Ravi Zacharias Quotes & Sayings

This is why Jesus challenged the notion that more evidence would have generated more faith. George Macdonald said years ago that to give truth to him who does not love the truth is to only give more reasons for misinterpretation. — Ravi Zacharias

We have local churches where we meet together as believers. We no longer go to Mount Sinai to meet God. Why not? Because the place of the tabernacle and the temple is now replaced by the body - your body and mine - in which God meets with us and God dwells with us, and where we have communion with Him. When we come to the church now, we don't come to the sanctuary; we bring our sanctuaries with us. This individual entity is the locus of appointment between God and me. There He meets. There He dwells. Will the God who went to such pains to physically decorate the tabernacle and the temple not also take great care in physically designing the human body? — Ravi Zacharias

The cross stands as a mystery because it is foreign to everything we exalt- self over principle, power over meekness, the quick fix over the long haul, cover-up over confession, escapism over confrontation, conform over sacrifice, feeling over commitment, legality over justice, the body over the spirit, anger over forgiveness, man over God. — Ravi Zacharias

One of the most staggering truths of the Scriptures is to understand that we do not earn our way to heaven ... works have a place
but as a demonstration of having received God's forgiveness, not as a badge of merit of having earned it. — Ravi Zacharias

If God is the author of life, there must be a script. — Ravi Zacharias

Only when holiness and worship meet can evil be conquered. For that, only the Christian message has the answer. — Ravi Zacharias

Christian faith is exclusivistic. Christian faith lays claim upon our lives. The sanctity of life, what we do with a life, is very definitive in the Christian faith, what we do with sexuality, what we do with marriage, all of the fundamental questions of life have points of reference for answers, and people just have an aversion for that. That I think is the biggest reason they feel hostile towards the Christian faith. — Ravi Zacharias

Chivalry in love has nothing to do with the sweetness of the appearance. It has everything to do with the tenderness of a heart determined to serve. You must not act under the impetus of charm, but out of a commitment to make someone's life the joy you want it to be. — Ravi Zacharias

Atheism is an exercise in intellectual contempt. — Ravi Zacharias

Legalism always breeds compliance over purpose. — Ravi Zacharias

The Cross of Christ is the crux of history. Without the Cross, history cannot be defined or corrected. — Ravi Zacharias

Having killed God, the atheist is left with no reason for being, no morality to espouse, no meaning to life, and no hope beyond the grave. — Ravi Zacharias

To be able to accept the wonder and the marvel of one's own personality, however flawed or 'accidental,' and place it in and trust it to the hands of the One who made it, is one of the greatest achievements in life. — Ravi Zacharias

There is no greater example in apologetics than the apostle Paul speaking at Mars Hill. The irony of the talk Paul gave is in the difference in reaction the Easterner has when reading Paul's address to that of a Westerner. The Easterner is thrilled at how the apostle wove the message starting from where the listeners were to bring them to where he was in his thinking. The average Westerner is quick to point out that few of his hearers responded. Such an attitude says volumes about why the church in the West has been so intellectually weak. To those in the West, the bigger the number of respondents, the more replicated the technique. The bigger the statistic, the greater the success. Westerners are enamored by size, largesse, number of hands raised, and so on. When the sun has set on these reports, we seem rather dismayed when statistics show the quality of the life of the believer is no different from that of the unbeliever. — Ravi Zacharias

Jesus did not only teach or expound His message. He was identical with His message. "In Him," say the Scriptures, "dwelt the fullness of the Godhead bodily." He did not just proclaim the truth. He said, "I am the truth." He did not just show a way. He said, "I am the Way." He did not just open up vistas. He said, "I am the door." "I am the Good Shepherd." "I am the resurrection and the life." "I am the I AM." In — Ravi Zacharias

The love of God shows us that God alone bridges the distance between him and us, enabling us to see this world through Calvary. — Ravi Zacharias

Chesterton says, in essence, that there is a dislocation of humility in our times. We have become more confident in who we are and less in what we believe. Our pride has moved us from the organ of conviction to the organ of ambition, when it is intended to be the other way around. In short, our confidence should be in our message and not in ourselves. — Ravi Zacharias

Where the eye is focused, there the imagination finds its raw material. The right focus must be won at immense cost and discipline. Train the eye to see the good, and the imagination will follow suit. — Ravi Zacharias

If God can do anything, then He surely can even allow evil and call it good. Why does He have to explain it? Surely, if omnipotence means all-powerful without even logical or rational limitation, He can allow evil to exist and not see any incoherence in it. And if God can do anything He pleases why can't He simply be incoherent as well? That may be irrational to the skeptic, but does not limitless power also mean the power to be irrational without justification? — Ravi Zacharias

Every worldview has to bring together reason and faith. — Ravi Zacharias

All religions, plainly and simply, cannot be true. Some beliefs are false, and we know them to be false. So it does no good to put a halo on the notion of tolerance as if everything could be equally true. To deem all beliefs equally true is sheer nonsense for the simple reason that to deny that statement would also, then, be true. But if the denial of the statement is also true, then all religions are not true. — Ravi Zacharias

Life is lived out in self-contained compartments with nothing to connect them. Their bowing recognizes the sacred. Their expoiting grants the material. In living they desecrate others without a twinge of conscience. Yet if anyone were to hint at desecrating that shrine, his life sould be in peril. Such is the amputation of religion that pays homage to God but would be the most surprised if God were ever to show up. — Ravi Zacharias

I have little doubt that the single greatest obstacle to the impact of the gospel has not been its inability to provide answers, but the failure on our part to live it out. — Ravi Zacharias

The Samaritan woman grasped what He said with fervor that came from an awareness of her real need. The transaction was fascinating. She has come with a buket. He sent her back with a spring of living water. She had come as a reject. He sent her back being accepted by God Himself. She came wounded. He sent her back whole. She came laden with questions. He sent her back as a source for answers. She came living a life of quiet desperation. She ran back overflowing with hope. The disciples missed it all. It was lunchtime for them. — Ravi Zacharias

Time is the brush of God, as he paints his masterpiece on the heart of humanity. — Ravi Zacharias

You'll never get to a person's soul until you understand their hurts. — Ravi Zacharias

Wonder blasts the soul - that is, the spiritual - and the skeleton, the body - the material. Wonder interprets life through the eyes of eternity while enjoying the moment, but never lets the moment's revision exhaust the eternal. — Ravi Zacharias

The vaster the audience, the more vulnerable the people watching the media. — Ravi Zacharias

Of all the religions in the world, there is none with the wealth of music that the Christian faith offers. — Ravi Zacharias

You see, there is an intellectual side to life but also a side to life where deep needs are experienced. We falsely think that one side deals with truth and the other with fantasy. Both need the truth, and the elimination of one by the other is not the world in which God intends for us to live. — Ravi Zacharias

The reality is that if religion is to be treated with intellectual respect, then it must stand the test of truth, — Ravi Zacharias

Success is more difficult to handle than failure. — Ravi Zacharias

I am absolutely convinced that meaninglessness does not come from being weary of pain; meaninglessness comes from being weary of pleasure. And that is why we find ourselves emptied of meaning with our pantries still full. — Ravi Zacharias

One of my favorite examples involves Dr. Peter Greenspan, a Jewish obstetrician-gynecologist who also teaches at a medical school. The more he read books by critics who were trying to attack the prophecies, the more he recognized the flaws in their arguments. Ironically, concluded Greenspan, "I think I actually came to faith in Y'shua [Jesus] by reading what detractors wrote."36 — Ravi Zacharias

Islam from the beginning was primarily predisposed toward one particular people. There is very little doubt that in its inception, Islam was a geopolitical reaction to the other groups around them. Even those sympathetic to Islam, such as Ali Dashti, the noted Iranian journalist, comment that the greatest miracle in Islam is that it gave Mohammed's followers an identity, something they had lacked as various warring tribal groups. The very language of the Koran is restrictive. To claim that Mohammed's only miracle was the Koran and then to state that one cannot recognize the miracle unless one knows the language makes a miracle anything but universal. How can a "prophet to the world" be so narrowly restricted to a language group? The Koran, it is said, is only inspired in the original language - no other language can bear the miracle. The narrowness of its ethnic appeal cannot be ignored. — Ravi Zacharias

Giving yourself the privilege of destroying other positions while parking your own position in an unidentifiable location is a form of linguistic terrorism. — Ravi Zacharias

There are so many needs in the world, and our hearts cannot carry them all. You must walk to the priorities God has set before you. — Ravi Zacharias

Justice is the handmaiden of truth, and when truth dies, justice is buried with it. — Ravi Zacharias

I think the media plays into the hands of false induction, genuine seduction taking place, wrong deductions, and the inevitable reductions. That's the way and the path of the visual. — Ravi Zacharias

God is the shaper of your heart. God does not display his work in abstract terms. He prefers the concrete, and this means that at the end of your life one of three things will happen to your heart: it will grow hard, it will be broken, or it will be tender. Nobody escapes — Ravi Zacharias

A solemn reminder not to make our goal in life one of sheer material pursuit. The allurement is great, and the disappointments are proportionate. — Ravi Zacharias

When I do things my way, I exhaust pleasure very quickly. It is not that Christianity has failed to teach me how to delight in God's presence; it is that I have failed by seeking pleasure through godless ways or by resisting God's provision for me because it is not what I want. — Ravi Zacharias

A society that hates laws that guard the soul despises not so much the laws as much as it despises the very thought of a soul. Those who belong to such a society consider the flesh the totality of their being. — Ravi Zacharias

I thank the Lord that, even though things were so wrong in my life here, I finally was brought to the realization of what all those struggles were about. There are some wonderful things from your painful past, things with a beauty you may not have realized at the time. — Ravi Zacharias

Presence, relationship, holiness, trust, beauty, goodness, peace - all were present in the relationship between God and humanity at creation. By playing God and redefining good and evil according to our own discretion, we introduced into the human spirit disobedience, absence, severance, distrust, evil, and restlessness. — Ravi Zacharias

When we look into the human heart we see the lust, the greed, the hate, the pride, the anger, and the jealousies that are so destructive. This is at the heart of the human predicament, and the Scriptures call this condition sin. — Ravi Zacharias

We are fashioned by God to be thinking and emotional creatures. The emotions should follow reason, and not the other way around. — Ravi Zacharias

In today's society, looking good and feeling good often trumps doing good and being good. And some people don't know the difference anymore. — Ravi Zacharias

Anytime evil becomes organized, its ferocity breathes the air of hell. There is nothing that can quench that fury. It cannot be stopped until it has accomplished its purpose. That is why hell is unending. Its nature is to burn on the inside, and no outward consolation or influence can change wickedness that is inflamed by numbers. The — Ravi Zacharias

I am convinced that all our attempts to change the letter of the law and to reeducate people have been, and are, merely band-aid solutions for a fatal hemorrhage. The system will never change because our starting point is flawed. The secular view of man can neither give the grandeur that God alone can give, nor can it see the evil within the human heart that God alone can reveal and cure, for atheism implicitly denudes each individual of the grand image God has imprinted upon His creation. — Ravi Zacharias

God doesn't respond because someone opens up some new insight for Him. No. In persistent, fervent prayer, God prepares the soil of one's heart to make room for the seed of His answer, from which will flower an alignment with His will. — Ravi Zacharias

Truth is the thread that separates true spirituality from false spirituality. — Ravi Zacharias

I left the altar rail and went back to the pew where the others were kneeling like four shadows, four unrealities, and I hid my face in my hands. In the temple of God that I had just become, the once eternal and pure sacrifice was offered up to the God dwelling in me. The sacrifice of God to God. Now, Christ born in me, a new Bethlehem, and sacrificed in me his new Calvary, and risen in me: offering me to the Father, in himself, asking the Father, my Father and his, to receive me into his infinite and special love - not the love he has for all things that exist, for mere existence is a token of God's love, but the love of those creatures who are drawn to him in and with the power of his own love for himself.3 — Ravi Zacharias

It is possible to hold a treasure in your hand but be ignorant of it and go for the wrapping instead. This proximity to truth and distance from its worth is repeated innumerable times in our lives. — Ravi Zacharias

Christian communication is further impeded by the expectations of a world progressing at a staggering pace in every field of study. It seems as though to deal in spiritual matters, the Christian has to be an authority on every other subject, failing which, he is branded "escapist" or "unrealistic." Thus, science, philosophy, psychology, history, and virtually every other discipline affects religion. In a sense, this ought not to be surprising, because spiritual truth deals with the essence of life. For — Ravi Zacharias

Attempting to satisfy the passions that rage inside us and the longings that motivate us, we invent spirituality, lean on political solutions, create new villains, turn our backs on Jesus, and blame a thousand tyrannies- but we never come to terms with the source of the problem deep within the heart and inclination of every human being. — Ravi Zacharias

And so the abnormal is now normal in entertainment, because the normal is treated as subnormal in the world of the media. That, I can assure you, is consciously done. — Ravi Zacharias

Pain can easily produce the sense of being abandoned. The presence of someone who loves and cares can most persuasively counter that fear. God's words were important to Job, but most important to him was the assurance that God was with him through it all, revealing Himself to Job at the most critical moment. And Job said, "My ears had heard of you but now my eyes have seen you" (Job 42:5). — Ravi Zacharias

When you come to religion, you come to a place.
When you come to Jesus Christ, you come to a person. — Ravi Zacharias

A mood can be a dangerous state of mind, because it can crush reason under the weight of feeling. — Ravi Zacharias

I am totally convinced the Christian faith is the most coherent worldview around. — Ravi Zacharias

His life spells living. Your life or my life, apart from Him, spells death. — Ravi Zacharias

The ultimate test of any civilization is how we treat the most vulnerable ... what we do to our children. Our world has lost its direction. — Ravi Zacharias

In Christian engagement, the goal is to win the person
who is of the other worldview - not to destroy the person. — Ravi Zacharias

...monotony finds no relief in adding variety or changing our attitude about it. Activity does not create meaning; it is the other way around. — Ravi Zacharias

My longings, my hopes, my dreams, and my every effort has been to live for Him who rescued me, to study for Him who gave me this mind, to serve Him who fashioned my will, and to speak for Him who gave me a voice. — Ravi Zacharias

Here is life's essential purpose - to worship God in spirit and in truth (see John 4:24). All other purposes are meant to be secondary. When they become primary, they destroy the individual. — Ravi Zacharias

By the time I was a young man, I lived with two deep struggles: I longed to become a cricketer, and I performed miserably in school. Cricket and tennis were all that I lived for. In India, this was a formula for failure. — Ravi Zacharias

We have to find the back door to peoples' hearts because the front door is heavily guarded. — Ravi Zacharias

Think long and hard whether you have reached that mature stage of selflessness for this one you think you love so much. The love you enjoy will be the best thing that ever happened to you, but it will cost you your independence.... The responsibility of marriage and family demands time, and when we cheat on that, we rob ourselves of the investment returns. — Ravi Zacharias

They are teachers who point to their teaching or show some particular way. In all of these, there emerges an instruction, a way of living. It is not Zoroaster to whom you turn. It is Zoroaster to whom you listen. It is not Buddha who delivers you; it is his Noble Truths that instruct you. It is not Mohammed who transforms you; it is the beauty of the Koran that woos you. By contrast, Jesus did not only teach or expound His message. He was identical with His message. "In Him," say the Scriptures, "dwelt the fullness of the Godhead bodily." He did not just proclaim the truth. He said, "I am the truth." He did not just show a way. He said, "I am the Way." He did not just open up vistas. He said, "I am the door." "I am the Good Shepherd." "I am the resurrection and the life." "I am the I AM." In Him is not just an offer of life's bread. He is the bread. That is why being a Christian is not just a way of feeding and living. Following Christ begins with a way of relating and being. — Ravi Zacharias

Pleasure without God, without the sacred boundaries, will actually leave you emptier than before. And this is biblical truth, this is experiential truth. The loneliest people in the world are amongst the wealthiest and most famous who found no boundaries within which to live. That is a fact I've seen again and again. — Ravi Zacharias

You can become interested too late to realize how important your family tree is. The — Ravi Zacharias

Unsuspecting people make a fatal mistake when they give their allegiance to a system of thought by focusing on its benefits while they ignore its systemic contradictions. — Ravi Zacharias

You cannot have a boundary-less existence, because your neighbor has his own boundaries, and who is going to give you the ethics between the two boundaries? If there is no objective moral law, relativism will take hold, and relativism ultimately will lead to self-destruction. — Ravi Zacharias

These days its not just that the line between right and wrong has been made unclear, today Christians are being asked by our culture today to erase the lines and move the fences, and if that were not bad enough, we are being asked to join in the celebration cry by those who have thrown off the restraints religion had imposed upon them. It is not just that they ask we accept, but they now demand of us to celebrate it too. — Ravi Zacharias

Evil is a violation of purpose, the purpose of your creator and mine. — Ravi Zacharias

But it was not to be. — Ravi Zacharias

In a post-modern culture we need an apologetic that is felt and seen because if post-moderns are not feeling it, they are not believing it. — Ravi Zacharias

In our human imagination, we so often perceive our Heroes to be something larger than life. We exalt them in ways that do them a disservice ... we convince ourselves that they are or were something essentially different than the rest of us. — Ravi Zacharias

Historic figures have homes to visit for posterity; the Lord of history left no home. Luminaries leave libraries and write their memoirs; He left one book, penned by ordinary people. Deliverers speak of winning through might and conquest; He spoke of a place in the heart. — Ravi Zacharias

God put enough into the world to make faith in Him a reasonable thing. But He left enough out to make it impossible to live by reason alone. — Ravi Zacharias

The world was made for the body. The body was made for the soul. And the soul was made for God. — Ravi Zacharias

If you are already a Christian, then you also have a task before you - to articulate the truth about Christ, to defend it, to share it, to preserve it, to pass it along to the next generations. As J. B. Phillips so powerfully renders 2 Corinthians 4:6: "God, who first ordered light to shine in darkness, has flooded our hearts with his light, so that we can enlighten men with the knowledge of the glory of God, as we see it in the face of Christ. — Ravi Zacharias

The antitheist is quick to excoriate all religious belief by generically laying the blame at the door of all who claim to be religious, without distinction. By the same measure, why is there not an equal enthusiasm to distribute blame for violence engendered by some of the irreligious? — Ravi Zacharias

The denial of Christ has less to do with facts and more to do with the bent of what a person is prejudiced to conclude. — Ravi Zacharias

Time isn't just a fleeting thing. It never moves forward without engraving its mark upon the heart. — Ravi Zacharias

All religions are not the same. All religions do not point to God. All religions do not say that all religions are the same. At the heart of every religion is an uncompromising commitment to a particular way of defining who God is or is not and accordingly, of defining life's purpose. — Ravi Zacharias

If it is true that heredity plays a role in the spiritual dispositions that are imprinted on our souls, Jesus' declaration that each of us needs to be born again is even more profound. The DNA of generations past marks itself very deeply in us, and it takes a new birth for us to be able to see through new eyes. — Ravi Zacharias

History is a grim reminder of what happens to those who think they have no law but themselves. — Ravi Zacharias

Thankfully, our disappointments matter to God, and He has a way of taking even some of the bitterest moments we go through and making them into something of great significance in our life. It's hard to understand it at the time. Not one of us wants that thread when it is being woven in. Not one of us says, 'I can hardly wait to see where this is going to fit.' We all say at that moment, 'This is not the pattern I want. — Ravi Zacharias

How much more relevant could God be than to be a provider of food for life? What good is religion if it cannot feed the hungry? Satan was perilously and painfully close to a truth. But it was a half-truth, and a half-truth gets so interwoven with a lie that it becomes deadlier by the mix. Ask yourself this question: What kind of a following would result if the sole reason for the affection toward the leader is that he provides his followers with bread? Both motives would be wrong - for the provider and the receiver. These are the terms of reward and punishment that are mercenarily tainted and have diminishing returns, at best engendering compliance, but not love. Their appeal, too, is soon lost when offered as enticements or when withheld to engender fears. Dependence without commitment will ever look for ways to break the stranglehold. The — Ravi Zacharias

Having the answers is not essential to living. What is essential is the sense of God's presence during dark seasons of questioning. — Ravi Zacharias

In naturalism, man is actually very insignificant, but arrogates to himself stupendous power. In Christianity, man is actually the apex of created significance, but is called to see it in abject humility. — Ravi Zacharias

Our sense of wonder is a blessing from God, given so that we would be continually amazed at His beauty and creation. — Ravi Zacharias

God has put enough into the world to make faith in Him a most reasonable thing. But He has left enough out to make it impossible to live by sheer reason or observation alone. — Ravi Zacharias

Years ago I was asked this question: Do terrorists fear anything? I said, 'I suspect they would fear a morally strong America.' They would know that a morally strong America would not be dislodged. You can always appeal to a point of vulnerability which would break a people up. [Terrorists] don't fear so much the weaponry as the moral courage, and I think a morally strong America would be intimidating to them. — Ravi Zacharias

G. K. Chesterton once said that to be thankful is the highest form of thought and that gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder. Thanklessness, then,must be the lowest form of thought, and ingratitude is discontentment, bankrupted of wonder. — Ravi Zacharias

We cannot discuss human rights, when we are denying people the right to live. — Ravi Zacharias

Spirituality does not give relevance to life; rather, truth gives relevance to spirituality. — Ravi Zacharias