Calvin Miller Quotes & Sayings

Great worship and great sermons contain a wonderful impending, a sense of "watch out, here it comes. — Calvin Miller

We must look to Mary's example to know how to deal with the glorious impossibilities of God. Look how she turned the world upside down by making one simple statement ... — Calvin Miller

Audience analysis is also the most formidable work of the local pastor. — Calvin Miller

It is strange how oftentimes the air speaks.
We are sane as long as we hear voices when there are none.
We are insane when we hear nothing and worse we are deaf. — Calvin Miller

Do not God's visitations unnerve us? But why? Because He never comes to us without asking us to do something. We never know what He will ask of us, but we know that we will be overwhelmed by our feelings of inadequacy — Calvin Miller

The world is looking for answers. If you have some of them, for goodness' sake spit 'em out. The world is looking for servants of God whose yes is yes. How elementary, how refreshing. — Calvin Miller

A single sermon is not likely to effect much change. — Calvin Miller

Death is a confirmation of the believer's creed. For the skeptic it is discovery, immense and late. — Calvin Miller

Axiom #3: When told how to apply sermons specifically, most people over-congratulate themselves on how biblically they already live while thinking of others who could really use the sermon. — Calvin Miller

Application is what gets the Sermon off the Mount, and down in the valley where the toilers live out their days. — Calvin Miller

One of the great things silence does, it gives us a new concept of God. — Calvin Miller

Just because the pastors have preached hundreds of sermons in one place does not give them the liberty of skipping the work of audience analysis for even one single Sunday. — Calvin Miller

We cannot make believers. Believers make themselves by voluntarily coming to faith, one at a time. — Calvin Miller

We have become the revisionist society. We rewrite history in favor of viewpoints. We rewrite ethics in favor of "what's right is what makes you feel good after." Political correctness puts Jesus and Buddha on the same low shelf. Gender inclusivity has us tied up in proper pronouns. Since God goes undefined, His expectations have been missing for some time, and sin is what you do that hurts others. — Calvin Miller

Reputation is not a treatise you write on your own behavior. Other people write it, and other people keep it. — Calvin Miller

"And now you have joy?" "I do indeed." "And how did you get it?" "I chose it, admitted it into my life, then I celebrated its arrival in my heart. I made my celebration so loud and boisterous, I prohibited all gloom from attending the celebration" ... — Calvin Miller

We humans are a hungry lot. We are driven by a craving to know who we are. Yet who we are is embedded in the heart of a holy God. Unless we seek for ourselves in the epicenter of God's grace, we will be forever condemned to walk the arid edges of self-understanding. — Calvin Miller

Love is substance; Lust, illusion. Only in the surge of passion do the two mingle in confusion. — Calvin Miller

A passion to obey Christ is born out of our relationship with him. The more we love him, the more we want him to be a part of our affairs. — Calvin Miller

Still nobody knows better than those who preach that preaching is an art in which a studied, professional sinner tells the less studied sinners how they ought to believe, behave, and serve. — Calvin Miller

In a religion where logic alone rules, there is no power. — Calvin Miller

Bless your critics for their honesty. They do not criticize you to be a blessing to you, but the end product may be the same. — Calvin Miller

With love that knew no fear, the Singer caught his torment, wrapped it all in song and gave it back to him as peace. — Calvin Miller

Donald Coggan's wisdom: "When true preaching takes place, the main actor is not the preacher, nor the congregation, but the Holy Spirit."15 — Calvin Miller

Our problem is this: we usually discover him within some denominational or Christian ghetto. We meet him in a province and, having caught some little view, we paint him in smaller strokes. The Lion of Judah is reduced to something kittenish because our understanding cannot, at first, write larger definitions. — Calvin Miller

Edward Markquart, a brilliant homoletician, wrote: People want their preachers to be authentic human beings ... who experience the same feelings and struggles as the laity, who do not hide behind the role of reverend so and so. — Calvin Miller

Anytime our sermons become confessional, they become more powerful. — Calvin Miller

Beware, O earth, the prophet who claims to know the time but never wears a watch. — Calvin Miller

The world is poor because her fortune is buried in the sky and all her treasure maps are of the earth. — Calvin Miller

The lips know only shallow tunes — Calvin Miller

Readers, on the other hand, have at least 7.5 books going all the time. Actually, the number of books a reader takes on is usually directly related to the number of bathrooms he has in his home and office. I am working on a survey that will show that, over a lifetime, readers are in bathrooms seven years and three months longer than nonreaders. — Calvin Miller

CHRIST'S LIFE ILLUSTRATES PLAINLY THAT THE CROWN OF VICTORY IS FORGED FROM THE GOLD OF OBEDIENCE. — Calvin Miller

Life found itself alive and somehow knew its opposite was death. We are ever being born, or dying, and the thrill of choosing is ours. Only once, must we be born without our own consent. Only once, must we die without our own permission — Calvin Miller

Becoming a great preacher, like becoming a great artist, requires a life commitment. — Calvin Miller

Those who fervently love God are intoxicated by His warmth and live out their addiction like moths drawn to a flame. — Calvin Miller

Much of Christmas' beauty is in its sameness. The same traditions. The same meals. The same songs. The same story. Yet each Christmas is a little different. — Calvin Miller

Most of these super-sovereigns feel that God can comment if he wants to, but God must avoid getting loud. While God is welcome to his opinions, he is only one voice, and he doesn't get extra points just for being God. The unstudied opinionated are prone to say, even to God, "Yes, but here's what I think." In such a world, classic apologetics has lost much of its force. — Calvin Miller

Passion is the soul of intensity. The speaker who truly loves God may or may not lead others to believe it, but the speaker who doesn't is only a philosopher whose ideas are too bland to be important. — Calvin Miller

With what dread and apprehension we entrust important jobs into the hands of others. Imagine the love of a needless God who is willing to want our work. — Calvin Miller

Comtemporary pulpits feel that to bring up dying is just not as relevant as telling people how to live, marry, succeed, relate, or become a winner. — Calvin Miller

Intensity is both the communicator's best friend and worst enemy. To really hold an audience, they must sense that what you are saying is important, at least to you. — Calvin Miller

But we have arrived at a glistening, smug day when nobody much sins, and those that do are prone to call it something else. — Calvin Miller

The Bible never says those who believe in God will be saved; only those who believe that He had a Son who rose from the dead can be saved (Rom. 10:9). Talk about narrow doctrine; we who have accepted Christ as — Calvin Miller

Jesus always quickens artistic and literary imagination. — Calvin Miller

Tripping is embarrassing, but I have learned that where we stumble is the place we dig for gold - where we trip is where the treasure lies. — Calvin Miller

Never lose the awe and wonder of having a personal God get personally involved in your life. — Calvin Miller

Imagination must constantly run on a new track or it becomes lifeless. A living imagination is essential to prayer. — Calvin Miller

It is not such a fiercesome thing to lead once you see your leadership as part of God's overall plan for His world. — Calvin Miller

The third question, "What do they know about God?" has for its answer, "Pretty much nothing. — Calvin Miller

If anybody is left behind in a congregation of a thousand, the preacher has not preached well. — Calvin Miller

To get the job done preaching must be committed to two goals: first it should be passionate and second, fascinating. — Calvin Miller

When we sin, we do not infuriate God, our Lover. We only hurt Him. We grieve Him! — Calvin Miller

Saturdays and Mondays were Sundays' bookends. On Saturdays preachers were neurotic planning what they would say, and on Mondays they were neurotic for having said it."7 — Calvin Miller

Define your times. Treasure your calling. Pray without ceasing. The terrors of the age are less than the grandeur of the Christ within you. — Calvin Miller

What mature believer does not delight in seeing new converts talk with Christ? As we get older, we sometimes hurry past the ardor we knew as younger Christians. Hurried Christians beget hurried disciples. Hurried disciples become a hurried church - a hassled fellowship of disciples who serve the clock and call it God. But this subnormal Christianity has become so normal we don't see anything abnormal about it. In fact, we've come to believe that the most sincere Christians are supposed to be shallow neurotics. Yet the church holds only one possibility of relevance: Time itself must be surrendered to the pursuit of the depths of God. — Calvin Miller

Teach me the wilderness simplicity.
Help me to point to you, honestly and joyously,
as the threshold of all that really matters. — Calvin Miller

Preachers, however eloquent they are, are rarely heard as readily as pastors. After all, shepherds are sheep lovers, and the sheep are dependent upon their shepherds, who love them even before they listen. — Calvin Miller

After eating the world's bread, we wake each morning to remember: We are still hungry. Seek a better loaf. Eat, and never die. Taste, savor, and be filled forever. — Calvin Miller

Once people know what the Bible says, their next questions are: So what? How to? Where do I start? — Calvin Miller

Humanity is fickle. They may dress for a morning coronation and never feel the need to change clothes for an execution in the afternoon. So Triumphal Sundays and Good Fridays always fit comfortably into the same April week. — Calvin Miller

When it comes to adding authority to the sermon, the Bible is the most powerful way to comment on what the Bible has to say. — Calvin Miller

The best of sermons have never been a belch of information or piety. — Calvin Miller