothing - compares to the self-restraint shown that dark Friday in Jerusalem.

I fight the tentacular grip of ungrace in my own life. Although I may not perpetuate the strictness of my upbringing, I battle daily against pride, judgmentalism, and a feeling that I must somehow earn God's approval.

the Gospels make clear the connection: God forgives my debts as I forgive my debtors. The reverse is also true: Only by living in the stream of God's grace will I find the strength to respond with grace toward others.

Sometimes God seemed as close as his wife or children. Sometimes he had no sense of God's presence, no faith to lean on. God is wild, you know, he wrote. We're not in charge.

Rather than looking back nostalgically on a time when Christians wielded more power, I suggest another approach: that we regard ourselves as subversives operating within the broader culture.

The medical community now freely admits that in a larger sense a person's attitude is one of the chief factors in determining the effect of all suffering.

Over time Christians learned that the faith grows best from the bottom up rather than being imposed from the top down.

The earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the LORD, as the waters cover the sea

senseless. I prefer the word "buzzed," following the brain/amplifier analogy.