Quotes from James MacDonald

Placing evangelistic mission above the mission of God's glory is the single most destructive error in the church today and the one from which many other errors fall out. God's own glory as the priority for your church, and every church needs no reflection on our part, only obedience. Glory is not a threat to reaching lost people but is actually the most biblical and God-honoring way to get there: • Yes, God is passionate to see the

Plain and simple, men need community with other men. Loving, you-before-me, dedicated relationship. If you have never had it, you don't really get it yet, and if you had that community and lost it, you know the cavity it leaves in your soul until you discover it again.

When I know God's place, I can know my place— then things start to fall into place.

Only 9 percent of evangelicals tithe to their churches. • Eight hundred new church plants survive each

Without a complete view of sin, people can burn out in their pursuit of pleasure.

In his recent book Unexplainable, he said, "[God] wants to do the inconceivable, the uncommon, the unexpected, the remarkable, the incomprehensible, so that He—God—is the only explanation for what occurs in our lives."3

And call no man your father on earth …" No religious leader is to be called father. How clear is that? Don't call people "father" for "… you have one Father who is in heaven" (v. 9).

Wayne Grudem, my friend and seminary professor, put it well: "God does not have size or spatial dimensions and is present at every point of space with His whole being, yet God acts differently in different places."19

the satanic strategy of using lies to disguise, divide, and destroy. Let's focus on the middle word of Satan's plan to defeat you. The word is divide and his strategy is to get a wedge between you and men who can support God's work in your life through loving mutual community. As always he does this through lies.

God's holiness … puts everything and everyone in their rightful place.

Suffering related to circumstances beyond my control, suffering related to consequences of my besetting sin, and suffering caused by others who refused to see their own sin. In all these instances, the Lord has been at work, refining my focus upon personal holiness, amplifying my ministry through very humbling experiences, and reminding me repeatedly to extend grace not just to the gracious but to those who lack a grace I took too long to come to myself.

Turning to him, Spurgeon said, "If you had gone up the way you came down, you could have come down the way you went up.

We know we are called to act like quality men with urgency that is governed by clarity in the strength of the Lord. What remains is this matter of love.

Pride rises above and against the knowledge of God, acting as if He is unworthy to be retained in our thoughts.

You would think that the more a man knows and loves God, the deeper he gets into understanding His Word, and the further he progresses in personal holiness, the better he would be at being a watchful man,

When God is recognized for the infinitely holy being that He is, you don't stand around questioning His decisions.

true encounter with the God of the universe makes me feel gladly small, perfectly puny, and happily so, in my assigned place and actual size! A true experience of eternity leaves us feeling, as C. S. Lewis said, "the infinite relief of having for once got rid of all the silly nonsense about your own dignity which has made you restless and unhappy all your life."28

Men need to know that you don't need to become a woman to love others as God designed for the benefit of all.

to be about helping people discover what they can't get anywhere else.

From the furnace of manifest presence, born of unashamed adoration and unapologetic preaching, comes an army of worshippers unafraid in their witness, determined to see others discover what they have found in the LORD.

Church has to be about helping people discover what they can't get anywhere else.

Yet many are living that very life, deluded by weak preaching and deceived by biblical illiteracy into thinking grace coddles the unrepentant.

In making God our buddy, we find Him nice for cuddling but not much help when the hurricane comes. UNFULFILLED LONGING FOR

advancing the cause of Jesus that didn't begin and end with love. I was wrong, totally wrong, and had to come to the place where I grieved the failure to love as the greatest failure a Christian is capable of.