Simply Christian Quotes & Sayings

Objections to Christianity ... are phrased in words, but that does not mean that they are really a matter of language and analysis and argument. Words are tokens of the will. If something stronger than language were available then we would use it. But by the same token, words in defense of Christianity miss the mark as well: they are a translation into the dispassionate language of argument of something that resides far deeper in the caverns of volition, of commitment. Perhaps this is why Saint Francis, so the story goes, instructed his followers to "preach the Gospel always, using words if necessary." It is not simply and straightforwardly wrong to make arguments in the defense of the Christian faith, but it is a relatively superficial activity: it fails to address the core issues. — Alan Jacobs

Human imagination is not simply our means of reaching out to God but God's means of manifesting himself to us. — Christian Wiman

Christianity sees plants and flowers as created by God to show forth and share with humans the divine goodness, beauty and truth - the purpose of all Creation. In this flowers may be enjoyed simply and directly in themselves as showing forth God's goodness and beauty, or, more fully, as archetypes, signatures, symbols, and bearers of legends, mirroring the revealed articles of Christian faith - thereby serving as means for their teaching, recollection, contemplation and celebration. — John Stokes

This historic Christian doctrine of the divinity of Christ does not simply mean that Jesus is like God.
It is far more radical than that. It means that God is like Jesus. — D. Elton Trueblood

At root, evangelical anti-intellectualism is both a scandal and a sin. It is a scandal in the sense of being an offense and a stumbling block that needlessly hinders serious people from considering the Christian faith and coming to Christ. It is a sin because it is a refusal, contrary to Jesus' two great commandments, to love the Lord our God with our minds. Anti-intellectualism is quite simply a sin. Evangelicals must address it as such, beyond all excuses, evasions, or rationalizations of false piety. — Os Guinness

In that case" Tessa said, feeling hot blood rise to her face,"I think I would prefer it if you called me by my Christian name, as you do with Miss Lovelace.
Will look at her, slow and hard, then smiled. His blue eyes lit when he smiled. "Then you must do the same for me," he said. "Tessa."
She had never thought about her name much before, but when he said it, it was as if she were hearing if for the first time-the hard T, the caress of the double S, the way it seemed to end on a breath. Her own breath was very short when he said, softly, "Will."
"Yes?" Amusement glittered his eyes.
With a sort of horror Tessa realized that she had simply said his name for the sake of saying it; she hadn't actually had a question. — Cassandra Clare

We have a lowest-common-denominator Christianity being taught in so many denominations that has produced a people who simply do not know some of the most basic Christian truths. — Albert Mohler

I shouldn't need to remind you that it was words that created the universe and The Word that now holds it together. While your man was simply reading one little book, something not unlike Genesis was stirring in his skull, and you didn't think to stop it? — Geoffrey Wood

God lures us into marriage through love and sex and loneliness, or simply the fact that someone finally paid attention - all those reasons that you got married in the first place. It doesn't really matter, he'll do whatever it takes. He lures us into marriage and then he uses it to transform us. — John Eldredge

You see, the goal of the Christian life is not simply to get us into heaven, but to get heaven into us! — Richard J. Foster

Neither the Nazis nor the Communists, he affirms, acted because of their atheism. They were simply keen to kill a great many people. Atheism had nothing to do with it. They might well have been Christian Scientists. — David Berlinski

Many in our world today want us to believe that we can except Christ simply as a Savior from sin, but not the Lord of our lives. They teach essentially that a person can perform an act of believing on Christ once, and after this, they can fall away even into total unbelief and yet still supposedly be "saved". Christ does not call men in this way. Christ does not save men in this way. The true Christian is the one continually coming, always believing in Christ. Real Christian faith is an ongoing faith, not a one-time act. If one wishes to be eternally satiated, one meal is not enough. If we wish to feast on the bread of heaven, we must do so all our lives. We will never hunger or thirst if we are always coming and always believing in Christ. He's our sufficiency. Christ the bread from heaven. We must feed on all of Christ, not just the parts we happen to like. Christ is not the Savior of anyone unless He is their Lord as well. — James R. White

As a rule, Americans are big on that word "choice" and some souls can be captured simply by dangling before the creature a continual, lifelong supply of things from which to choose. — Geoffrey Wood

Can Christian preaching expect modern man to accept the mythical view of the world as true? To do so would be both senseless and impossible. It would be senseless, because there is nothing specifically Christian in the mythical view of the world as such. It is simply the cosmology of a pre-scientific age. — Rudolf Karl Bultmann

What we call "the laws of nature" merely reflect the normal way in which God sustains or governs the natural world. Perhaps the most wicked concept that has captured the minds of modern people is the belief that the universe operates by chance. That is the nadir of foolishness. Elsewhere, I have written more extensively on the scientific impossibility of assigning power to chance, because chance is simply a word that describes mathematical possibilities.* Chance is not a thing. It has no power. It cannot do anything, and therefore it cannot influence anything, yet some have taken the word chance, which has no power, and diabolically used it as a replacement for the concept of God. But the truth, as the Bible makes clear, is that nothing happens by chance and that all things are under the sovereign government of God, which is exceedingly comforting to the Christian who understands it. — R.C. Sproul

God, the one true benefactor of the world, has done a work for the world in Jesus Christ, loving it, saving it, and calling it to communion with God. As Robert Taft has put it, in the deepest sense, the one true liturgy is God's work of salvation in Jesus Christ. In the Eucharist, the Christian community joins in that work made present to it again and participates in God's love enacted, made real in the world. The church, in fact, both commits to working together in the great benefaction of God's gift of love through Christ, and is empowered to be part of it. In this way, Christian faith is renewed again and again in the Eucharist, not simply as a set of ideas to be held, but a form of life to be lived. — James W. Farwell

Vanity in an old man is charming. It is a proof of an open, nature. Eighty winters have not frozen him up, or taught him concealments. In a young person it is simply allowable; we do not expect him to be above it. — Christian Nestell Bovee

Part of the scandal of American Christianity is that statistically the U.S. is the most Christian country in the world, and yet as a country we have the greatest income inequality in the world. And as a country we are uncritically committed, not simply to being the most powerful nation in the world militarily, but to being as militarily powerful as the rest of the world combined.
We Christians live in a tradition that is passionate about issues of economic justice and peace and yet at least half of American Christians, probably even more, think it's really important that we be as powerful as the rest of the world put together. — Marcus J. Borg

The Christian who is not diligently involved in a serious study of Scripture is simply inadequate as a disciple of Christ. To be an adequate Christian and competent in the things of God we must do more than attend "sharing sessions" and "bless me parties." We cannot learn competency by osmosis. Biblically illiterate Christians are not only inadequate but unequipped. In fact, they are inadequate because they are not equipped. — R.C. Sproul

I am not a Bible-believing Christian in the fullest sense simply by believing the right doctrines, but as I live in practice in this supernatural world. — Francis A. Schaeffer

We look upon prayer simply as a means of getting things for ourselves, but the biblical purpose of prayer is that we may get to know God Himself. — Oswald Chambers

They reminded me that Christianity isn't meant to simply be believed; it's meant to be lived, shared, eaten, spoken, and enacted in the presence of other people. They reminded me that, try as I may, I can't be a Christian on my own. I need a community. I need the church. — Rachel Held Evans

Christians are simply pilgrims who acknowledge their lostness and their desire for help in finding the way. — Philip Yancey

Some take pains to be biblical, but many [Christian financial teachers, writers, investment counselors, and seminar leaders] simply parrot their secular colleagues. Other than beginning and ending with prayer, mentioning Christ, and sprinkling in some Bible verses, there's no fundamental difference. They reinforce people's materialist attitudes and lifestyles. They suggest a variety of profitable plans in which people can spend or stockpile the bulk of their resources. In short, to borrow a term from Jesus, some Christian financial experts are helping people to be the most successful 'rich fools' they can be. — Randy Alcorn

The powerful changes that happen in the life of a disciple never come from the disciple working hard at doing anything. They come from arriving at a place where Jesus is everything, and we are simply overwhelmed with the gift. Sometimes it seems as if God loves us too much. His love goes far beyond our ability to stop being moral, religious, obedient, and victorious, and we just collapse in his arms.
Out of the gospel that Jesus is the only Mediator between God and humanity comes a Christian life that looks like Jesus, a life Jesus would recognize. It's a life that looks like Jesus, because Jesus does everything, and all we do is accept his gift. And to accept his gift, we have to give up trying to be Jesus.
Out of that discovery comes a Christian life that is free from the tyranny of unnecessary adjectives - even my preferred modified, Jesus-shaped - and simply follows after the One who loves us beyond words or repayment. — Michael Spencer

The reason the Christians have murdered on such a vast scale and killed anyone and everyone in their way is purely and simply greed. — Bartolome De Las Casas

We shouldn't expect popularity. What should we expect? Paul gave us the list: affliction, crushing, persecution, being knocked flat, and always carrying about in the body the dying of Jesus. That doesn't describe some mystical asceticism; it simply means that He was always on the brink of death, always ready to die, always being pursued by some who were plotting death. He knew that every day He awakened could be the day He died. Death was working in Him as a daily experience, a constant anticipation. In His mind, He had to live daily through His own funeral because He could die any time. Yet this great truth never changed: "I believed and therefore I spoke." That's it, Christian. You believe, and you speak. — John F. MacArthur Jr.

Here is a Christian so committed to the well-being of other Christians, especially new Christians, that he is simply burning up inside to be with them, to help them, to nurture them, to feed them, to stabilize them, to establish an adequate foundation for them. Small wonder, then, that he devotes himself to praying for them when he finds he cannot visit them personally.4 — Alexander Strauch

Our poor world aspires simply to point out where Christians have gone wrong, and that is pretty much where it goes wrong. It is as though many of us, when of the world, are actually all the more judgmental: for we are stuck on a bad Christian while the Christian is pinned to a good Christ. — Criss Jami

The fact is that the more we take flight upward [to God], the more our words are confined to the ideas we are capable of forming; so that now as we plunge into that darkness which is beyond intellect, we shall find ourselves not simply running short of words but actually speechless and unknowing. — Pope Dionysius

I don't know what falling in love for me is. The concept of romantic love arose in the Middle Ages. Now remember, the Arabs don't even have a word for love - that is, a word for love apart from physical attraction or sex. And this separation of love and sex is a western concept, a Christian concept. As to what falling in love means, I'm uncertain. Love, well, it means simply physical attraction and liking a person at the same time. — William S. Burroughs

You may ask, why not simply call this literature Christian? Unfortunately, the word Christian is no longer reliable. It has come to mean anyone with a golden heart. And a golden heart would be a positive interference in the writing of fiction. — Flannery O'Connor

There is nothing you can do that will make God stop loving you. You could try, but you simply can't do it - because his love for you is based upon his character and not on anything you do or say or feel. — Rick Warren

So, Nietzsche said, "Life is meaningless, but have courage anyway." Jesus also called His people to be courageous in the face of difficulty, adversity, and hostility, but He did not call them to a groundless courage. As we know, Jesus told His disciples, "Take heart" (John 16:33), or, as some translations put it, "Be of good cheer." However, He did not simply tell them to take heart for the sake of taking heart. He gave them a reason why they ought to have a sense of confidence and assurance for the Christian life. He said, "Take heart; I have overcome the world. — R.C. Sproul

Segmented killing and hatred will only stop when we enlarge our personal, national, and international circles of concern to include all six billion people on this planet: not just the white ones, Christian ones, American ones, female ones, or any ones. Simply put: every one. — Cindy Sheehan

I myself am a Buddhist, not a Christian. But I cannot help but think that if Christ ran a public establishment, it would be open to all, and He would be the last to refuse service to anyone. It is, simply put, the most un-Christian of notions. — George Takei

For the Christian, peace is not simply the absence of conflict, or any other artificial state the world has to offer. Rather it is the deep, abiding peace only Jesus Christ brings to the heart. — Billy Graham

He rejected traditional religious beliefs (Jewish, Christian, and Islamic) not on the basis of any reasoned argument, nor even with an expression of emotional antipathy, for he loved to use religious expressions and metaphors, but simply by saying that they are naive. — Walter J. Moore

But I believe the greatest enemy of the Bible is the so-called Christian who simply ignores the Bible or disregards it. — Adrian Rogers

We have simply not come to grips with the fact that it isn't hard to live the Christian life. It's impossible! Only Christ can live it. And that's why our only hope is to learn that Jesus Christ did not come just to get men out of hell and into heaven; He came to get Himself out of heaven and into men! — Bob George

Good Christian liturgy is friendship in action, love taking thought, the covenant relationship between God and his people not simply discovered and celebrated like the sudden meeting of friends, exciting and worthwhile though that is, but thought through and relished, planned and prepared
an ultimately better way for the relationship to grow and at the same time a way of demonstrating what the relationship is all about. — N. T. Wright

While this may simply be another way of saying that spirituality is Christian maturity, it tries to delineate more openly the factors of Spirit-control over a period of time. — Charles C. Ryrie

A fundamental principle of Catholic theology is that grace perfects nature rather than setting it aside; and that means that the Christian life is not a two-layer cake, the supernatural simply added on to the natural. It transforms the natural but by perfecting it, not by demeaning it. — Peter Kreeft

Your heart of devotion and obedience is not in vain. Who knows but God how many people have come near to you and were forever changed simply by the fragrance of his love in you? Who knows but God if he will put you before kings and leaders to speak the truth, redirecting the future of nations? Who knows when that small crack in the dam of our enemy's plans will give way and God's glory will truly cover the earth as the sea? Do not become distracted or discouraged by the death around you. Death must always give way when the life of Christ enters the picture. — Amy Layne Litzelman

To call someone a Christian simply because he does some Christian-y things is giving false comfort to the unsaved. — Francis Chan

A Christian who is willing to take up arms against another Christian is a Christian who has traded in his membership in the post-Babel communion of saints for membership in a nation governed by refurbished stoicheic values. They have traded in their loyalty to the temple of the Spirit for loyalty to the flesh. Christians who make war against other Christians are Galatians, bewitched by the lure of patriotism, which is simply the lure of flesh. They are no longer in the ranks of the Spirit. — Peter Leithart

The spiritual efficacy of all encounters is determined by the amount of personal ego that is in play. If two people meet and disagree fiercely about theological matters but agree, silently or otherwise, that God's love creates and sustains human love, and that whatever else may be said of God is subsidiary to this truth, then even out of what seems great friction there may emerge a peace that - though it may not end the dispute, though neither party may be "convinced" of the other's position - nevertheless enters and nourishes one's notion of, and relationship with, God. Without this radical openness, all arguments about God are not simply pointless but pernicious, for each person is in thrall to some lesser conception of ultimate truth and asserts not love but a lesson, not God but himself. — Christian Wiman

No effort should be made to destroy those habits or qualities that we may not desire. Whatever we think about deeply or intensely, the subconscious will take up and develop further. Therefore, if we think about our failings, shortcomings or bad habits, the subconscious will take them up and give them more life and activity than they ever had before. If there is anything in our nature therefore that we wish to change, we should simply proceed to build up what we want and forget completely what we wish to eliminate. When the good develops the bad disappears. When the greater is built up, the lesser will either be removed or completely transformed and combined with the greater. — Christian D. Larson

In addition to the interpretive frameworks of the mythological (classical-Greek), the theological (Medieval-Christian), and the existential (modern-European), would it be possible to shift our framework to something we can only call cosmological? Could such a cosmological view be understood not simply as the view from inter-stellar space, but as the view of the world-without-us, the Planetary view? — Eugene Thacker

There was to be nothing special about it, nothing that savored of a religious Order, no special rule, no distinctive habit. She, and those who joined her, would simply be poor
there was no choice on that score, for they were that already
but they would embrace their poverty, and the life of the proletariat in all its misery and insecurity and dead, drab monotony. They would live and work in the slums, lose themselves, in the huge anonymous mass of the forgotten and the derelict, for the only purpose of living the complete, integral Christian life in that environment
loving those around them, sacrificing themselves for those around them, and spreading the Gospel and the truth of Christ most of all by being saints, by living in union with Him, by being full of His Holy Ghost, His charity. — Thomas Merton

In 56 A.D. [the apostle] Paul wrote that over 500 people had seen the risen Jesus and that most of them were still alive (1 Corinthians 15:6ff.). It passes the bounds of credibility that the early Christians could have manufactured such a tale and then preached it among those who might easily have refuted it simply by producing the body of Jesus. — John Warwick Montgomery

That was the only reason I let her stay extra time at the park the next day. We were not waiting for anyone in particular to show up or hoping for anyone in particular to show up. I mean, she's a dog. She didn't care if she was wrestling a stick from another mutt or a Pug or a Dachshund or whatever. Neither of us cared a bit who was or was not there. I was simply letting her make up for the time she missed the previous day. — Amanda Hamm

The hidden child wants to be able to participate and to co-create in art, rather than being simply an admiring viewer. — Christian Morgenstern

I pray we ... come to this darkness so far above light! If only we lacked sight and knowledge so as to see, so as to know, unseeing and unknowing, that which lies beyond all vision and knowledge. For this would be really to see and to know: to praise the Transcendent One in a transcending way ... We would be like sculptors who set out to carve a statue. They remove every obstacle to the pure view of the hidden image, and simply by the act of clearing aside they show up the beauty which is hidden. — Pope Dionysius

Monastic vows rest on the false assumption that there is a special calling, a vocation, to which superior Christians are invited to observe the counsels of perfection while ordinary Christians fulfill only the commands; but there simply is no special religious vocation since the call of God comes to each at the common tasks. — Martin Luther

I realized that conventional views of Christian faith that I'd heard when I was growing up were simply made up - and I realized that many parts of the story of the early Christian movement had been left out. — Elaine Pagels

What has actually to be said about the Cause of everything is this. Since it is the Cause of all beings, we should posit and ascribe to it all the affirmations we make in regard to beings, and, more appropriately, we should negate all these affirmations, since It surpasses all being. Now we should not conclude that the negations are simply the opposites of the affirmations, but rather that the cause of all is considerably prior to this, beyond privations, beyond every denial, beyond every assertion. — Pope Dionysius

Numerous Christians do not know how to glorify God in their eating and drinking. They do not eat and drink simply to keep their body fit for the Lord's use but indulge to satisfy their personal desires. We should understand that the body is for the Lord and not for ourselves; hence we should refrain from using it for our pleasure. Food ought not hinder our fellowship with God since it is to be taken purely to preserve the body in health. — Watchman Nee

We have raised the bar so high on how church is done that few believe they could ever do it themselves. The dark side of this endeavor is that we have lowered the bar of what is means to be a Christian, such that simply showing up to the weekly one-hour event with some regularity and a checkbook is all it takes. — Neil Cole

What makes art Christian art? Is it simply Christian artists painting biblical subjects like Jeremiah? Or, by attaching a halo, does that suddenly make something Christian art? Must the artist's subject be religious to be Christian? I don't think so. There is a certain sense in which art is its own justification. If art is good art, if it is true art, if it is beautiful art, then it is bearing witness to the Author of the good, the true, and the beautiful — R.C. Sproul

What the media wants and what the media demands of Christians is very simply this: your silence. — Dan Quayle

I think it's offensive to equate evangelical Christians, Catholics, others that view marriage as between a man and a woman, as being racist. We're not racist. We love our fellow man, we think we're all equal under God's eyes, we don't believe we should change the definition of marriage simply because of opinion polls or because of a court that quite frankly isn't looking at the constitution. — Bobby Jindal

Perfection ... is clearly not achieved simply by being naked, by the lack of wealth or by the rejection of honors, unless there is also that love whose ingredients the apostle described (cf. I Cor. 13) and which is to be found solely in purity of heart. Not to be jealous, not to be puffed up, not to act heedlessly, not to seek what does not belong to one, not to rejoice over some injustice, not to plan evil - what is this and its like if not the continuous offering to God of the heart that is perfect and truly pure, a heart kept free of all disturbance? — John Cassian

In the upshot there is only one answer for the preacher who wonders whether he is worthy to preach the sermon he has composed or for the writer who wonders whether he is worthy to write the religious book he is working on. The answer is: Of course not. To ask yourself: Am I worthy to perform this Christian task? is really the peak of pride and presumption. For the very question carries the implication that we spend most of our time doing things we are worthy to do. We simply do not have that kind of worth. — Harry Blamires

The religion I know most about, which is the Christian one, would simply say that it's not really for one man or woman to know fully and to understand the nature of our brief human existence. — Sebastian Faulks

Christians and Jews hold in common one theological basis for hospitality: Creation. Creation is the ultimate expression of God's hospitality to His creatures. In the words of on rabbi, everything God created is a "manifestation of His kindness. [The] world is one big hospitality inn." As Church historian Amy Oden has put it, "God offers hospitality to all humanity ... by establishing a home.. for all." To invite people into our homes is to respond with gratitude to the God who made a home for us.
In the Christian doctrine of the Trinity, we find another resource for hospitality. The trinity shows God in relationships with Himself. our Three-in-one God has welcomed us into Himself and invited us to participate in divine life. And so the invitation that we as Christians extend to one another is not simply an invitation into our homes or to our tables; what we ask of other people it that hey enter into our lives. — Lauren F. Winner

I support, defend, and admire prostitutes, gay or straight. They do important and necessary work, whether moralists of the Left and Right like it or not. Feminists who think they can abolish the sex trade are in a state of massive delusion. Only a ruthless, fascist regime of vast scale could eradicate the rogue sex impulse that is indistinguishable from the life force. Simply in the Western world, pagan sexuality has survived 2000 years of Judaeo-Christian persecution and is hardly going to be defeated by a few feminists whacking at it with their brooms. — Camille Paglia

We simply can't trust God's power fully until we experience it in the midst of our crisis. — David Wilkerson

Julian recognized that the strength of the orthodox Church rested to a great extent on the imperial discrimination in its favour. According to Ammianus, he tried to atomize the Church by ending the system:
'He ordered the priests of the different Christian sects, and their supporters to be admitted to the palace, and politely expressed his wish that, their quarrels being over, each might follow his own beliefs without hindrance or fear. He thought that freedom to argue their beliefs would simply deepen their differences, so that he would never be faced by a united common people. He found from experience that no wild beasts are as hostile to men, as Christians are to each other.' — Paul Johnson

The content of worship comes from the Bible, the goal of worship is to give praise to God, and the basis for worship is the saving work of Jesus Christ. Put more simply, true Christian worship is Word-communicat ing, God-glorifying, and Christ-confessi ng. — Philip Graham Ryken

The writers of Luke and Matthew, for instance, in seeking to make the life of Jesus conform to Old Testament prophecy, insist that Mary conceived as a virgin (Greek parthenos), harking to the Greek rendering of Isaiah 7:14. Unfortunately for fanciers of Mary's virginity, the Hebrew word alma (for which parthenos is an erroneous translation) simply means "young woman," without any implication of virginity. It seems all but certain that the Christian dogma of the virgin birth, and much of the church's resulting anxiety about sex, was the — Sam Harris

Our churches are filled with Christians who are idling in intellectual neutral. As Christians, their minds are going to waste. One result of this is an immature, superficial faith. People who simply ride the roller coaster of emotional experience are cheating themselves out of a deeper and richer Christian faith by neglecting the intellectual side of that faith. — William Lane Craig

The Christian faith, simply stated, reminds us that our fundamental problem is not moral; rather, our fundamental problem is spiritual. It is not just that we are immoral, but that a moral life alone cannot bridge what separates us from God. Herein lies the cardinal difference between the moralizing religions and Jesus' offer to us. Jesus does not offer to make bad people good but to make dead people alive. — Ravi Zacharias

Here's the real secret: you can fulfill the commands of the Bible better by falling in love with God than by trying to obey him. It's not that your obedience isn't significant or relevant; it's simply not the center of the wheel. No, the hub of your life is your relationship with God. Your behavior and obedience radiate like spokes from the center of your life and allow you to roll forward. When you try to make your eternal behavior the hub on which you turn, you get stuck. Forward motion must be fueled by love. — Chris Hodges

It's a shame that so many people are so intimidated and bothered by Tim Tebow's stance as a Christian. He's not bothering anybody. He's simply being who He is and giving all glory to His Lord. — Monica Johnson

Sam Harris fearlessly describes a moral and intellectual emergency precipitated by religious fantasies
misguided beliefs that create suffering, that rationalize violence, that have endangered our nation and our future. His argument for the morality, the honesty, and the humility of atheism is galvanizing. It is a relief that someone has spoken so frankly, with such passion yet such rationality. Now when the subject arises, as it inevitably does, I can simply say: Read Sam Harris' Letter to a Christian Nation. — Janna Levin

The devil has not vanished simply because people refuse to believe he exists, no more than God has ... — E.A. Bucchianeri

It is indeed one of th e grave errors of religious anti-secularism that it does not see that secularism is made up of verites chretiennes devenues folies, of Christian truths that "went mad," and that in simply rejecting secularism , it in fact rejects with it certain fundamentally Christian aspirations and hopes. — Alexander Schmemann

The "Word of God" is not simply the Christian Bible but exists in a threefold form: "The Word" incarnate (Jesus Followers' King), the word prophesied and proclaimed (Prophets), and the word in scripture (Bible). All three are the self-disclosure of God, The One & Only ... in three, distinct & unique Persons, Father, Son, & Holy Spirit. — Gary Patton

Serra was a mix of light and darkness; he was a man of great vision and great blindness, of immense zeal and immense stubbornness. In his own mind, his goals justified his treatment of the Indians, whom he loved as the children he did not have and whom he disciplined with the same ardor with which he disciplined himself. His vision, like that of many of his eighteenth century contemporaries, demanded intolerance against those with different ideas about this world and the next. These qualities do not make him an angel or a devil; they simply make him a man of his time and place. His time and place were, like ours, far from perfect."26 — Christian Clifford

We stink more of the world than we stink of sack cloth and ashes. A lot of contemporary churches today would feel more at home in a movie house rather than in a house of prayer, more afraid of holy living than of sinning, know more about money than magnifying Christ in our bodies. It is so compromised that holiness and living a sin-free life is heresy to the modern church. The modern church is, quite simply, just the world with a Christian T-shirt on! — Nicky Cruz

Consider how many times you've seen either a crashed plane or a crashed car. It's entirely possible you've seen roughly as many of each - yet many of those cars were on the road next to you, whereas the planes were probably on another continent, transmitted to you via the Internet or television. In the United States, for instance, the total number of people who have lost their lives in commercial plane crashes since the year 2000 would not be enough to fill Carnegie Hall even half full. In contrast, the number of people in the United States killed in car accidents over that same time is greater than the entire population of Wyoming. Simply — Brian Christian

It seems The Adversary needs neither their guilt nor their request, but simply their return. In other words, since repentance is the process whereby guilt is turned into gratitude, He doesn't mind if they skip a step and go directly to gratitude. — Geoffrey Wood

What we call doubt is often simply dullness of mind and spirit, not the absence of faith at all, but faith latent with the lives we are not quite living, God dormant in the world to which we are not quite giving our best selves. — Christian Wiman

Our bodies are simply our shells, the package for the spirit and the soul. — Eric Samuel Timm

For believers, there is much more to existence than simply passing out of one world and into another. — Van Harden

Let me make it quite clear that when Christians say the Christ-life is in them, they do not mean simply something mental or moral. When they speak of being "in Christ" or of Christ being "in them", this is not simply a way of saying that they are thinking about Christ or copying Him. They mean that Christ is actually operating through them; that the whole mass of Christians are the physical organism through which Christ acts
that we are His fingers and muscles, the cells of His body. — C.S. Lewis

When the devil comes knocking on your door simply say Jesus, it's for you. — Robin Jones Gunn

What gives the Word of God authority is simply the fact that it is the word of God! — Vance Havner

[A]ll churches, whether Jewish, Christian or Muslim, are simply human inventions. They use fear to enslave us. They are a monopoly for power and profit. — Thomas Paine

Family is the one human institution we have no choice over. We get in simply by being born, and as a result we are involuntarily thrown together with a menagerie of strange and unlike people. Church calls for another step: to voluntarily choose to band together with a strange menagerie because of a common bond in Jesus Christ. I have found that such a community more resembles a family than any other human institution. Henri Nouwen once defined a community as "a place where the person you least want to live with always lives." His definition applies equally to the group that gathers each Thanksgiving and the group that congregates each Sunday morning. (p. 64-65, Church: Why Bother?) — Philip Yancey

Would a just God sentence a morally good individual to hell for never having heard of him? And for that matter, would a just God expel a morally good individual to hell who has heard of Jesus, but simply finds no evidentiary reason to believe? According to any reasonable interpretation of Christianity's key doctrines, the answer is a simple and firm 'Yes.' This is because, according to Christian dogma, it is impossible to be 'moral' without Jesus Christ; I disagree with this on a fundamental level. — David G. McAfee

The stories told, the words, create their own reality. The details are important. Words create realities and decide destinies.

Unidentified writers, under four evangelical pseudonyms, wrote a book that made the world what it is today. Their words created the very reality in which we have been living for two thousand years; the words simply had to be worthy of faith. Had it not been for the detail about the baked fish he ate after going hungry after he died on the cross, and the finger stuck into the wound, the world would not be Christian and would not be awaiting resurrection. The word becomes the reality, a reality of which we ourselves are merely a part. — Mikhail Shishkin

What I got in Sunday school ... was simply a firm conviction that the Christian faith was full of palpable absurdities, and the Christian God preposterous ... The act of worship, as carried on by Christians, seems to me to be debasing rather than ennobling. It involves groveling before a being who, if he really exists, deserves to be denounced instead of respected. — H.L. Mencken

Why do Christians sing when they are together? The reason is, quite simply, because in singing together it is possible for them to speak and pray the same Word at the same time; in other words, because here they can unite in the Word. — Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Herr Hitler is the very person he wants to eradicate. He might have started out with good intentions, but he is mentally unbalanced and now almost insane." "Then how come he is loved by the whole nation?" Harold interjected. "His first programs of building the Autobahn, of installing the Reichsarbeitsdienst (national labor service) were almost strokes of genius. This endeared him with our people suffering from unemployment. Then he promised things which he is unable to deliver. His hypnotic power as an orator causes the people to cheer. They don't love him. They are simply mesmerized by a charlatan. — Horst Christian

Properly a theory about knowledge, not about religion. A theist and a Christian may be an agnostic; an atheist may not be an agnostic. An atheist may deny that there is God, and in this case his atheism is dogmatic and not agnostic. Or he may refuse to acknowledge that there is a God simply on the ground that he perceives no evidence for his existence and finds the arguments which have been advanced in proof of it invalid. In this case his atheism is critical, not agnostic. The atheist may be, and not infrequently is, an agnostic. — Robert Flint

You simply cannot continue a nation as America without that Christian base of liberty. — Dan Severson

I don't believe in the Law of Attraction. There were things I wanted in my life that no amount of positive thinking was going to make it a reality for me. However, I have learned to believe in the Law of Tough Love. Life has thrown a dozen tragedies at me. I did what any Christian would do
prayed for the outcome I wanted, but God was tough and only gave me what I needed. I now realize that life is not about fulfilling a wish list; rather a need list. Good and bad experiences are on the horizon. How else does a person change, grow and evolve? And just like any warrior woman, I won't simply survive
but thrive! — Shannon L. Alder

The Adversary, of course, simply wants them to lay down their sins, guilt and all, and follow Him. But this type holds on to their sinfulness and their guilt for it, because otherwise, they'd have no relationship with Him at all. And, of course, no relationship can be based on guilt and survive. — Geoffrey Wood