Quotes from Philip Yancey

Prayer is a place where God and humans meet.

Much of the misgiving that Muslims feel for the West stems from our strong emphasis on freedom, always a risky enterprise. I've heard some say they would rather rear their children in a closely guarded Islamic society than in the United States, where freedom so often leads to decadence.

Muslims have great reverence in their prayers but not much intimacy.

What I see in the Bible, especially in the book of Psalms, which is a book of gratitude for the created world, is a recognition that all good things on Earth are God's, every good gift is from above. They are good if we recognize where they came from and if we treat them the way the Designer intended them to be treated.

In China, where you can be arrested and imprisoned for your faith, getting together with other Christians is a lifeline and you'll risk anything for the privilege. No one attends church in China casually, or for a social advantage - quite the opposite.

All too often the church holds up a mirror reflecting back the society around it, rather than a window revealing a different way.

Our best efforts at changing society will fall short unless the church can teach the world how to love.

We should be asking: How do we respond to a post-Christian society?

Be salt, and a little bit of salt keeps the whole society from going rancid.

The proof of spiritual maturity is not how pure you are but awareness of your impurity. That very awareness opens the door to grace.

Dependence, humility, simplicity, cooperation, and a sense of abandon are qualities greatly prized in the spiritual life, but extremely elusive for people who live in comfort.

The surgery of life hurts. It helps me, though, to know that the surgeon himself, the Wounded Surgeon, has felt every stab of pain and every sorrow.

In some ways, evil is backhanded proof of Gods existence.

God already knows the naked truth about us, of course. Why not acknowledge it?

The Gospels and the rest of the New Testament reflect the life of Jesus, what it means for us & what it means for the world.

The world says you gain your life by getting more and more and more and more, but Jesus says, 'No, that leads to death. You get it back by giving it away and when you give it away you get it back.'

God endorses the confusion and even outrage that we feel when mysterious things happen.

Prayer is - not just bowing your head a few times a day, it pervades all of life.

The self-sacrificing, servant aspect of the Christian life has many parallels to parenthood.

When suffering happens, it forces us to confront life in a different way than we normally do.

Life with God is an individual matter, and general formulas do not easily apply.

We're in a celebrity culture, and when I turn on the news today I hear about Lindsay Lohan, Tiger Woods and Paris Hilton and the Kardashian sisters and 'Dancing with the Stars,' one thing after another, Kate Gosselin's new body.

If God doesn't want something for me, I shouldn't want it either. Spending time in meditative prayer, getting to know God, helps align my desires with God's.

I wrote a book on grace, and grace is a free gift, but to receive the gift you have to have your hands open. And a lot of people don't have their hands open, there's something they're grasping because there's a lot of things to grasp in a prosperous country.