Quotes from Philip Yancey

El Espíritu no va a quitarnos toda desilusión con Dios. Los mismos títulos que se le dan —intercesor, ayudador, consejero, consolador — llevan implícita la idea de que habrá problemas.

Or we can picture God as a caring parent with traits with love, generosity, and sensitivity- an infinite Being who personally interacts with and responds to creation. Accordingly, God considers prayers much as a wise parent might consider requests from a child.

Where is the church when it hurts? If the church is doing its job—binding wounds, comforting the grieving, offering food to the hungry—I don't think people will wonder so much where God is when it hurts. They'll know where God is: in the presence of God's people on earth.

When I am tempted to complain about God's lack of presence, I remind myself that God has much more reason to complain about my lack of presence.

Escoger para su obra santa en el mundo […] cerebros débiles, desajustados, piojosos, santurrones, vanidosos, excéntricos, egomaníacos, tímidos y sensuales"2. «Porque lo insensato de Dios es más sabio que los hombres», sigue diciendo Pablo.

6The LORD regretted that he had made human beings on the earth, and his heart was deeply troubled. 7So the LORD said, "I will wipe from the face of the earth the human race I have created—and with them the animals, the birds and the creatures that move along the ground—for I regret that I have made them." 8But Noah found favor in the eyes of the LORD.

Unless we can grasp our own beliefs as truly good news, we cannot easily communicate them to a thirsty world.

Somehow we need to reclaim the "goodnewsness" of the gospel

who are we to sit in judgment of God's moral government of the universe?

Because of Jesus we need never question God's desire for intimacy. Does God really want close contact with us? Jesus gave up Heaven for it.

Let him who is about to accuse God consider the greatness of the God accused.

A God wise enough to rule the universe is wise enough to watch over his child Job, regardless of how things seem in the bleakest moments.

The church works best as a separate force, a conscience to society that keeps itself at arm's length from the state. The closer it gets, the less effectively it can challenge the surrounding culture and the more perilously it risks losing its central message. Jesus left his followers the command to make disciples from all nations. We have no charge to "Christianize" the United States or any other country — ?an impossible goal in any case.

I used to worry about falling asleep during prayer. Now, as a parent, I understand. What parent wouldn't want her child to fall asleep in her arms?

A skeptical world judges the truth of what we say by the proof of how we live. Today's activists may be the best evangelists.

The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed. ALBERT EINSTEIN

positioned myself. I once described the people I tend to hear from as "borderlanders," those caught in a no-person's-land between faith and disbelief. Some approach the church cautiously, attracted to Jesus but turned off by his followers. Some have fled the church due to bad experiences, yet still yearn for the consolation they felt there. I've spent time in the borderlands myself and want to honor those wandering on the edges, the misfits.

Lest I sound like a cranky moralist, I should say that to me the real question is not why modern secularists oppose traditional morality; it is on what basis they defend any morality.

She did not question God's supernatural power, but how to go about convincing God of her sincerity? Faith wasn't like a muscle that could be enlarged through rehabilitation exercises.

metáfora terrenal tomada del mundo de los negocios. El Espíritu nos recuerda que estas desilusiones son temporales; que son el preludio de una vida eterna con Dios, quien estimó necesario restaurar el nexo espiritual

The West too may find that prosperity and self-indulgence are not sufficient to satisfy human needs.

If anyone has material possessions and sees his brother in need but has no pity on him, how can the love of God be in him?

Something inside me recoiled as I heard her repeat the clichéd comments from her visitors. Is Christianity supposed to make a sufferer feel even worse?

Thielicke gently turned his parishioners to the example of Jesus who saw like no one else the anguish and injustice, the terror, of this planet. Shouldn't such awareness have filled his every waking hour and robbed him of sleep at night? Shouldn't it have shaken his very soul?