Philip Yancey citations

“We grow up hungry for love, and in ways so deep as to remain unexpressed we long for our Maker to love us.”

“I have learned that faith means trusting in advance what will only make sense in reverse.”

“Yet as I read the birth stories about Jesus I cannot help but conclude that though the world may be tilted toward the rich and powerful, God is tilted toward the underdog.”

“Power, no matter how well-intentioned, tends to cause suffering. Love, being vulnerable, absorbs it. In a point of convergence on a hill called Calvary, God renounced the one for the sake of the other.”

“Christians get very angry toward other Christians who sin differently than they do.”

“Grace, like water, flows to the lowest part.”

“When I pray for another person, I am praying for God to open my eyes so that I can see that person as God does, and then enter into the stream of love that God already directs toward that person.”

“God loves people because of who God is, not because of who we are.”

“We tend to think, 'Life should be fair because God is fair.' But God is not life. And if I confuse God with the physical reality of life- by expecting constant good health for example- then I set myself up for crashing disappointment.”

“I rejected the church for a time because I found so little grace there. I returned because I found grace nowhere else.”

“Grace is the most perplexing, powerful force in the universe, and, I believe, the only hope for our twisted, violent planet.”

“Sometimes I feel like the most liberal person among conservatives, and sometimes like the most conservative among liberals.”

“Grace is free only because the giver himself has borne the cost.”

“Love deems this world worth rescuing.”

“If my activism, however well-motivated, drives out love, then I have misunderstood Jesus’ gospel. I am stuck with law, not the gospel of grace.”

“I would far rather convey grace than explain it.”

“In a nutshell, the Bible from Genesis 3 to Revelation 22 tells the story of a God reckless with desire to get his family back.”

“Power can do everything but the most important thing: it cannot control love.”

“Christians are not perfect, by any means, but they can be people made fully alive.”

“Prayer is a declaration of dependence upon God.”

“Grace is everywhere, like lenses that go unnoticed because you are looking through them.”

“We need faith and the mind of the Lord Jesus to recognize something of lasting value in even our most ordinary tasks.”