Quotes from James MacDonald

As a follower of Jesus through faith in Him, the Holy Spirit is your only hope of ever consistently acting like a man. He is the courage to make right choices, the guide toward truth and away from error, the source of our comfort, and the provider of our strength. His primary tool is the Word of God.

When your soul is satisfied, you have everything even if you have nothing. And when your soul is not at peace, you have nothing no matter what you have attained or acquired.

Be loving in conflict or be loving in frustration or let love command your every interaction because "love never fails.

Preferring the comforting messages of certain attributes of God, our lives have become a trifling with His holiness. We desperately need to regain this view of the highness and the holiness of God. His holiness is the ultimate clarity.

Small groups are the place to push past Bible knowledge and on to life application so that we can see people's lives transform more and more into the image of Christ.

You don't get to a better place with God until you recognize that where you are is not as good.

For Satan's purposes, making you a completely ineffective and isolated follower of Jesus is as much a success as keeping you lost in sin. Once

Nothing worse than a man who makes excuses, blames others, and refuses responsibility for his own actions." No doubt there were real experiences that underlined the worthlessness of excuse makers for these men.

In our homes, where we work, in our friendships, we come inevitably to a fork in the road where we must decide, "Will I forgive that?" If the answer is yes, we go forward together in love. If we choose "no, I will not forgive," at that point we will tend to amplify the fault we observe to excuse our withdrawal into bitterness. Everyone loses—and the gospel most of all.

God's love is not a pampering love. God's love is a perfecting love. God does not get up every day trying to figure how He can plant a bigger smile on your face. God is in the process of growing us and changing us. His love is a transforming love.

All God's righteous hatred of all that sin from all of human history was poured out upon Christ as He hung there on that cross.

Too often Jesus Christ was not my Master but a bystander I visited with at church occasionally.

The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?

The joy of following Jesus is the fellowship of living in His strength and knowing His presence as a moment-by-moment reality.

The marquee scrolling across our minds trying to reinterpret life reads: "God-Against-Us." This becomes the dominant lens through which our flesh interprets life. We no longer give our loving Father the benefit of the doubt. Instead, we view every event as conclusive proof that God is against us.

When it comes to biblical counseling, friendship is central to the counseling relationship because it is a key aspect of the Gospel. Paul's words display it; Jesus' actions approve it. In Jesus Christ, friendship has its ultimate – that is, it's paradigmatic – display. He sacrificially gave Himself for the good of those he befriended – people who were awkward and troubled types, people who did not offer Him anything particularly desirable in return.

A soul that is happy in the things of God can overcome tremendous obstacles.

Colossians 2:6 says, "As you received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in him." The path to salvation by faith travels down the way of repentance and we never leave that road.

Love is selfless! Love is "you before me" decision making. Need it shorter? Love = Ub4me! There it is.

Acting like a man means developing a non-anxious presence that sees the big picture, remains calm in a crisis, and won't cave in under pressure. Godly men respond; they don't react.

The purpose of continuous repentance in the life of a quality man is not a return to the crisis of salvation but part of what the Bible calls sanctification. Repentance is the choice to embrace the Holy Spirit's daily work of convicting us about ongoing sin. "If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.

Every man needs a place to be open and vulnerable with brothers leaning together upon the Lord.

God brings us low, even to the point of death, in order to bring us up again.

When we experience God for who He really is, we suddenly see ourselves for who we are.