1
The one indispensable requirement for producing godly, mature Christians is godly, mature Christians.Kevin DeYoung
2
Nothing in the Bible encourages us to give sex the exalted status it has in our culture, as if finding our purpose, our identity, and our fulfillment all rest with what we can or cannot do with our private parts.Kevin DeYoung
3
The man who attempts Christianity without the church shoots himself in the foot, shoots his children in the leg, and shoots his grandchildren in the heart.Kevin DeYoung
4
And we need Christians who don’t make others feel guilty (and don’t feel guilty themselves) when one of us follows a different passion than another. I read and write a lot. That’s what I do well. But that doesn’t mean anyone should feel guilty for not reading and writing as much as I do. You have your own gifts and calling. We have to be okay with other Christians doing certain good things better and more often than we do.Kevin DeYoung
5
The world needs to see Christians burning, not with self-righteous fury at the sliding morals in our country, but with passion for God.Kevin DeYoung
6
I used to have six theories and no kids. Now I have six kids and no theories.Kevin DeYoung
7
You can exaggerate your authority in handling the Scriptures, but you cannot exaggerate the Scriptures' authority to handle you. You can use the word of God to come to wrong conclusions, but you cannot find any wrong conclusions in the word of God.Kevin DeYoung
8
My fear is that of all the choices people face today, the one they rarely consider is, "How can I serve most effectively and fruitfully in the local church?" I wonder if the abundance of opportunities to explore today is doing less to help make well-rounded disciples of Christ and more to help Christians avoid long term responsibility and have less long-term impact.Kevin DeYoung
9
Justice in a fallen world is not equality of outcome but equal treatment under a fair law.Kevin DeYoung
10
Effective love is rarely efficient.Kevin DeYoung
11
The Luddite impulse is strong among Christians, and our first reaction is to rage against the machine.Kevin DeYoung
12
Most moms and dads think they are either the best or the worst parents in the world. Both are wrong.Kevin DeYoung
13
The people on this planet who end up doing nothing are those who never realize they can't do everything.Kevin DeYoung
14
One reason we never tame the busy this beast is that we are unwilling to kill anything.Kevin DeYoung
15
If the good news is an invitation to a Jesus way of life and not information about somebody who accomplished something on my behalf, I’m sunk. This is law and no gospel.Kevin DeYoung
16
Think of (the Kingdom) like the sun. As it peeks through on a cloudy day, we do not say the sun has grown. We say, 'The sun has broken through.' Our view of the sun has changed, or obstacles to the sun have been removed, but we have not changed the sun.Kevin DeYoung
17
The Church acts as a sort of embassy for the government of the King. It is an outpost of the Kingdom of God surrounded by the kingdom of darkness. Just as an embassy is meant to showcase the life of a nation to the surrounding people, so the Church is meant to manifest the life of the Kingdom of God to the people around it.Kevin DeYoung
18
We will have to work hard to rest.Kevin DeYoung
19
I sometimes find, especially among my peers, that authenticity is not a…means of growing in holiness, but a convenient cover for endless introspection, doubt, uncertainty, anger, and worldliness. So that if other Christians seem pure, assured, and happy we despise them for being inauthentic. Granted, the church shouldn’t be happy-clappy naive about life’s struggles. Plenty of psalms show us godly ways to be real with our negative emotions. But the church should not apologize for preaching a confident Christ and exhorting us to trust Him in all things. Church is not meant to foster an existential crisis of faith every week .Kevin DeYoung
20
Real life applications get tricky when we think about them.Kevin DeYoung
21
Battling busyness is a community response.Kevin DeYoung
22
If I keep pushing myself, I’ll finally be somebody. I’ll finally matter. I’ll finally arrive.” Nonsense. You won’t be satisfied. The only thing worse than failing to realize any of your dreams, is seeing them all come true. You were meant for something more. Even if you could be known the world over, what does it matter if you have no time to be known by God?Kevin DeYoung
23
The more my brain was fed, the hungrier it became.Kevin DeYoung
24
I can turn every "is" into "ought ".Kevin DeYoung
25
We get used to living in a state of mild disappointment with ourselves.Kevin DeYoung
26
I think most Christians hear these urgent calls to do more (or feel them internally already) and learn to live with a low-level guilt that comes from not doing enough. We know we can always pray more and give more and evangelize more, so we get used to living in a state of mild disappointment with ourselves.Kevin DeYoung
27
If the gospel is old news to you, it will be dull news to everyone else.Kevin DeYoung
28
The irony is that if we make every imperative into a command to believe the gospel more fully, we turn the gospel into one more thing we have to get right, and faith becomes the one thing we need to be better at.Kevin DeYoung
29
I think the church is often a culprit in the busyness, especially in the evangelical church. Again, it's part of being Americans. Part of being evangelicals too is that we're highly activist. We are always diving in, willing to solve problems, and again there's a lot good there. But we also need the theological balance that the Kingdom is not ours to bring or ours to create.Kevin DeYoung
30
The Bible tells us to love our neighbors as ourselves. Surely part of loving in this way is trying to understand what another person wants us to understand. I may not understand perfectly and I may not agree, but if I love you I should try to know what it is you wish I could know.Kevin DeYoung
31
As a pastor in a Protestant church, my whole ministry centers on the conviction that by grace we are saved through faith. And it's not our faith that delivers us, as if believing something, anything at all were pleasing to God. It's the object of our faith - Christ's life, death, and resurrection - that saves us.Kevin DeYoung
32
The kind of experience of humility and happiness that comes with gratitude tends to crowd out whatever is coarse, or ugly, or mean.Kevin DeYoung
33
I try to keep in my mind the simple question: Am I trying to do good or make myself look good? Too many of our responsibilities get added to our plate when we are trying to please people, impress people, prove ourselves, acquire power, increase our prestige. All those motivations are about looking good more than doing good.Kevin DeYoung
34
In the Lord's Prayer, Jesus assumes that asking for forgiveness would be a daily occurrence, as would praying that we might be delivered from evil and led not into temptation.Kevin DeYoung