Quotes about Experience

I did try to write in Iraq, and I failed. I think you just don't have the brain space for it.

I saw Jesus walk into my bedroom.

I was about nine or 10 when my dad moved to the U.S. to get another degree. Me and my mother moved to Atlanta to join him when I was 14.

You learn to speak by speaking, to study by studying, to run by running, to work by working; in just the same way, you learn to love by loving.

If the stories of our faith are such that you're too young to remember them, then you are not old enough to preach.

Sheer scholarship alone cannot reveal to us the gospel of grace. We must never allow the authority of books, institutions, or leaders to replace the authority of KNOWING Jesus Christ personally and directly. When the religious views of others interpose between us and the primary experience of Jesus as the Christ, we become unconvicted and unpersuasive travel agents handing out brochures to places we have never visited.

We must go out into a desert of some kind (your backyard will do) and come into a personal experience of the awesome love of God.

There is an essential connection between experiencing God, loving God, and trusting God. You will trust God only as much as you love him. And you will love him to the extent you have touched him, rather that he has touched you.

Our response to Jesus Christ will be total the day we experience how total is his love for us. Instead of our self-conscious efforts to be good, we should allow ourselves the luxury of letting ourselves be loved by God. And much of his love for us will be expressed through the medium of our friends' love for us. How else could he reveal it in a way that is tangible? "You are my friends if you do what I command. . . . This is my command: Love each other" (John 15:14, 17).

Biblically, tenderness is what follows when someone reveals to you your own inner beauty, when you discover your belovedness, when you experience that you are deeply and sincerely liked by someone.

I am convinced that without a gutlevel experience of our profound spiritual emptiness, it is not possible to encounter the living God.

I believe that Christianity happens when men and women experience the reckless, raging confidence that comes from knowing the God of Jesus Christ.