E. Stanley Jones Quotes & Sayings

If you find something that gets hold of you in the Word, pass it on to somebody that very day. — E. Stanley Jones

When we think of the ideal, we do not add virtue to virtue, but think of Jesus Christ, so that the standard of human life is no longer a code, but a character. — E. Stanley Jones

We are personalities in the making, limited, and grappling with things too high for us. Obviously we, at very best, will make many mistakes, but these mistakes need not be sins. — E. Stanley Jones

Grace is free, but when once you take it, you are bound forever to the Giver and bound to catch the spirit of the Giver. — E. Stanley Jones

Recognize negativism and inferiority attitudes as enemies - do not try to dress them as your friends. you will be tempted to look upon negativism as prudence and inferiorities as humility. Strip off those false cloaks and see these attitudes in their nakedness - as enemies of you and of your possibilities. — E. Stanley Jones

The Sermon on the Mount seems dangerous. It challenges the whole underlying conception on which modern society is built. It would replace it by a new conception, animate it with a new motive, and turn it toward a new goal. — E. Stanley Jones

Prayer means that the total you is praying. Your whole being reaches out to God, and God reaches down to you. — E. Stanley Jones

No person is free until he or she is free at the center. When we let go there, we are free indeed. When the self is renounced, then one stands utterly disillusioned, apart, asking for nothing. If anything comes to us, it is all sheer gain. Then life becomes one constant surprise. — E. Stanley Jones

I have surrendered to God; therefore I surrender to nothing else. — E. Stanley Jones

In the prayer time, the battle of the spiritual life is lost or won. — E. Stanley Jones

I never said the way of Christ is easy. Are you prepared to let go of everything He would not approve? — E. Stanley Jones

The only thing you believe in is the thing you believe in enough to practice. Your creed is your deed. — E. Stanley Jones

Our intentions may be very good, but, because the intelligence is limited, the action may turn out to be a mistake - a mistake, but not necessarily a sin, for sin comes out of a wrong intention. — E. Stanley Jones

Where sin has abounded in me, Grace now much more abounds in me. I live by that 'much more.' — E. Stanley Jones

We must continue to pursue the thought that we do not merely belong to the Kingdom - the Kingdom belongs to us. — E. Stanley Jones

Continuing a Lenten series on prayer: Prayer is co-operation with God. It is the purest exercise of the faculties God has given us - an exercise that links these faculties with the Maker to work out the intentions He had in mind in their creation. — E. Stanley Jones

Whatever our creed, we stand with admiration before the sublime character of Jesus. — E. Stanley Jones

Some have said that the power of a Redeemer would depend upon two things: first, upon the richness of the self that was given; and second, upon the depths of the giving. Friend and foe alike are agreed on the question of the character of Jesus Christ. — E. Stanley Jones

Prayer is aligning ourselves with the purposes of God. — E. Stanley Jones

The one supreme business of life is to find God's plan for your life and live it — E. Stanley Jones

In conversion you are not attached primarily to an order, nor to an institution, nor a movement, nor a set of beliefs, nor a code of action - you are attached primarily to a Person, and secondarily to these other things. — E. Stanley Jones

I see that I am inwardly fashioned for faith and not for fear. Fear is not my native land; faith is. I am so made that worry and anxiety are sand in the machinery of life; faith is oil. I live better by faith and confidence than by fear and doubt and anxiety. In anxiety and worry my being is gasping for breath - these are not my native air. But in faith and confidence I breath freely - these are my native air. — E. Stanley Jones

When Satan attacks you, command him in the Name of Jesus to bend his neck. On the back of it you'll find there's a nail scarred foot print! — E. Stanley Jones

When man listens, God speaks; when man obeys, God acts; when man prays, God empowers. — E. Stanley Jones

To talk with God, no breath is lost. Talk on! To walk with God, no strength is lost. Walk on! To wait on God, no time is lost. Wait on! — E. Stanley Jones

Life is supplied with a basic adequacy. — E. Stanley Jones

We are not quite sure that the Sermon on the Mount is the Sermon for the mart. We are not
sure, and an unsure place is an unsafe place*
We must go on or go back. We must be more
Christian or less. — E. Stanley Jones

When you pray, you begin to feel the sense of being sent. — E. Stanley Jones

Suppose you should fail. Is that so terrible? Not to have tried is a worse failure. — E. Stanley Jones

An hour spent in the presence of God brings the purest joy known to man. — E. Stanley Jones

A Rattlesnake, if Cornered will become so angry it will bite itself. That is exactly what the harboring of hate and resentment against others is - a biting of oneself. We think we are harming others in holding these spites and hates, but the deeper harm is to ourselves. — E. Stanley Jones

The BIBLE redirects my will, cleanses my emotions, enlightens my mind, and quickens my total being — E. Stanley Jones

Victorious living does not mean freedom from temptation, nor does it mean freedom from mistakes. — E. Stanley Jones

The love of God invades me, the peace of God pervades me, the will of God persuades me, and I am wholly His. — E. Stanley Jones

Very often when I haven't faith in my faith, I have to have faith in His faith. He makes me believe in myself and my possibilities, when I simply can't. I have to rise to His faith in me. — E. Stanley Jones

Your powers are dead or dedicated. If they are dedicated, they are alive with God and tingle with surprising power. If they are saved up, taken care of for their own ends, they are dead. — E. Stanley Jones

Your capacity to say "No" determines your capacity to say "Yes" to greater things. — E. Stanley Jones

Worry and anxiety are sand in the machinery of life; faith is the oil. — E. Stanley Jones

The Indian is making an amazing discovery, namely that Christianity and Jesus are not the same - that they may have Jesus without the system that has been built up around Him in the West. — E. Stanley Jones

Our actions are the results of our intentions and our intelligence. — E. Stanley Jones

Christ is everywhere and He is in me. What more do I want, except more of Him? — E. Stanley Jones

If I throw out a boathook from the boat and catch hold of the shore and pull, do I pull the shore to me, or do I pull myself to the shore? Prayer is not pulling God to my will, but the aligning of my will to the will of God. — E. Stanley Jones

Many live in dread of what is coming. Why should we? The unknown puts adventure into life ... The unexpected around the corner gives a sense of anticipation and surprise. Thank God for the unknown future. — E. Stanley Jones

If you don't make up your mind, your unmade mind will unmake you. — E. Stanley Jones

God, to redeem us at the deepest portion of our nature - the urge to love and be loved - must reveal His nature in an incredible and impossible way. He must reveal it at a cross. — E. Stanley Jones

We must be willing to be guided of God, not merely now and then, but as a life proposition. — E. Stanley Jones

Christianity not only saves you from sin, but from cynicism. — E. Stanley Jones

At the cross God wrapped his heart in flesh and blood and let it be nailed to the cross for our redemption. — E. Stanley Jones

When we can sing in the face of death, we can sing in the face of anything. — E. Stanley Jones

We grow small trying to be great. — E. Stanley Jones

The God I find in Christ is a God who overcomes evil with good, hate by love, and the world by a cross. — E. Stanley Jones

Here he tells us that the new birth is first of all 'not of blood'. You don't get it through the blood stream, through heredity. Your parents can give you much, but they cannot give you this. — E. Stanley Jones

God doesn't have any grandchildren. — E. Stanley Jones

When the Church listens to the Holy Spirit, it becomes fruitful. New movements are born. — E. Stanley Jones

While love takes on itself impossible tasks, yet it finds that love lightens all loads. It is the same burden that wings are to a bird, that sails are to a ship. Nothing is hard if done for love's sweet sake. The yoke of love is easy; the yoke of duty is hard. There is all the difference in the world between being drawn by love and being driven by duty. The task may be the same, but love makes everything light, and duty makes everything drudgery. — E. Stanley Jones

You cease to move into yourself, away from others. You give up your antagonism. You begin to move toward others in love. God moved toward you in gracious, outgoing love, and you move toward others in that same outgoing love. — E. Stanley Jones

Who has not seen a frail, clinging-vine type of woman, who upon the death of her husband strainghtens up and becomes an oak, around which the growing children twine their lives, and are forever greatful for such a mother? But this strength would never have come out and developed had it not been for the tears that watered the vine and made it into an oak. — E. Stanley Jones

The conscious mind determines the actions, the unconscious mind determines the reactions; and the reactions are just as important as the actions. — E. Stanley Jones

A road that perhaps more than any other leads to self atrophy is undedicated money. — E. Stanley Jones

Be so preoccupied with good will that you haven't room for ill will. — E. Stanley Jones

I have only to be true to the highest I know-success of failure is in the hand of God. — E. Stanley Jones

To implant fear in the minds of children is a crime. If parents try to rule the child by fear, then fear rules the child. — E. Stanley Jones

The universe does not make sense without God. — E. Stanley Jones

When the Christian doesn't find joy on account of his happenings, he can always find joy in spite of them. — E. Stanley Jones

Faith is not merely you holding on to God- it is God holding on to you — E. Stanley Jones

Nothing is ever really yours until you share it. — E. Stanley Jones

Prayer is commitment. We don't merely co-operate with God with certain things held back within. We, the total person, co-operate. This means that co-operation equals committment. — E. Stanley Jones

Don't wait for some miracle to be performed on you from without, lifting you above your fears and doubts and self-centeredness. You help God from within by turning in outgoing love to others, and miraculously your fears and doubts and self-centeredness will vanish. The miracle starts within, not from without. — E. Stanley Jones

In our Ashrams of East and West, places of spiritual retreat, we begin with what we call "The Morning of the Open Heart," in which we tell our needs ... We give four or five hours to this catharsis. The reaction of one member, who listened to it for the first time, was: "Good gracious, have we all the disrupted people in the country here?" My reply was: "No, you have a cross section of the church life honestly revealed." In the ordinary church, it is suppressed by respectability, by a desire to a appear better than we really are. — E. Stanley Jones

Earth's blackest day and earth's brightest day are only three days apart. — E. Stanley Jones

Spiritual power comes out of inward fellowship with God and abandonment to his purposes. — E. Stanley Jones

If we know how to pray, we know how to live. — E. Stanley Jones

If you don't surrender to God, don't think you don't surrender. Everybody surrenders
to something. — E. Stanley Jones

In the ordinary church, it is suppressed by respectability, by a desire to appear better than we really are. — E. Stanley Jones

The early Christians did not say, in dismay, 'Look what the world has come to,' but, in delight, 'Look what has come to the world! — E. Stanley Jones

The action carries a sense of incompleteness and frustration, but not of guilt. Victorious living does not mean perfect living in the sense of living without flaw, but it does mean adequate living, and that can be consistent with many mistakes. — E. Stanley Jones

When I met Christ, I felt that I had swallowed sunshine. — E. Stanley Jones

An individual gospel without a social gospel is a soul without a body and a social gospel without an individual gospel is a body without a soul. One is a ghost, the other a corpse. — E. Stanley Jones

Grace makes you gracious. The Giver makes you give. — E. Stanley Jones

Surrender the thing you fear into the hands of God. Turn it right over to God and ask Him to solve it with you. Fear is keeping things in your own hands; faith is
turning them over into the hands of God. — E. Stanley Jones

Be victorious in the home, and you are victorious everywhere. — E. Stanley Jones

A nail-pierced hand holds the sceptre of the universe, and my knees bend before him. — E. Stanley Jones

The moral laws of the Universe are deeply embedded in the constitution of things. We do not break them - we break ourselves upon them. — E. Stanley Jones

All coming to Jesus has the feeling of homecoming upon it. All going away from Him has the sense of estrangement upon it. The rich young ruler went away from Jesus "sorrowful." Everybody does. Not only estrangement from God, but also estrangement from oneself. And the universe! And from life! You are not at home with life, unless you are at home with Life. And Jesus is Life! — E. Stanley Jones

The opponent strikes you on your cheek, and you strike him on the heart by your amazing spiritual audacity in turning the other cheek. You wrest the offensive from him by refusing to take his weapons, by keeping your own, and by striking him in his conscience from a higher level. He hits you physically, and you hit him spiritually. — E. Stanley Jones

Whatever we focus on determines what we become. — E. Stanley Jones

When prayer fades out, power fades out. We are as spiritual as we are prayerful; no more, no less. — E. Stanley Jones

The purpose of religion is not so much to get us into heaven, or to keep us out of hell, but to put a little bit of heaven into us, and take the hell out of us. This has always been the greatest responsibility of religion. — E. Stanley Jones

To live by worry is to live against reality — E. Stanley Jones

Obviously God must guide us in a way that will develop spontaneity in us. The development of character, rather than direction in this, that, and the other matter, must be the primary purpose of the Father. He will guide us, but he won't override us. That fact should make us use with caution the method of sitting down with a pencil and blank sheet of paper to write down the instructions dictated by God for the day. Suppose a parent would dictate to the child minutely everything he is to do during the day. The child would be stunted under that regime. The parent must guide in such a manner, and to the degree, that autonomous character, capable of making right decisions for itself, is produced. God does the same. — E. Stanley Jones

If you don't surrender to Christ, you surrender to chaos. — E. Stanley Jones

When we talk about what we believe we divide. When we talk about who we believe in we unite. — E. Stanley Jones

Being born in a Christian home does not make you a Christian. — E. Stanley Jones

When we say we begin with God, we begin with our idea of God, and our idea of God is not God. Instead, we ought to begin with God's idea of God, and God's idea of God is Christ — E. Stanley Jones

To pass from estrangement from God to be a son of God is the basic fact of conversion. That altered relationship with God gives you an altered relationship with yourself, with your brother man, with nature, with the universe. — E. Stanley Jones

Jesus will meet me today in the person of someone in need-I must not miss him. — E. Stanley Jones

We find, sooner or later, that in prayer we either abandon ourselves or we abandon prayer. — E. Stanley Jones

There are two ways to be rich - one in the abundance of your possessions and the other in the fewness of your wants. — E. Stanley Jones

Prayer is commission. Out of the quietness with God, power is generated that turns the spiritual machinery of the world. When you pray, you begin to feel the sense of being sent, that the divine compulsion is upon you. — E. Stanley Jones

When the depths are upheld by the Holy Spirit, then the reaction is Christian. — E. Stanley Jones