Quotes from Andy Stanley

I tell the girls in our student ministry, "You don't really want sex. What you want is intimacy. You want to meet a guy, fall in love, and know you can trust him completely. You want somebody with whom you can share everything there is to know about you without fear of betrayal or rejection. You want to be fully known and to know him fully. Purity now paves the way to intimacy later.

You were not, are not, and should be glad you're not included in that covenant.

The church is not here to win. Just the opposite. By every human measure, our Savior lost. On purpose. With a purpose.

Likewise, most of the world goes to bed at night under the assumption that if they were to die in their sleep, they would find themselves standing at the pearly gates. After all, good people go to heaven. And just about everybody thinks they are good.

If there's an area in your life where you tell yourself, "I know this is wrong, but I'm going to do it anyway, and probably repeat it," Solomon would answer, "In that area of your life, you're a fool."

Don't be so concerned about keeping the folks you've got, that you neglect the folks you're trying to reach.

Mockers are cynical, critical, condescending, and controlling. You always feel off balance around them. You never know where you stand. They always try to come across as the smartest person in the room, and they use that supposed knowledge to try to dominate and manipulate their world and their relationships.

The tendency in business, or in church work for that matter, is to mistake activity for progress. We think that just because people are busy and doing a lot of stuff that we are being successful. The fact of the matter is, if all that activity isn't taking you where you want to go, then it's just wasted time.

If a teenage guy tends to overreact when he fails, there is a pretty good chance he thinks his significance is based on success.

Fire in the fireplace is a wonderful thing. Fire on the carpet has the potential to burn down your house. Sex is like fire. In the right context, it is an awesome thing. But once it is outside the context it was designed for, sex can burn your life and relationships to the ground.

The best way to know if someone is prepared to commit is to examine his or her prior commitments. If you want to know how someone will behave tomorrow, take a look at what he or she did yesterday.

We should discipline with the goal of teaching our children the critical life skill of making things right with the people they've wronged.