Quotes About Reality

It's not like there's a vote on what's real," said Judith. "It don't matter what either of you believe, the world just gets on with it.

Weakness is not the problem, but my delusion of my strengths is.

Here's the reality: most people who are angry with God are angry with him for being God. They're not angry because he has failed to deliver what he promised. They're angry because he has failed to deliver what they have craved, expected, or demanded. When awe of self replaces awe of God, God ceases to be your Lord and is reduced to being your indentured servant.

In a real way, things are worse than you ever thought they could be, but God's grace is greater than you could ever have imagined it would be. Biblical faith lives at the intersection of shocking honesty and glorious hope.

When amazing realities of the gospel quit commanding your attention, your awe, and your worship, other things in your life will capture your attention instead.

It is the single most stunning reality in the life of a believer. God has placed his love on us and he will never again remove it. There's a reason to continue, no matter how hard life seems and how weak you feel.

Suffering doesn't make us weak; it simply exposes the weaknesses that have been there all along. It exposes the delusion of our sovereignty and independent capability.

You and I must live temptation-aware; to fail to do so is to fail to recognize the fallenness of the world that happens to be the address where we live.

You and I can face the harsh realities of life in this broken world with courage and hope because we do not face them all by ourselves. Immanuel ("God with us") is indeed with us in power, glory, and grace.

As I've said before, I really do love the honesty of the Bible. I don't need vacuous religious platitudes that delude me into thinking that life is better than it really is. I don't need a form of faith

if you don't keep the eyes of your heart focused on the paradise that is to come, you will try to turn this poor fallen world into the paradise it will never

Mourning means you recognize the most important reality in the human existence, sin. Mourning means you have been hit by the weight of what it has done to you and to everyone you know.

Live in hope because paradise is surely coming, and stop asking this fallen world to be the paradise it will never be.

biblical faith—that is, true faith in the existence, presence, promises, and provisions of God—never requires you to deny reality in any way. It is not biblical faith to try to convince yourself that things are better than they actually are. It is not biblical faith to work to make yourself feel good about what is not good. Biblical faith looks reality in the face and does not flinch.

When amazing realities of the gospel quit commanding your attention, your awe, and your worship, other things in your life will capture your attention instead. When you quit celebrating grace, you begin to forget how much you need grace, and when you forget how much you need grace, you quit seeking the rescue and strength that only grace can give. This means you begin to see yourself as more righteous, strong, and wise than you actually are, and in so doing, you set yourself up for trouble.

This season, in the midst of all the celebrations and gift-giving, be careful to remember that at the center of what we celebrate is one game-changing, life-altering, hope-giving reality: grace is a person, and his name is Jesus.

Here's the real-life, street-level issue: if you don't keep the eyes of your heart focused on the paradise that is to come, you will try to turn this poor fallen world into the paradise it will never be.

If complaint has the power to focus your vision, it can also twist and bend your perception of reality and the God who rules it.

Paul says it well: "It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me" (Gal. 2:20). I don't think that we talk about this enough. I don't think that we celebrate this reality enough. I don't think we let our hearts consider the wonder of this identity enough. By grace, we are the temple of the Most High God. By grace, he lives in us. By grace, his power is at our disposal.

Prayer calls me to abandon the present as my only lens on life and commit to look at life from the perspective of reality.

death is literally all around us. We cannot run and we cannot hide and we have no ability to defeat it. Death lives at our address, and there is no escaping.

Not only does sin blind, but as sinners, we participate in our own blindness. We all swindle ourselves into thinking that we are better than we are, that what we're doing is okay when, in fact, it's not okay in the eyes of God. The spiritual reality is that we're like naked homeless people, but we see ourselves as affluent and well-dressed.

Suffering, sadness, and death are not yet no more. It is hard to live in the middle, but that is exactly where we live. We live in a world that is still sadly and terribly broken.

We will never fully explain the world by appealing to something outside it that must simply be accepted on faith, be it an unexplained God or an unexplained set of mathematical laws.