Deyoung Quotes & Sayings

We won't say no to more craziness until we can say yes to more Jesus. We will keep choosing dinner rolls over the bread of life. We will choose the fanfare of the world over the feet of Jesus. We will choose busyness over blessing. — Kevin DeYoung

Most moms and dads think they are either the best or the worst parents in the world. Both are wrong. — Kevin DeYoung

The happiest and most fulfilled times of my life have all involved a prolonged separation from the Internet. — Kevin DeYoung

Jesus was not just a prophet but the fulfillment of all prophecy. — Kevin DeYoung

We wake up most days not trying to serve, just trying to survive. — Kevin DeYoung

There is a gap between our love for the gospel and our love for godliness. This must change. It's not pietism, legalism, or fundamentalism to take holiness seriously. It's the way of all those who have been called to a holy calling by a holy God. — Kevin DeYoung

Some opponents of the word of God come by their objections honestly, but others have never stopped to search the Scriptures for themselves. They've already decided the Bible is antiscience, antiwoman, and antigay, without bothering to define those terms or investigate the Bible with calm reason and an open mind. — Kevin DeYoung

When we embrace everything the Bible says about itself, then - and only then - will we believe what we should believe about the word of God, feel what we should feel, and do with the word of God what we ought to do. — Kevin DeYoung

At the Lausanne missions gathering in 2010, John Piper made the statement that "we should care about all suffering, especially eternal suffering." He chose the word "care" quite carefully. He didn't want to say we should do something about all suffering, because we can't do something about everything. But we can care. — Kevin DeYoung

The work of the Holy Spirit is to bring glory to Christ by taking what is his - his teaching, the truth about his death and resurrection - and making it known. The Spirit does not work indiscriminately without the revelation of Christ in view. Arguably, the Holy Spirit's most important work is to glorify Christ, and he does not do this apart from shining the spotlight on Christ for the elect to see and savor. — Kevin DeYoung

Apart from our union with Christ every effort to imitate Christ, no matter how noble and inspired at the outset, inevitably leads to legalism and spiritual defeat. But once you understand the doctrine of union with Christ, you see that God doesn't ask us to attain to what we're not. He only calls us to accomplish what already is. The pursuit of holiness is not a quixotic effort to do just what Jesus did. It's the fight to live out the life that has already been made alive in Christ. — Kevin DeYoung

No secondary, man-made text can replace or be allowed to subvert our allegiance to and knowledge of the Bible. — Kevin DeYoung

And we need Christians who don't make others feel guilty (and don't feel guilty themselves) when one of us follows a different passion than another. I read and write a lot. That's what I do well. But that doesn't mean anyone should feel guilty for not reading and writing as much as I do. You have your own gifts and calling. We have to be okay with other Christians doing certain good things better and more often than we do. — Kevin DeYoung

God's grace saves us from ourselves. — Kevin DeYoung

The best-looking Christian is the one growing by the Spirit into the likeness of Christ. — Kevin DeYoung

You cannot be in Christ and be indifferent to the sin in your life. — Kevin DeYoung

We were taught in school, and I was taught at home and in church, that blacks and whites were equal and we should not discriminate based on skin color, even if my school was almost entirely white. — Kevin DeYoung

Sincere biblical repentance is as much a work of grace as not sinning in the first place. — Kevin DeYoung

Busyness kills more Christians than bullets. — Kevin DeYoung

Worldliness is whatever makes sin look normal and righteousness look strange. — Kevin DeYoung

When you share the gospel, you're not calling people to a better way of life, you're proclaiming to them eternal life. — Kevin DeYoung

The biggest deception of our digital age may be the lie that says we can be omni-competent, omni-informed, and omni-present. We cannot be any of these things. We must choose our absence, our inability, and our ignorance - and choose wisely. — Kevin DeYoung

All our sins are offensive to God and require forgiveness. But over and over the Bible teaches that some sins are worse than others. — Kevin DeYoung

It sounds really spiritual to say God is interested in a relationship, not in rules. But it's not biblical. From top to bottom, the Bible is full of commands. They aren't meant to stifle a relationship with God, but to protect it, seal it, and define it. Never forget: first God delivered the Israelites from Egypt, then He gave them the law. God's people were not redeemed by observing the law. But they were redeemed so that they might obey the law. — Kevin DeYoung

We think relevance and relate-ability are the secrets to spiritual success. And yet, in truth, a dying world needs you to be with God more than it needs you to be with it. — Kevin DeYoung

The goal of revelation is not information only, but affection, worship, and obedience. Christ in us will be realized only as we drink deeply of the Bible, which is God's word outside of us. — Kevin DeYoung

Much of the impotence of American churches is tied to a profound ignorance and apathy about justification. Our people live in a fog of guilt. Or just as bad, they think being a better person is all God requires. — Kevin DeYoung

Nowhere do Jesus or the apostles ever treat the Old Testament as human reflections on the divine. It is instead the voice of the Holy Spirit (Acts 4:25; Heb. 3:7) and God's own breath (2 Tim. 3:16). — Kevin DeYoung

There is no more authoritative declaration than what we find in the word of God, no firmer ground to stand on, no "more final" argument that can be spoken after Scripture has spoken. — Kevin DeYoung

Faith is more than getting a theological quiz right. Faith is to know, to assent, to put your trust in, and to cherish what is true. — Kevin DeYoung

Opening our home to others is a wonderful gift and a neglected discipline in the church. — Kevin DeYoung

We have to schedule time to be unscheduled. — Kevin DeYoung

To start the day without prayer is to suggest the devil is feeble, God is irrelevant, and we can handle things on our own. — Kevin DeYoung

On the last day, God will not acquit us because our good works were good enough, but he will look for evidence that our good confession was not phony. It's in this sense that we must be holy. — Kevin DeYoung

The world needs to see Christians burning, not with self-righteous fury at the sliding morals in our country, but with passion for God. — Kevin DeYoung

There is nothing gray about whether a follower of Christ should see 50 Shades of Grey. This is a black and white issue. Don't go. Don't watch it. Don't read it. Don't rent it. — Kevin DeYoung

We walk into the future in God-glorifying confidence, not because the future is known to us but because it is known to God. And that's all we need to know. Worry about the future is not simply a character tic, it is the sin of unbelief, an indication that our hearts are not resting in the promises of God. — Kevin DeYoung

Christ justifies no one whom he does not also sanctify. — Kevin DeYoung

No doubt, some people are quantitatively less busy than others and some much more so, but that doesn't change the shared experience: most everyone I know feels frazzled and overwhelmed most of the time. — Kevin DeYoung

Flattery is saying something nice in order to help yourself. Encouragement is saying something true in order help someone else. — Kevin DeYoung

In the Lord's Prayer, Jesus assumes that asking for forgiveness would be a daily occurrence, as would praying that we might be delivered from evil and led not into temptation. — Kevin DeYoung

No one who truly delights in God's word will be indifferent to the disregarding of it. — Kevin DeYoung

So go marry someone, provided you're equally yoked and you actually like being with each other. Go get a job, provided it's not wicked. Go live somewhere in something with somebody or nobody. But put aside the passivity and the quest for complete fulfillment and the perfectionism and the preoccupation with the future, and for God's sake start making some decisions in your life. Don't wait for the liver-shiver. If you are seeking first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, you will be in God's will, so just go out and do something. — Kevin DeYoung

This, then, can be the only acceptable answer to the question posed at the beginning of this chapter about Jesus's doctrine of Scripture: it is impossible to revere the Scriptures more deeply or affirm them more completely than Jesus did. Jesus submitted his will to the Scriptures, committed his brain to studying the Scriptures, and humbled his heart to obey the Scriptures. — Kevin DeYoung

Any gospel which purports to save people without also transforming them is inviting easy-believism. If you think being a Christian is nothing more than saying a prayer or joining a church, then you've confused real grace with cheap grace. Those who are justified will be sanctified. — Kevin DeYoung

Here's the problem: when every sin is seen as the same, we are less likely to fight any sins at all. Why should I stop sleeping with my girlfriend when there will still be lust in my heart? Why pursue holiness when even one sin in my life means I'm Osama bin Hitler in God's eyes? Again, it seems humble to act as if no sin is worse than another, but we lose the impetus for striving and the ability to hold each other accountable when we tumble down the slip-n-slide of moral equivalence. All of a sudden the elder who battles the temptation to take a second look at the racy section of the Lands End catalog shouldn't dare exercise church discipline ont he young man fornicating with reckless abandon. When we can no longer see the different gradations among sins and sinners and sinful nations, we have not succeeded in respecting our own badness; we've cheapened God's goodness. — Kevin DeYoung

The biblical teaching is consistent and unambiguous: homosexual activity is not God's will for his people. Silence in the face of such clarity is not prudence, and hesitation in light of such frequency is not patience. The Bible says more than enough about homosexual practice for us to say something too. — Kevin DeYoung

The mystery of the Christian life is that Christ expects us to flee sin and the devil, but does not expect us to rid ourselves of either on this side of glory. Repentance is a way of life, and so is the pursuit of godliness. I wish every Christian could be reminded of these two things. — Kevin DeYoung

We are not called to bring a broken planet back to its created glory. But we are to call broken people back to their creator. — Kevin DeYoung

We're not consistent. We're not stable. We don't stick with anything. Most of the time we can't even make decisions. — Kevin DeYoung

The irony is that if we make every imperative into a command to believe the gospel more fully, we turn the gospel into one more thing we have to get right, and faith becomes the one thing we need to be better at. — Kevin DeYoung

Sometimes feeling overwhelmed is part of what it means to be a Christian. You can't bear somebody else's burden unless you are taking something of their load and it's weighing you down a little bit. — Kevin DeYoung

When we are crazy busy, we put our souls at risk. The challenge is not merely to make a few bad habits go away. The challenge is to not let our spiritual lives slip away. — Kevin DeYoung

It's all too easy to turn the fight of faith into sanctification-by-checklist. Take care of a few bad habits, develop a couple good ones, and you're set. But a moral checklist doesn't take into consideration the idols of the hearts. It may not even have the gospel as part of the equation. And inevitably, checklist spirituality is highly selective. So you end up feeling successful at sanctification because you stayed away from drugs, lost weight, served at the soup kitchen, and renounced Styrofoam. But you've ignored gentleness, humility, joy, and sexual purity. — Kevin DeYoung

In the world of perpetual outrage, people cannot see the difference between deflated footballs, a dead lion, and dismembered babies. — Kevin DeYoung

Legalism is a problem in the church, but so is anti-nomianism. Granted, I don't hear anyone saying, 'Let's continue in sin that grace may abound'. That's the worse form of antinomianism. But strictly speaking, antinomianism simply means no-law, and some Christians have very little place for the law in their pursuit of holiness. — Kevin DeYoung

Christian spirituality does not rest on mysticism; it rests in a Mediator. — Kevin DeYoung

To run hard after holiness is another way of running hard after God. — Kevin DeYoung

They've willingly embraced Christian freedom but without an equal pursuit of Christian virtue. Among — Kevin DeYoung

The more my brain was fed, the hungrier it became. — Kevin DeYoung

Sooner could a fish live upon a tree than the wicked in Paradise. — Kevin DeYoung

Don't just ask God for what we want. Let him teach us what we should want. — Kevin DeYoung

God's wrath was not just withdrawn. It was spent. Full atonement can it be? Hallelujah, what a Savior! — Kevin DeYoung

We are busy because we try to do too many things. We do too many things because we say yes to too many people. We say yes to all these people because we want them to like us and we fear their disapproval. — Kevin DeYoung

Fourth, Jesus himself reinforces the normativity of the Genesis account. — Kevin DeYoung

Third, only two persons of the opposite sex can fulfill the procreative purposes of marriage. — Kevin DeYoung

My life often feels like a whirling dervish of kids, writing, speaking, and pastoral ministry. — Kevin DeYoung

Plain horse sense ought to tell us that anything that makes no change in the man who professes it makes no difference to God either, and it is an easily observable fact that for countless numbers of persons the change from no-faith to faith makes no actual difference in the life. — Kevin DeYoung

No one can hate you in this life more than Jesus was hated. — Kevin DeYoung

The only chains God wants us to wear are the chains of righteousness
not the chains of hopeless subjectivism, not the shackles of risk-free living, not the fetters of horoscope decision making
just the chains befitting a bond servant of Christ Jesus. Die to self. Live for Christ. And then do what you want, and go where you want, for God's glory. — Kevin DeYoung

The secret of the gospel is that we actually do more when we hear less about all we need to do for God and hear more about all that God has already done for us. — Kevin DeYoung

reconciliation is radical because it is biblical. — Curtiss Paul DeYoung

God's will for your life is not very complicated. Obviously, living a Christlike life is hard work, and what following Jesus entails is not clear in every situation. But as an overarching principle, the will of God for your life is pretty straightforward: Be holy like Jesus, by the power of the Spirit, for the glory of God. — Kevin DeYoung

It is our confidence in the sovereign grace of God that gives us any hope of success in missions. — Kevin DeYoung

Your tolerance is not love. It is unfaithfulness. — Kevin DeYoung

I'm pretty sure most of us would be more
fulfilled if we didn't fixate on fulfillment
quite so much. — Kevin DeYoung

Some Christians need encouragement to think before they act. Others need encouragement to act after they think. — Kevin DeYoung

One of the most resilient and cherished myths of parenting is that parenting creates the child. — Kevin DeYoung

If you want to know God as your Father, you need to know Jesus Christ as your Savior. — Kevin DeYoung

As Christians living in changing times, we must keep three things open: our heads, our hearts, and our Bibles. — Kevin DeYoung

The one indispensable requirement for producing godly, mature Christians is godly, mature Christians. — Kevin DeYoung

God tends to do his best work when the odds appear stacked against him. — Kevin DeYoung

The Heidelberg Catechism is like a refreshing bath with cool gospel water. — Kevin DeYoung

There is no sin so prevalent, so insidious, and so deep as the sin of fearing people more than we fear God. — Kevin DeYoung

The unity of Scripture also means we should be rid, once and for all, of this "red letter" nonsense, as if the words of Jesus are the really important verses in Scripture and carry more authority and are somehow more directly divine than other verses. An evangelical understanding of inspiration does not allow us to prize instructions in the gospel more than instructions elsewhere in Scripture. If we read about homosexuality from the pen of Paul in Romans, it has no less weight or relevance than if we read it from the lips of Jesus in Matthew. All Scripture is breathed out by God, not just the parts spoken by Jesus. — Kevin DeYoung

We do not truly know what love is unless we know Christ. — Kevin DeYoung

At the heart of the Protestant faith is the conviction that there is nothing we contribute to our salvation but our sin, no merit we bring but Christ's, and nothing necessary for justification except faith alone. — Kevin DeYoung

Growing up in Michigan, I can't think of anything so explicitly communicated to me in my whole education experience as the vileness of in-your-face racism. — Kevin DeYoung

As the culture war rages on, Lord give us wisdom to see the difference between defending our rights and protesting our slights. — Kevin DeYoung

They took a bite from the forbidden fruit, and the fruit bit back. — Kevin DeYoung

The next time someone tells you, "The Church is full of a bunch of hypocrites." You can respond, "You don't even know the half of it." — Kevin DeYoung

Stewarding my time is not about selfishly pursuing only the things I like to do. It's about effectively serving others in the ways I'm best able to serve and in the ways I am most uniquely called to serve. — Kevin DeYoung

God did not send a concept, an idea, or a virtue. He sent his Son. Follow the God of love, not love as your god. — Kevin DeYoung

The world' is not another way of saying 'the people around us'. The world is everything that opposes the will of God. To put it another way, worldliness is whatever makes sin look normal, and righteousness look strange. In every society there is a principle of Babylon that makes war agains the children of God. — Kevin DeYoung

For Jesus, Scripture is powerful, decisive, and authoritative because it is nothing less than the voice of God. — Kevin DeYoung

Battling busyness is a community response. — Kevin DeYoung

The reason for your entire salvation, the design behind your deliverance, the purpose for which God chose you in the first place is holiness. — Kevin DeYoung

Leviticus 18 doesn't tell us everything we need to know about sex, but it gives us the basic rules: incest is bad (vv. 6-27); taking a rival wife is bad (v 18) ... adultery is bad (v 20); killing our children is bad (v 21); homosexuality activity is bad (v 22); and bestiality is bad (v 23). — Kevin DeYoung

Holiness is the sum of a million little things - the avoidance of little evils and little foibles, the setting aside of little bits of worldliness and little acts of compromise, the putting to death of little inconsistencies and little indiscretions, the attention to little duties and little dealings, the hard work of little self-denials and little self-restraints, the cultivation of little benevolences and little forbearances. — Kevin DeYoung

Busyness is like sin: kill it, or it will be killing you. — Kevin DeYoung