Tony Reinke Quotes & Sayings

Keeping Christ in view at all times is, by far, the hardest - and the most essential - part of our calling as Christians. — Tony Reinke

Every time we open our Bibles, our souls are being fed through centuries of technological advancement. — Tony Reinke

Almost all men are infected with the disease of desiring to obtain useless knowledge, — Tony Reinke

The joy of the Lord is our strength in the Christian life; unbelief is our Kryptonite. — Tony Reinke

My annual goal is to read seventy-five books, which may sound like a lot. — Tony Reinke

The Christian's hope is based not on our unsettling feelings of joy in Christ, but on Christ himself. — Tony Reinke

I wish we may learn from all our changes, to be sober and watchful, not to rest in grace received, in experience or comforts, but still to be pressing forward, and never think ourselves either safe or happy, but when we are beholding the glory of Christ by the light of faith in the glass of the Gospel. To view him as God manifest in the flesh, as all in all in himself, and all in all for us; this is cheering, this is strengthening, this makes hard things easy, and bitter things sweet. This includes all I can wish for my dear friends, that you may grow in grace, and in the knowledge of Jesus. To know him, is the shortest description of true grace; to know him better, is the surest mark of growth in grace; to know him perfectly, is eternal life. This is the prize of our high calling; the sum and substance of all we can desire or hope for is, to see him as he is, and to be like him: and to this honor and happiness he will surely bring all that love his name.81 — Tony Reinke

The progressive cure for our maladies is looking to Christ's glory as we endure the proper medications of necessary pain and trials, the bitter circumstances that make us whiny patients.61 Yet Christ is always on call, his patience is infinite, and he bears with our complaints as he works out our spiritual health.62 Only in him do sinners find healing. — Tony Reinke

I am afraid that as the serpent deceived Eve by his cunning, your thoughts will be led astray from a sincere and pure devotion to Christ (2 Cor. 11:3). Sin is the move away from simple devotion to Christ. Sin is spiritual complexity. — Tony Reinke

Recognize the cost is your life, and willingly lay yourself down. The world hates the smell of that sacrifice, because it is the smell of grace. They hate it because it is the smell of something living and burning at the same time - something that is impossible without a risen Savior. — Tony Reinke

And so these two convictions stand as marvelous evidences of grace: an awareness of our heart's depravity and an awareness of our Physician's infallibility. "The sum of my complaints amounts but to this - that I am a sick sinner, diseased in every part; but then, if he who is the Infallible Physician has undertaken my case, I shall not die but live, and declare the works of the Lord."64 — Tony Reinke

Our goal is not to finish a book, or merely to talk about a book,
but to use our books to grow Christlike character — Tony Reinke

The sad truth is that many of us are addicted to our phones because we crave immediate approval and affirmation. The fear we feel in our hearts when we are engaged online is the impulse that drives our "highly selective self-representations." We want to be loved and accepted by others, so we wash away our scars and defects. When we put this scrubbed-down representation of ourselves online, we tabulate the human approval in a commodity index of likes and shares. We post an image, then watch the immediate response. We refresh. We watch the stats climb-or stall. We gauge the immediate responses from friends, family members, and strangers. Did what we posted gain the immediate approval of others? We know within minutes. Even the promise of religious approval and the affirmations of other Christians is a gravitational pull that draws us toward our phones. — Tony Reinke

The Pascal of our generation puts it this way: "We run away like conscientious little bugs, scared rabbits, dancing attendance on our machines, our slaves, our masters" - clicking, scrolling, tapping, liking, sharing . . . anything. "We think we want peace and silence and freedom and leisure, but deep down we know that this would be unendurable to us." In fact, "we want to complexify our lives. We don't have to, we want to. We want to be harried and hassled and busy. Unconsciously, we want the very thing we complain about. For if we had leisure, we would look at ourselves and listen to our hearts and see the great gaping hole in our hearts and be terrified, because that hole is so big that nothing but God can fill it."12 — Tony Reinke

If we're being honest, we don't call ourselves royalty. If we're being honest, we call ourselves timid, confused, and insecure. All our self-loathing and self-promoting is a thin veil covering over our frightening conviction that we are nobodies. — Tony Reinke

A minister may be diligent in his work, regular in his family, resident with his people and attentive to them, and in many respects exemplary in his outward conduct, and yet not preach Jesus Christ, and him crucified.32 — Tony Reinke

Our humbling experience of sin is a mark of maturity. To be humbled by sin is to be marked by grace. Christian holiness is not the eradication of the sin nature, at least not on this side of eternity. — Tony Reinke

Illuminated by the gospel, we now perceive and enjoy God's truth, goodness, and beauty - whether it's in the blazing sun of the inspired Word of God, in the moonlight of creation, or in the starlight of great books. — Tony Reinke

Currently, the Library of Congress houses eighteen million books. American publishers add another two hundred thousand titles to this stack each year. This means that at the current publishing rate, ten million new books will be added in the next fifty years. Add together the dusty LOC volumes with the shiny new and forthcoming books, and you get a bookshelf-warping total of twenty-eight million books available for an English reader in the next fifty years! But you can read only 2,600 - because you are a wildly ambitious book devourer ... For every one book that you choose to read, you must ignore ten thousand other books simply because you don't have the time (or money!). — Tony Reinke

True happiness is not found. It finds you. — Tony Reinke

The question of this book is simple: What is the best use of my smartphone in the flourishing of my life? To that end, my aim is to avoid both extremes: the utopian optimism of the technophiliac and the dystopian pessimistic of the technophobe. — Tony Reinke

Stories arrest us. Parents use stories to capture the attention of active children. Preachers use stories to capture the attention of sleepy adults. — Tony Reinke

The Christian life is Christ - a truth that deeply reassures our souls, focuses our hearts, and simplifies our spiritual lives. But it's a calling that we perpetually fumble. The veil removed from our eyes in conversion gives way to clouds over our eyes in trials and sleepiness in our steps with the spiritual disciplines. The greatest challenges we face are Christ-clouding distractions. — Tony Reinke

If a sailor escapes with his life in a storm on the open sea, he will be grateful but soon forget his deliverance, Newton writes (no doubt looking back to the storm that nearly took his life). But even more permanently thankful will be the sailor who escapes storm after storm, swell after swell, near-death experience after near-death experience, and then after such an odyssey finally finds his way to safe harbor. — Tony Reinke

But sin should never consume our focus at the expense of our confidence in the power and sufficiency of Christ. There is little danger in thinking lowly of ourselves. The ever-present danger faced by the Christian is thinking too lowly of Christ. Christ is our identity, not indwelling sin. — Tony Reinke

Don't allow unfinished books to pile up in a mountain of guilt. Show patience with a book, but cut the ties when necessary and move on. — Tony Reinke

Fundamentally, literacy is a spiritual discipline that must overcome the spiritual darkness that veils us. If we ever hope to spiritually benefit from our reading, the Holy Spirit must intrude upon our lives and remove our blindfolds so that we can behold the radiant glory of Jesus Christ (John 1:9). Once we see His glory, our literacy - how we read books - is permanently and forever changed. — Tony Reinke

All the elements and forms that are essential to religion (a concept of God, a sense of guilt, a desire for redemption, sacrifice, priesthood, temple, cult, prayer, etc.), though corrupted, nevertheless do also occur in pagan religions ... Hence Christianity is not only positioned antithetically toward paganism; it is also paganism's fulfillment. Christianity is the true religion, therefore also the highest and purest; it is the truth of all religions. What in paganism is the caricature, the living original is here. What is appearance there is essence here. What is sought there can be found here. — Tony Reinke

But as Newton grew more and more aware of his own sin and the evil that debased his best service, he was careful not to take his eyes off Christ. "I could go on complaining," Newton wrote a friend, "but I check myself. I am vile indeed, but Jesus is full of grace and truth. He leads and guides, he feeds and guards, he restores and heals. He is an all-sufficient Savior."66 Under the care of such an all-sufficient Christ, the chief of sinners does not despair, but presses on toward holiness. — Tony Reinke

If we neglect Scripture in order to read only other books, we not only cut ourselves from the divine umbilical cord that feeds our souls, we also cut ourselves from the truth that makes it possible for us to benefit from the truth, goodness, and beauty in the books that we read. — Tony Reinke

Books are great tools, but they are disappointing gods. And once books become idols, those idols will leave us deeply unsatisfied. — Tony Reinke

We cannot keep our eyes focused on Jesus while our greed lusts for worldly security. We may go through the motions, but eventually the misplaced priority of worldliness will corrode the soul's joy. — Tony Reinke

The more sick I am, the more need I have to apply to such a great, compassionate, infallible physician. I cannot heal myself, and why should I wish I could, when he has undertaken my case. Depend upon it, our hearts are all alike. To know that they are deceitful and desperately wicked, and to look to Jesus for mercy, help, and salvation, are, I think, the greatest attainments we can rise to in this imperfect state.63 — Tony Reinke

ignited and sustained by God. Indwelling sin provides us with marvelous proof of God's sustaining grace. — Tony Reinke

John Newton's final recorded words: My memory is nearly gone, but I remember two things: that I am a great sinner and that Christ is a great Savior. — Tony Reinke

Before You post

*Will this ultimately glorify me or God?
*Will this stir or muffle healthy affections for Christ?
*Will this merely document that I know something that others don't?
*Will this misrepresent me or is it authentic?
*Will this potentially breed jealousy in others?
*Will this fortify unity or stir up unnecessary division?
*Will this build up or tear down?
*Will this heap guilt or relieve it?
*Will this fuel lust for sin or warn against it?
*Will this overpromise and instill false hopes in others? — Tony Reinke

What you complain of in yourself, comprises the best marks of grace I can offer. A sense of unworthiness and weakness, joined with a hope in the Savior, constitutes the character of a Christian in this world. But you want the witness of the Spirit. What do you mean by this? Is it a whisper or a voice from heaven, to encourage you to believe that you may venture to hope that the promises of God are true, that he means what he says, and is able to make his word good? Your eyes are opened, you are weary of sin, you love the way of salvation yourself, and love to point it out to others, you are devoted to God, to his cause and people. It was not so with you once. Either you have somewhere stolen these blessings, or you have received them from the Holy Spirit. — Tony Reinke

Christian growth is never measured by a Christian's satisfaction in himself. — Tony Reinke

A lot of people assume you can think better with a slow diet of books, but that will not be the case for every reader. I prefer inundation. — Tony Reinke

Apart from this ultimate hope, the created world would be a dungeon of despair for God's children. But faith animates our lives with an eschatological anticipation of the presence and glory of Christ. We will not find our full and permanent happiness here. Nor will we find Christian joy automatically, like a daily newspaper at the door. God intends for us to find joy kinetically, in action, as we work out our faith with fear and trembling, as we fight the good fight of faith, as we worship, fellowship, and engage in all the various dynamics of the Christian life together.62 But even in this, our hope of eternal joy sobers our expectations for the joy we can expect to experience in this life. — Tony Reinke

The lesson I have learned is that a failure to cultivate the imagination leads to an unintended neglect of the imaginative literature of Scripture, and this in turn leads to some degree of spiritual atrophy. For Christians, the stories of Revelation are not optional reading. Nor are they child's play. Imaginative literature
the kind of literature that invites us to see in our imaginations what we cannot see with our eyes
is an important part of the Christian's literary diet. It challenges our idols. It challenges what is false and trivial in our lives. — Tony Reinke

What is most decisive is God's Joy Project is not that we fully grasp it, but that our sovereign God fully grasps us. — Tony Reinke

Scripture is the ultimate grid by which we read every book. Scripture is perfect, sufficient, and eternal. All other books, to some degree, are imperfect, deficient, and temporary. That means that when we pick books from the bookstore shelves, we read those imperfect books in light of the perfect Book, the deficient books in light of the sufficient Book, and the temporary books in light of the eternal Book. — Tony Reinke

My heart is like a country but half subdued, where all things are in an unsettled state, and mutinies and insurrections are daily happening. I hope I hate the rebels that disturb the King's peace. I am glad when I can point them out, lay hold of them, and bring them to him for justice. But they have many lurking-holes, and sometimes they come disguised like friends, so that I do not know them, till their works discover them.10 — Tony Reinke

Reading is a discipline, and all disciplines require self-discipline, and self-discipline is the one thing our sinful flesh will resist. — Tony Reinke

Sin is not merely wrong doing; sin is essentially wrong adoring. Sin is the fastening of our hearts on any good, treasure, or security in life that replaces the good, treasure, and security of God. — Tony Reinke

The Christian life is not only about simplicity of dependence and intention, but also about a simplicity of affection. We give up all vain attempts to self-medicate our souls with the broken-cistern pleasures of the world. The simple Christian looks to God alone to supply him with spiritual joys, understanding that there will be times when those joys may be withheld by God for a divinely appointed reason. Yet, because he aims to live for God's glory alone, he looks to God alone for his soul's pleasure (Ps. 86:4). — Tony Reinke

Sin is what makes the things we know we ought to do so difficult and lifeless. — Tony Reinke

We get one chance at this life. We have one body, one mind, and one life to live. Reading provides us with a vicarious experience of others' lives. — Tony Reinke

This is why the Christian life is about Christ. Or to say it more starkly, "to live is Christ" (Phil. 1:21). — Tony Reinke

True faith in Christ unites the soul to Christ, and this unity brings a peace that passes understanding (Phil. 4:7) and a "joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory" (1 Pet. 1:8). Union with Christ teaches us that we are weak in ourselves, but strong in the Lord and in the power of his might (Eph. 6:10).6 Union with Christ connects us to God, binding us to our supreme pleasures.7 — Tony Reinke

Our lives are consolidated on our phones: our calendars, our cameras, our pictures, our work, our news, our weather, our email, our shopping - all of it can be managed with state-of-the-art apps in powerful little devices we carry everywhere. Even the GPS app on my phone, which guided me to a new coffee shop today, possesses thirty thousand times the processing speed of the seventy-pound onboard navigational computer that guided Apollo 11 to the surface of the moon. — Tony Reinke