Quotes from Philip Yancey

In a sort of negative proof of the power of prayer, three times God commanded Jeremiah to stop praying; God wanted no alteration in his plans to punish a rebellious nation.

We have not, it seems, the power to abstain from worship. Instead, we swallow the sweet poison, substituting lesser gods for God.

Nosotros, sin Dios, no podemos. Dios, sin nosotros, no quiere», decía San Agustín.

grace is the only force in the universe powerful enough to break the chains that enslave generations.

A Franciscan Benediction

Ungrace causes cracks to fissure open between mother and daughter, father and son, brother and sister, between scientists, and prisoners, and tribes, and races. Left alone, cracks widen, and for the resulting chasms of ungrace there is only one remedy: the frail rope-bridge of forgiveness.

We respond to healing grace by giving it away.

El poder consigue todo, menos lo más importante: no puede controlar el amor.

El problema de Dios no es que no sea capaz de hacer ciertas cosas. Su problema es que él ama. El amor le complica la vida a Dios, como se la complica a cualquiera"1.

In view of the mess we have made of crystal-clear commands--the unity of the church, love as a mark of Christians, racial and economic justice, the importance of personal purity, the dangers of wealth--I tremble to think what we would do if some of the ambiguous doctrines were less ambiguous.

The things, good Lord, that we pray for, give us the grace to labour for', as Sir Thomas More expressed it. The inner voice of prayer expresses itself naturally in action, just as the inner voice of my brain guides all my bodily actions.

Politics deals with externals: borders, wealth, crimes. Authentic forgiveness deals with the evil in a person's heart, something for which politics has no cure.

AS ANDREW GREELEY SAID, If one wishes to eliminate uncertainty, tension, confusion and disorder from one's life, there is no point  in getting mixed up either with Yahweh or with Jesus of Nazareth.7-9 I grew up expecting that a relationship with God would bring order, certainty, and a calm rationality to life. Instead, I have discovered that living in faith involves much dynamic tension.

Where is God when it hurts? Where God's people are. Where misery is, there is the Messiah, and now on earth the Messiah takes form in the shape of the church. That's what the body of Christ means.

Some of us seem so anxious about avoiding hell that we forget to celebrate our journey toward heaven.

the New Testament holds up the model of a church whose activities exist primarily for the sake of outsiders. What keeps us from becoming the church God had in mind?

God loves each one of us as if there was only one of us to love, said Augustine.

Politics, which always runs by the rules of ungrace, allures us to trade away grace for power, a temptation the church has often been unable to resist.

The question {WHY}, though, never goes away-- not for me, not for anybody. We keep groping toward light while living in darkness.

I see the confusion of politics and religion as one of the greatest barriers to grace.

Christians behave like spies, living in one world while our deepest allegiance belongs to another.

if I care to listen, I hear a loud whisper from the gospel that I did not get what I deserved. I deserved punishment and got forgiveness. I deserved wrath and got love. I deserved debtor's prison and got instead a clean credit history. I deserved stern lectures and crawl-on-your-knees repentance; I got a banquet—Babette's feast—spread for me.

instruct the ignorant, counsel the doubtful, admonish sinners, bear wrongs patiently, forgive offences willingly, comfort the afflicted, pray for the living and the dead.

If I take Easter as the starting point, the one incontrovertible fact about how God treats those whom he loves, then human history becomes the contradiction and Easter a preview of ultimate reality.