Philip Yancey Quotes

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.

What a nation needs more than anything else is not a Christian ruler in the palace but a Christian prophet within earshot.

Homeless people bear God's image too.

In other words, the proof of spiritual maturity is not how 'pure' you are but awareness of your impurity. That very awareness opens the door to grace.

I know of only two alternatives to hypocrisy: perfection or honesty.

God does not seem impressed by size or power or wealth. Faith is what he wants, and the heroes who emerge are heroes of faith, not strength or wealth.

I used to feel spiritually inferior because I had not experienced the more spectacular manifestations of the Spirit and could not point to any bona fide “miracles” in my life. Increasingly, though, I have come to see that what I value may differ greatly from what God values. Jesus, often reluctant to perform miracles, considered it progress when he departed earth and entrusted the mission to his flawed disciples. Like a proud parent, God seems to take more delight as a spectator of the bumbling achievements of stripling children than in any self-display of omnipotence. From God’s perspective, if I may speculate, the great advance in human history may be what happened at Pentecost, which restored the direct correspondence of spirit to Spirit that had been lost in Eden. I want God to act in direct, impressive, irrefutable ways. God wants to “share power” with the likes of me, accomplishing his work through people, not despite them.

Are we concentrating more on the kingdom of this world than on the kingdom that is not of this world?