Quotes from Ted Dekker

The problem of pain is not a nail in the coffin of Christianity; it is a crowbar that jerks the lid off the coffin and allows all who are willing to climb out of their sleep.

It seems as though we Christians have developed a nasty habit of leading people into a radical encounter with God's unconditional love, forgiveness, acceptance, and union only to spend the ensuing years teaching them how to become close to God to earn his approval.

I was lost, starving for intimacy, desperate to be valued, swallowed by a sea of lonely hearts, thinking that perhaps I was the only one who was lost.

Most people die twice: first when they give up on life, and finally when Death comes to take what's his.

It was her false self that was confused, thinking that it knew what ugly was and stewing in it, trying to be good enough when there was no such thing. The ugliness had been corrected a long time ago through forgiveness. It was time to forgive herself and surrender to the truth. She

Any time you find yourself worrying about anything, or upset because someone has dishonored or betrayed you, it is only because you have placed your faith in something other than Jesus.

It was real. Not your actual father, no, but the one who tells you that you're not good enough. That you don't belong. The one we all secretly fear when the lights are off. The one that religion has turned into a god made in their own image, capable of hatred.

I now embrace the pleasures of this life with as much or more passion as I did before, but I do so without expecting those pleasures to provide any more than a foretaste of what is to come—a tremendously liberating knowledge.

One could keep open secrets only so well before they became a threat to others.

I would like my readers to close the cover at the end and say: Wow, I never thought of it like that before!

Don't mistake man's weakness for God's.

He who holds his life dear is destroying it; And he who makes his life of no account in this world Will keep it to the life of the ages." Yeshua

Everything we say, do, and think, aligns us with darkness or light, love or grievance. Thus everything is a spiritual practice, whether we are aware of it or not. We are constantly, in every moment, aligning with one way of being or another. The choice is ours to make each moment of the day.

I've always wanted to go to the desert. It's so vast. Uncaring of the rest of the world. It's just there, no matter what else happens. Golden sands and towering rocks. Coyotes that roam the land, free.

Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.

You will know the Truth and the Truth will set you free, for in that Truth you are free already.

Do you believe? I believe, he said softly. What do you believe? I believe that I will kill these two to save my wife and son. Belief. Something about belief mattered greatly.

But if you look to your Maker, you'll find enough power to kill a thousand Slaters... - Dr. John Francis

Our challenge isn't in becoming more than we are, because we are already risen and complete. Our challenge is to remember and abide in who we are, each day and each hour.

What does matter is whether or not we take offense when we think we've been wronged, regardless of who we think we are or what costume we're wearing.

For the sake of the world, they had to cling to what they knew, not what their emotions demanded from them.

When God calls his children home, there's no death, no sting. There's only new life. Resurrection.

How, then, does one find and know peace and power in this life when surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses who only pretend to be clean by whitewashing their reputations while pointing fingers of judgment? So many Christians today see a system that seems to have failed them. They have found the promises from their childhood to be suspect, if not empty, and so they are leaving in droves, leaving leaders to scratch their heads.

Remember, Caleb, words are weak instruments of love. They can do many things, but they do not carry the truth like your hands do. People need to be shown, not told.