Quotes from Lee Strobel

Luke, the theologian of the poor and of social concern; Matthew, the theologian trying to understand the relationship of Christianity and Judaism; Mark, who shows Jesus as the suffering servant. You can make a long list of the distinctive theologies of Matthew, Mark, and Luke.

Just as certain people are more susceptible to particular diseases, some temperaments —especially those that tend to be melancholy or contemplative — are more vulnerable to questions and doubts.

face." I sat spellbound. Here it was — the image of grace I had been seeking: an aspiring father bringing unconditional acceptance to a child who had absolutely nothing to offer, no accolades or accomplishments, just herself in all of her vulnerability and scars and weaknesses. My eyes moistened. This is the love of a dad. Maybe — just maybe — this is the love of a Father.

Christianity has been a boon to mankind . . . (and) has had a beneficent effect upon the human race. . . . Most people today who live in an ostensibly Christian environment with Christian ethics do not realize how much we owe Jesus of Nazareth. . . . What goodness and mercy there is in this world has come in large measure from him. D. James Kennedy, Christian

It flows out of the point I just made. Christians believe that as wonderful as Jesus' life and teachings and miracles were, they were meaningless if it were not historically factual that Christ died and was raised from the dead and that this provided atonement, or forgiveness, of the sins of humanity.

So do whatever it takes to keep the wonder of God's grace fresh in your heart.

Jesus, the ultimate sacrificial lamb of God, who paid for sin once and for all. Here was the personification of God's plan of redemption.

Until that moment, I only saw Jesus as the Son of God. I knew he had come down to earth, but that night for the first time it dawned on me: He understands me. He walked in my shoes! As a matter of fact, he was sort of a toogee. You know? His daddy — his earthly father — wasn't his real daddy. He slept in the straw as a child. He was ridiculed and abused. They chased him and tried to kill him.

We see them reporting the words and actions of a man who called them to as exacting a level of integrity as any religion has ever known. They were willing to live out their beliefs even to the point of ten of the eleven remaining disciples being put to grisly deaths, which shows great character. "In terms of honesty, in terms of truthfulness, in terms of virtue and morality, these people had a track record that should be envied.

Grace liberates us. Our tendency toward performance imprisons us.

God didn't love me because I made myself valuable through service; on the contrary, I was valuable because I was loved by God.

I see faith as being a reasonable step in the same direction that the evidence is pointing. In other words, faith goes beyond merely acknowledging that the facts of science and history point toward God. It's responding to those facts by investing trust in God—a step that's fully warranted due to the supporting evidence.

One writer referred to the problem of pain as "the question mark turned like a fishhook in the human heart.

People will die for their religious beliefs if they sincerely believe they're true, but people won't die for their religious beliefs if they know their beliefs are false.

The truth is that God could have forgiven my past and given me assurance of heaven and yet kept me at arm's length. He could have made me a mere servant in his kingdom household — and even that would have been more than I merited. But his grace is far more outrageous than that.

there's a cartoon of two turtles. One says, 'Sometimes I'd like to ask why he allows poverty, famine, and injustice when he could do something about it.' The other turtle says, 'I'm afraid God might ask me the same question.' Those

Today, the concrete data point strongly in the direction of the God hypothesis. . . . Those who wish to oppose it have no testable theory to marshal, only speculations about unseen universes spun from fertile scientific imagination. . . . Ironically, the picture of the universe bequeathed to us by the most advanced twentieth-century science is closer in spirit to the vision presented in the Book of Genesis than anything offered by science since Copernicus.27

We're Western individualists who like technological and sociological change," I observed. "Traditions don't mean as much to us.

even if I were to actually lose everything - my house, my finances, my friends, my reputation, my position - it really wouldn't matter in the end, because I would still have God's grace. I would still be the Father's adopted and beloved son. And that would be enough.

Only in a world where faith is difficult can faith exist. I don't have faith in two plus two equals four or in the noonday sun. Those are beyond question. But Scripture describes God as a hidden God. You have to make an effort of faith to find him. There are clues you can follow.

God gives us just enough evidence so that those who want him can have him. Those who want to follow the clues will. "The Bible says, 'Seek and you shall find.'9 It doesn't say everybody will find him; it doesn't say nobody will find him. Some will find. Who? Those who seek. Those whose hearts are set on finding him and who follow the clues.

Faith is only as good as the one in whom it's invested.

I like the way C. F. D. Moule, the Cambridge New Testament scholar, put it: 'If the coming into existence of the Nazarenes, a phenomenon undeniably attested by the New Testament, rips a great hole in history, a hole the size and shape of Resurrection, what does the secular historian propose to stop it up with?' "3

He can even use the bad things of life to bring about his ultimate purposes and ends. "That doesn't mean those things aren't bad—they really are bad. But they're all within the sovereignty of God. Even good can come out of evil.