Ordinary Michael Horton Quotes & Sayings

Christians must return to the great story that has its fulfillment in life after death, so we may live and die well in the light of our extraordinary hope that enables us to embrace the ordinary lives God gives us here and now. — Michael Horton

I've become my own solution. I believe in me now. — Cristina Isabel

This has been the vicious cycle of evangelical revivalism ever since: a pendulum swinging between enthusiasm and disillusionment rather than steady maturity in Christ through participation in the ordinary life of the covenant community. The regular preaching of Christ from all of the Scriptures, baptism, the Supper, the prayers of confession and praise, and all of the other aspects of ordinary Christian fellowship are seen as too ordinary. — Michael S. Horton

Many Christians wonder if it is good for children to have them in the regular service. After all, they cannot understand what is going on. But imagine saying that you're not going to have toddlers sit at the table for meals with the family because they do not understand the rituals or manners. Or keeping infants isolated in a nursery with nothing but mobiles and squeaky toys because they cannot understand the dialogue of the rest of the family around them. We know, instinctively, that it's important for our children to acquire language and the ordinary rituals of their family environment in order to become mature. — Michael S. Horton

I can teach you to jump up in five seconds-it takes years to learn how to land properly. — David Lee Roth

We want big results-sooner rather than later. And we've forgotten that God showers his extraordinary gifts through ordinary means of grace, loves us through ordinary fellow image bearers, and sends us into the world to love and serve others in ordinary callings. Michael Horton, Ordinary, 14 — Michael S. Horton

Being "ordinary" means that we reject the idolatry of pursuing excellence for selfish reasons. We aren't digging wells in Africa to prove our worth or value. We aren't serving in the soup kitchen or engaging in spiritual disciplines because we long to be unique, radical, and different. When we do these things for selfish reasons, God becomes a tool for winning our lifetime achievement award. Our neighbors become instruments in the crafting of our sense of meaning, impact, and identity. What we do for God is really for ourselves. — Michael S. Horton

American Christianity is a story of perpetual upheavals in churches and individual lives. Starting with the extraordinary conversion experience, our lives are motivated by a constant expectation for the Next Big Thing. We're growing bored with the ordinary means of God's grace, attending church week in and week out. Doctrines and disciplines that have shaped faithful Christian witness in the past are often marginalized or substituted with newer fashions or methods. The new and improved may dazzle us for a moment, but soon they have become "so last year". Michael Horton, Ordinary, 16 — Michael S. Horton

Ordinary" has to be one of the loneliest words in our vocabulary today. Who wants a bumper sticker that announces to the neighborhood, "My child is an ordinary student at Bubbling Brook Elementary"? Who wants to be that ordinary person who lives in an ordinary town, is a member of an ordinary church, and has ordinary friends and works an ordinary job? Our life has to count! We have to leave our mark, have a legacy, and make a difference. And all of this should be something that can be managed, measured, and maintained. We have to live up to our Facebook profile. It's one of the newer versions of salvation by works. — Michael S. Horton

I've been able to dine with presidents, with leaders of corporations, traveled for 14 years with (financier and philanthropist) Michael Milken, who has taught me so much about life. Hanging around with them, it's nothing I could have believed in grade school. I could be with all of them? Milton Berle, Don Rickles, Dean Martin ... this former third-string pitcher from the Norristown High baseball team and the son of an Italian immigrant? I really am in awe when I think that has happened to me. What a life. — Tommy Lasorda

It's true that old actors don't die, their parts get smaller. You're less likely to get the part, many parts, if you're playing people your age as opposed to people who are younger. There are fewer parts around. — Albert Finney

Patient dedication to the ordinary and often tedious disciplines of corporate and family worship, teaching, prayer, modeling, and mentoring have been eroded by successive waves of enthusiasm. — Michael S. Horton

It is thought that all children can see spirits, but once they get to a certain age they lose the gift. — Wesley Fox

CNN will not be showing up at a church that is simply trusting God to do extraordinary things through his ordinary means of grace delivered by ordinary servants. But God will. Week after week. These means of grace and the ordinary fellowship of the saints that nurtures and guides us throughout our life may seem frail, but they are jars that carry a rich treasure: Christ with all of his saving benefits. — Michael S. Horton

So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God (1 Cor 10:31). Eating and drinking are fairly common aspects of daily life, and yet even ordinary meals become significant when they draw our attention once again to glorifying and enjoying the God who provides them. — Michael S. Horton

As we are brought into God's extraordinary kingdom through ordinary means, we are remade, no longer fashioned as competitors for commodities in a world of scarce resources, but as co-sharers with Christ in the circulation of gifts that flows outward from its source without running out. — Michael Horton

For the need to think can never be stilled by allegedly definite insights of "wise men"; it can be satisfied only through thinking, and the thoughts I had yesterday will satisfy this need today only to the extent that I want and am able to think them anew. — Hannah Arendt

Generalisations should be ignored — Robert Chalmers

The real problem is that our values are changing and the new ones are wearing us out. But they're also keeping us from forming genuine, long-term, and meaningful commitments that actually contribute to the lives of others. Over time, the hype of living a new life, taking up a radical calling, and changing the world can creep into every area of our life. And it can make us tired, depressed, and mean. Michael Horton, Ordinary, 13-14 — Michael S. Horton

Facing another day, with ordinary callings to ordinary people all around us is much more difficult than chasing my own dreams that I have envisioned for the grand story of my life. — Michael S. Horton

Whenever a new generation announces its radical and totally unprecedented culture shift, there is an evangelical movement that pressures churches to get on board if they want to adapt and survive the next wave. It's doubtful that cultures actually work like that. But it is especially disruptive for the ordinary growth of believers in a covenant of grace that extends to every culture and "to a thousand generations." There is change, to be sure, but what kind of change, to what end, and through what means? For that, Scripture rather than culture must provide the ultimate answer. — Michael S. Horton

We've forgotten that God showers his extraordinary gifts through ordinary means of grace, loves us through ordinary fellow image bearers, and sends us out into the world to love and serve others in ordinary callings. — Michael S. Horton

The Next Big Thing is Christ's return. Until then, we live in hope that changes our ordinary lives here and now. — Michael S. Horton

If you want to be happy, try only to please God, not people. — Leo Tolstoy

But I've come to the point where I'm not sure anymore just what God counts as radical. And I suspect that for me, getting up and doing the dishes when I'm short on sleep and patience is far more costly and necessitates more of a revolution in my heart than some of the more outwardly risky ways I've lived in the past. And so this is what I need now: the courage to face an ordinary day - an afternoon with a colicky baby where I'm probably going to snap at my two-year old and get annoyed with my noisy neighbor - without despair, the bravery it takes to believe that a small life is still a meaningful life, and the grace to know that even when I've done nothing that is powerful or bold or even interesting that the Lord notices me and is fond of me and that that is enough. — Michael S. Horton

In many ways, it's more fun to be part of movements than churches. We can express our own individuality, pick our favorite leaders, and be swept off our feet at conferences. We can be anonymous. Although encouraged by like-minded believers, we are not bound up with them so that we should feel compelled to bear their burdens or suffer their rebukes. Yet this movement mentality keeps us restless and makes ordinary life in and submission to an actual church seem intolerably confining. And terribly ordinary. — Michael S. Horton

It's a quiet thing when your heart breaks. I thought it would be loud, ... I thought it would drown everything else out. But it happened like a whisper. A small, clean split. It broke in a second, and the pain was little more than a pinprick. It's the echo that kills you ... that tiny little sound kept bouncing around the cavern of my ribs, getting louder and louder. It multiplied until I heard a hundred hearts breaking, a thousand, more. All of them mine. — Cora Carmack

Because of Christ alone, embraced through faith alone, for the glory of God and the good of our neighbors alone, on the basis of God's Word alone - and nothing more. This is the slogan of the ordinary Christian (Luke 10:27). — Michael S. Horton

Contentment is the virtue that contrasts with restlessness, ambition, avarice. It means realizing, once again, that we are not our own - as pastors or parishioners, parents or children, employers or employees. It is the Lord's to give and to take away. He is building his church. It is his ministry that is saving and building up his body. Even our common callings in the world are not really our own, but they are God's work of supplying others - including ourselves - with what the whole society needs. There is a lot of work to be done, but it is his work that he is doing through us in daily and mostly ordinary ways. — Michael S. Horton