Philip Yancey - Love Quotes

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The more we love, and the more unlikely people we love, the more we resemble God - who, after all, loves ornery creatures like us.

Philip Yancey
Only in prayer can we learn to love God with all our heart, mind and soul.

Philip Yancey
Sociologists have a theory of the looking-glass self: You become what the most important person in your life (wife, father, boss, etc.) thinks you are. How would my life change if I truly believed the Bible's astounding words about God's love for me, if I looked in the mirror and saw what God sees?

Philip Yancey
I fell in love. It felt exactly like a fall, a head-over-heels tumble into a state of unbearable lightness. The earth tilted on its axis. I did not believe in romantic love at the time, thinking it a human construct, an invention of fourteenth century Italian poets. I was as unprepared for love as I had been for goodness and beauty. Suddenly, my heart seemed swollen, too large for my chest.

Philip Yancey
We deserve punishment and get forgiveness; we deserve God's wrath and get God's love.

Philip Yancey
The issue is not whether I agree with someone but rather how I treat someone with whom I profoundly disagree. We Christians are called to use the "weapons of grace," which means treating even our opponents with love and respect.

Philip Yancey
Our best efforts at changing society will fall short unless the church can teach the world how to love.

Philip Yancey
God does not accept me conditionally, on the basis of my performance, but bestows his love and forgiveness freely, despite my innumerable failures.

Philip Yancey
Grace means that God already loves us as much as an infinite God can possibly love.

Philip Yancey
Jesus did not give the parables to teach us how to live. He gave them, I believe, to correct our notions about who God is and who God loves.

Philip Yancey
Unless we love natural goods - sex, alcohol, food, money, success, power - in the way God intended, we become their slaves, as any addict can attest.

Philip Yancey
People instinctively know the difference between something done with a profit motive and something done with a love motive.

Philip Yancey
The Christian knows to serve the weak not because they deserve it but because God extended his love to us when we deserved the opposite. Christ came down from heaven, and whenever his disciples entertained dreams of prestige and power he reminded them that the greatest is the one who serves. The ladder of power reaches up, the ladder of grace reaches down.

Philip Yancey
Grace means there is nothing we can do to make God love us more... And grace means there is nothing we can do to make God love us less

Philip Yancey
Christians fail to communicate to others because we ignore basic principles in relationship. When we make condescending judgments or proclaim lofty words that don't translate into action, or simply speak without first listening, we fail to love - and thus deter a thirsty world from Living Water. The good news about God's grace goes unheard.

Philip Yancey
One who has been touched by grace will no longer look on those who stray as "those evil people" or "those poor people who need our help." Nor must we search for signs of "loveworthiness." Grace teaches us that God loves because of who God is, not because of who we are.

Philip Yancey
By striving to prove how much they deserve God's love, legalists miss the whole point of the gospel, that it is a gift from God to people who don't deserve it. The solution to sin is not to impose an ever-stricter code of behavior. It is to know God.

Philip Yancey
A faithful person sees life from the perspective of trust, not fear. Bedrock faith allows me to believe that, despite the chaos of the present moment, God does reign; that regardless of how worthless I may feel, I truly matter to a God of love; that no pain lasts forever and no evil triumphs in the end. Faith sees even the darkest deed of all history, the death of God's Son, as a necessary prelude to the brightest.

Philip Yancey
At the heart of the gospel is a God who deliberately surrenders to the wild, irresistable power of love.

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

Philip Yancey
Politics draws lines between people; in contrast, Jesus' love cuts across those lines and dispenses grace. That does not mean, of course, that Christians should not involve themselves in politics. It simply means that as we do so we must not let the rules of power displace the command to love.

Philip Yancey
Power can do everything but the most important thing: it cannot control love.

Philip Yancey
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.

Philip Yancey
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.

Philip Yancey
Love was compressed for all history in that lonely figure on the cross, who said that he could call down angels at any moment on a rescue mission, but chose not to - because of us. At Calvary, God accepted his own unbreakable terms of justice.

Philip Yancey
If we comprehend what Christ has done for us, then surely out of gratitude we will strive to live 'worthy' of such great love. We will strive for holiness not to make God love us but because He already does.

Philip Yancey