Famous Quotes & Sayings

John Piper

This is God's universal purpose for all Christian suffering: more contentment in God and less satisfaction in the world.

John Piper

Nothing is more vital than prayer in Christian existence, and few things are more vulnerable to neglect.

John Piper

To be a Christian is to move toward need, not comfort.

John Piper

My take on tithing in America is that it's a middle-class way of robbing God. Tithing to the church and spending the rest on your family is not a Christian goal. It's a diversion. The real issue is: How shall we use God's trust fund-namely, all we have-for His glory? In a world with so much misery, what lifestyle should we call our people to live? What example are we setting?

John Piper

Wimpy worldviews make wimpy Christians. And wimpy Christians won’t survive the days ahead.

John Piper

Christ did not die to make good works merely possible or to produce a half-hearted pursuit. He died to produce in us a passion for good deeds. Christian purity is not the mere avoidance of evil, but the pursuit of good.

John Piper

Suffering in the path of Christian obedience, with joy - because the steadfast love of the Lord is better than life (Psalm 63:3) - is the clearest display of the worth of God in our lives. Therefore, faith-filled suffering is essential in this world for the most intense, authentic worship. When we are most satisfied with God in suffering, he will be most glorified in us in worship. Our problem is not styles of music. Our problem is styles of life. When we embrace more affliction for the worth of Christ, there will be more fruit in the worship of Christ.

John Piper

There are only three kinds of Christians when it comes to world missions: zealous goers, zealous senders, and disobedient.

John Piper

You can't make yourself saved. This is very threatening to people, even Christians, because of what it seems to say about freedom.

John Piper

CHRISTIAN LIVING MOVES from what God has freely done for us in Christ to what we should freely do for others.

John Piper

The key to Christian living is a thirst and hunger for God. And one of the main reasons people do not understand or experience the sovereignty of grace and the way it works through the awakening of sovereign joy is that their hunger and thirst for God is so small.

John Piper

What defines us as Christians is not most profoundly that we have come to know him but that he took note of us and made us his own.

I have never concealed the fact and said it before the court in 1938 that I came from an anti-Semitic past and tradition... I ask only that you look at my life historically and take it as history. I believe that from 1933 I truly represented the Lutheran-Christian outlook on the Jewish question as I revealed before the court but that I returned home after eight years' imprisonment as a completely different person.

Martin Luther

Christians fight best on their knees. Whatever good may be done is done and brought about by prayer.

Martin Luther

If I did not see that the Lord kept watch over the ship, I should long since have abandoned the helm. But I see Him! - through the storm, strengthening the tackling, handling the yards, spreading the sails - yes more, commanding the very winds! Should I not be a coward if I abandoned my post? Let Him govern, let Him carry us forward, let Him hasten or delay; we will fear nothing!

Martin Luther

Let every man recognize what he is, and be certain that we are all equally priests, that is, we have the same power in the word and in any sacrament whatever.

Martin Luther

Let us keep to Christ, and cling to Him, and hang on Him, so that no power can remove us.

Martin Luther

Christians are rare people on earth.

Martin Luther

Let him who wants a true church cling to the Word by which everything is upheld.

Martin Luther

You must learn that if you are a Christian, you will without a doubt experience all kinds of opposition and evil inclinations in the flesh. For when you have faith, there will be a hundred more evil thoughts and a hundred more temptations than before.

Martin Luther

How is God's name hallowed among us? When both our doctrine and living are truly Christian.

Martin Luther

The certain mark by which a Christian community can be recognized is the preaching of the gospel in its purity.

Martin Luther

[The papists] ought to have sympathy with us weak, poor Christians, and not condemn us or make fun of us because we are learning so childishly to toddle along the benches, nay, to creep in the mire, and cannot skip and dance, on such light feet and legs, over and outside of God's commandments, as they do, the strong heroes and giants ... God forbid that we should!

Martin Luther

The priest is not made. He must be born a priest; must inherit his office. I refer to the new birth-the birth of water and the Spirit. Thus all Christians must became priests, children of God and co-heirs with Christ the Most High Priest.

Martin Luther

What harm would it do, if a man told a good strong lie for the sake of the good and for the Christian church? [...] a lie out of necessity, a useful lie, a helpful lie, such lies would not be against God, he would accept them.

Martin Luther

However, they have not acquired a perfect mastery of the art of lying; they lie so clumsily and ineptly that anyone who is just a little observant can easily detect it. But for us Christians they stand as a terrifying example of God's wrath.

Martin Luther

Nothing is more sweet than harmony in marriage, and nothing more distressing than dissension.

Martin Luther

There are three conversions necessary (for the Christian life): the conversion of the heart, the mind, and the purse.

Martin Luther

The offering of [the body] is called a spiritual sacrifice because it is freely sacrificed through the Spirit, the Christian being uninfluenced by the constrainst of the Low or the fear of hell.

Martin Luther

Christians are to be taught that the pope would and should wish to give of his own money, even though he had to sell the basilica of St. Peter, to many of those from whom certain hawkers of indulgences cajole money.

Martin Luther

What shall we Christians do now with this depraved and damned people of the Jews? ... I will give my faithful advice: First, that one should set fire to their synagogues. . . . Then that one should also break down and destroy their houses. . . . That one should drive them out the country.

Martin Luther

In contrast to ethical relativism, Christianity sets forth a system of absolute moral values and affirms that God has placed within the very structure of this universe certain moral principles that are fixed and immutable.

Martin Luther

If any earthly institution or custom conflicts with God's will, it is your Christian duty to oppose it. You must never allow the transitory, evanescent demands of man-made institutions to take precedence over the eternal demands of the Almighty God.