Quotes from Rich Mullins

I believe what I believe is what makes me what I am

Friendship is not a remedy for loneliness. Loneliness is part of our experience, and if we are looking for relief from loneliness in friendship, we are only going to frustrate the friendship. Friendship, camaraderie, intimacy, all those things, and loneliness lived together in the same experience.

Look at us all -- we are all of us lost and in all of our different ways of pretending, we all fool ourselves into the very same hell. Look at the cross -- we are all of us loved and one God meets us all at the point of our common need and brings to all of us -- all who will let Him -- salvation.

I have attended church regularly since I was less than a week old. I've listened to sermons about virtue, sermons against vice. I have heard about money, time management, tithing, abstinence, and generosity. I've listened to thousands of sermons. But I could count on one hand the number of sermons that were a simple proclamation of the gospel of Christ.

I look back over the events of my life and see the hands that carried Moses to his grave lifting me out of mine. In remembering I go back to these places where God met me and I meet him again and I lay my head on his breast, and he shows me the land beyond the Jordan and I suck into my lungs the fragrance of his breath, the power of his presence.

There's a difference, you know, between faith and playing make-believe. One will make you grow. The other one will make you sleep.

Well, I wrote that song for the village, but I wrote this one for the sky.

I hope that I would leave a legacy of joy. A legacy of real compassion. Because I think there is great joy in real compassion. I don't think that you can know joy apart from caring deeply about people – caring enough about people that you actually do something.

Forged in the fires of human passion, choking on the fumes of human rage, with these out hells and our heavens, so few inches apart, we must be awfully small, and not as strong as we think we are.

We all want to go there something awful, but to stand there takes some grace.

Love one another, forgive one another, work as unto God, let the peace of Christ reign in your hearts. Make it your ambition to lead quiet lives. Obey. Greet one another with a holy kiss. No one will argue with that.

We walk by faith and not by sight – not because we are blind, but because faith gives us the courage to face or fears and puts those fears in a context that makes them less frightful. We walk by faith and not by sight because there are places to go that cannot be seen and the scope of our vision is too small for our strides. Faith is not a denial of facts – it is a broadening of focus. It does not deny the hardness of guitar strings, it plucks them into a sweetness of sound

Joshua made the sun stand still in the sky, but I can't keep these thoughts of You from passing by.

Wealth can't be defined in terms of what we have, but only in terms of how free we are to give and take".

Faith is a matter of the will as much as it is of the intellect. I wanted to believe in Jesus. My friend wanted to believe in himself. In spite of how convincing my reason was, my reason was not compelling.

It took the hand of God almighty To part the waters and the sea But it only takes one little lie To separate you and me We are not as strong as we think we are.

And while reason may be found within His love, no reason would be able to contain his love. […] It is possible that the evidence of His divinity lies in that love – that in light of love, miracles seem sort of unremarkable. If God can love me, the rest will follow.

If I loved my Master like my dog loves his, I would be more saintly than John the Divine…more radical than John the Baptizer…more deeply devoted than St. John of the Cross. My

The Bible] says a lot of things in there! Proof-texting is a very, very dangerous thing. I think if we were given the scriptures it was not so that we could prove that we are right about everything. If we were given the scriptures it was to humble us into realizing that God is right and the rest of us are just guessing.

When I die, they're going to have to bury me because if they don't, I'll stink up the place.

Before we had stifled the cross into a symbol, before we had softened grace into a sentiment, before we had systematized the power and mystery of God's greatest revelation of Himself into a set of dogmas, we were the children that we must become again.

While we strive to be like God, we're pretty apt to fail, and we let ourselves down. I think more so than [we let God down]. God knows that we are dust, and I don't think He's too uptight about it.

Sometimes we don't know where God is going to lead us; but God already knows. It's not our job to worry about that. It's just our job to follow.

The same moon is still up there. The same stars that Abraham saw... And I know that the same God who put them there and made them shine, He's still there too... And I know that God does not lie. ...We don't need to judge God's way of doing stuff. It gets done.