David Lloyd-Jones Quotes & Sayings

So let me put it thus: Hold on to your principles of morality and ethics, use your willpower to the limit, pay great heed to every noble, uplifting desire that is in you; but realize that these things alone are not enough, that they will never bring you to the desired place. We have to realize that all our best is totally inadequate, that a spiritual battle must be fought in a spiritual manner. — David Lloyd-Jones

You are either a Christian or you are not a Christian; you cannot be partly a Christian. You are either "dead" or "alive"; you are either "born" or "not born". — David Lloyd-Jones

If you look at your past and are depressed it means that you are listening to the devil. — David Lloyd-Jones

Always respond to every impulse to pray. The impulse to pray may come when you are reading or when you are battling with a text. I would make an absolute law of this: always obey such an impulse. — David Lloyd-Jones

The whole man is involved, the mind, the heart and the will, and a common cause of spiritual depression is the failure to realize that the Christian life is a whole life, a balanced life. — David Lloyd-Jones

The nearer a man gets to God, the greater he sees his sin. — David Lloyd-Jones

If in a Christian pulpit you have no business saying, "I suggest to you" No! "These things I declare to you." — David Lloyd-Jones

The ultimate test of our spirituality is the measure of our amazement at the grace of God. — David Lloyd-Jones

The devil's one object is so to depress God's people that he can go to the man of the world and say: There are God's people. Do you want to be like that? — David Lloyd-Jones

There is no happiness finally, there is no peace, there is no joy except we be right with God. The miserable Christian is wrong in his ideas as to how this rightness with God is to be obtained. — David Lloyd-Jones

There are powers that can counterfeit almost everything in the Christian life. — David Lloyd-Jones

Though we claim to believe the whole of Scripture, in practice we frequently deny much of it by ignoring it. — David Lloyd-Jones

Faith is a refusal to panic, come what may. — David Lloyd-Jones

There is a great need of more familiarity with the Scriptures and their teaching in order that we may be crushed to our knees with a sense of humility and be made to cry to God that He would visit us again. — David Lloyd-Jones

The very God whom we have offended has Himself provided the way whereby the offense has been dealt with. His anger, His wrath against sin and the sinner, has been satisfied, appeased and He therefore can now thus reconcile man unto Himself. — David Lloyd-Jones

People who think that once they are converted all will be happy, have forgotten Satan. — David Lloyd-Jones

If you can explain what is happening in a church, apart from the sovereign act of God, it is not revival. — David Lloyd-Jones

The introduction is the first and best chance to win the attention of people who otherwise would not care. The first thing you have to do is make people believe that what you have to say is relevant and important. — David Lloyd-Jones

Faith always shows itself in the whole personality. — David Lloyd-Jones

The ultimate cause of spiritual depression is unbelief. For if it were not for unbelief, even the devil could do nothing. It is because we listen to the devil instead of listening to God that we go down before him and fall before his attacks. — David Lloyd-Jones

There is a very real danger of our putting our faith in our sermon rather than in the Spirit. Our faith should not be in the sermon, it should be in the Holy Spirit Himself. — David Lloyd-Jones

We need less travelling by jet plaes from congress to congress ... but more kneeling and praying and pleading to God to have mercy on us, more crying to God to arise and scatter his enemies and make himself known. — David Lloyd-Jones

I am not asking whether you know things about Him but do you know God, are you enjoying God, is God the centre of your life, the soul of your being, the source of your greatest joy? He is meant to be. — David Lloyd-Jones

You must be made miserable before you can know true Christian joy. Indeed the real trouble with the miserable Christian is that he has never been truly made miserable because of conviction of sin. He has by-passed the essential preliminary to joy, he has been assuming something that he has no right to assume. — David Lloyd-Jones

All teaching and all truth and all doctrine must be tested in the light of the scriptures. — David Lloyd-Jones

If you doubt your sins have been forgiven, that in itself is sin. — David Lloyd-Jones

If we only spent more of our time in looking at Him we should soon forget ourselves. — David Lloyd-Jones

A revival means days of heaven upon earth. — David Lloyd-Jones

What is preaching? Logic on fire! Preaching is theology coming through a man who is on fire. A true understanding and experience of the Truth must lead to this. I say again that a man who can speak about these things dispassionately has no right whatsoever to be in a pulpit; and should never be allowed to enter one. — David Lloyd-Jones

The Christian is a man who can be certain about the ultimate even when he is most uncertain about the immediate. — David Lloyd-Jones

The gospel is not something partial or piecemeal: it takes in the whole life, the whole of history, the whole world. It tells us about creation and the final judgment and everything in between. — David Lloyd-Jones

To be a Christian is not only to believe the teaching of Christ, and to practice it; it is not only to try to follow the pattern and example of Christ; it is to be so vitally related to Christ that His life and His power are working in us. It is to be "in Christ," it is for Christ to be in us. — David Lloyd-Jones

The gospel is meant to control and govern everything in our lives. — David Lloyd-Jones

The glory of the gospel is that when the church is absolutely different from the world, she invariably attracts it. — David Lloyd-Jones

Faith is this extraordinary principle which links man to God; faith is this thing that keeps a man from hell and puts him in heaven; it is the connection between this world and the world to come; faith is this mystic astounding thing that can take a man dead in trespasses and sins and make him live as a new being, a new man in Christ Jesus. — David Lloyd-Jones

Prayer, in many ways, is the supreme expression of our faith in God. — David Lloyd-Jones

The eternal everlasting God has become our Father and the moment we realize that, it transforms everything. — David Lloyd-Jones

Conviction is not repentance; conviction leads to repentance. But you can be convicted without repentance. — David Lloyd-Jones

You can have knowledge, and you can be meticulous in your preparation; but without the unction of the Holy Spirit you will have no power, and your preaching will not be effective. — David Lloyd-Jones

Spiritual depression or unhappiness in the Christian life is very often due to our failure to realize the greatness of the gospel. — David Lloyd-Jones

We all tend to go to extremes; some rely only on their own preparation and look for nothing more; others, as I say, tend to despise preparation and trust to the unction, the anointing and the inspiration of the Spirit alone. But there must be no "either/or" here; it is always "both/and." These two things must go together. — David Lloyd-Jones

Man was never meant to be a god, but he is forever trying to deify himself. — David Lloyd-Jones

We must cease to think of the church as a gathering of institutions and organizations, and we must get back to the notion that we are the people of God. — David Lloyd-Jones

Preaching the Word is the primary task of the Church, the primary task of the leaders of the Church, the people who are set in this position of authority; and we must not allow anything to deflect us from this, however good the cause, however great the need. — David Lloyd-Jones

A Christian is something before he does anything; and we have to be Christian before we can act as Christians. — David Lloyd-Jones

You must go on to remind yourself of God - who God is, and what God is, and what God has done, and what God has pledged Himself to do. — David Lloyd-Jones

The Christian faith is ultimately not only a matter of doctrine or understanding or of intellect, it is a condition of the heart. — David Lloyd-Jones

Whenever you put happiness before righteousness, you will be doomed to misery. That is the great message of the Bible from beginning to end. They alone are truly happy who are seeking to be righteous. — David Lloyd-Jones

We should go into His presence as a child goes to his father. We do it with reverence and godly fear, of course, but we should go with a childlike confidence and simplicity. — David Lloyd-Jones

There is nothing which so certifies the genuineness of a man's faith as his patience and his patient endurance, his keeping on steadily in spite of everything. — David Lloyd-Jones

There are ideas in our hearts, there are wishes, there are aspirations, there are groanings, there are sighings that the world knows nothing about; but God knows them. So words are not always necessary. When we cannot express our feelings except in wordless groanings, God knows exactly what is happening. — David Lloyd-Jones

We must re-grasp the idea of church membership as being the membership of the body of Christ and as the biggest honour which can come man's way in this world. — David Lloyd-Jones

Faith is the refusal to panic. — David Lloyd-Jones

First of all, the evangelical is one who is entirely subservient to the Bible. This is true of every evangelical. He is a man of one book; he starts with it; he submits himself to it; this is his authority. — David Lloyd-Jones

The devil is so subtle that he dominates man and persuades him at the same time that he is not being dominated. — David Lloyd-Jones

People are often unhappy in the Christian life because they have thought of Christianity, and the whole message of the gospel, in inadequate terms. — David Lloyd-Jones

The church is always to be under the Word; she must be; we must keep her there. You must not assume that because the church started correctly, she will continue so. She did not do so in the New Testament times; she has not done so since. Without being constantly reformed by the Word the church becomes something very different. — David Lloyd-Jones

Human will-power alone is not enough. Will-power is excellent and we should always be using it; but it is not enough. A desire to live a good life is not enough. Obviously we should all have that desire, but it will not guarantee success. — David Lloyd-Jones

I sometimes think that the very essence of the whole Christian position and the secret of a successful spiritual life is just to realize two things ... I must have complete, absolute confidence in God and no confidence in myself. — David Lloyd-Jones

The most vital question to ask about all who claim to be Christian is this: Have they a soul thirst for God? ... Is their life centered on Him? Do they press forward more and more that they might know Him ... — David Lloyd-Jones

There is nothing more foolish or self-defeating than for a Christian to say that he is not interested in doctrines. — David Lloyd-Jones

The Gospel is open to all; the most respectable sinner has no more claim on it than the worst. — David Lloyd-Jones

Grace is favor shown to people who do not deserve any favor at all. — David Lloyd-Jones