Will Horton Quotes & Sayings

The average person thinks that the purpose of religion is to give us a list of rules and techniques or to frame a way of life that helps us to be more loving, forgiving, patient, caring, and generous. Of course, there is plenty of this in the Bible. Like Moses, Jesus summarized the whole law in just those terms: loving God and neighbor. However, as crucial as the law remains as the revelation of God's moral will, it is different from the revelation of God's saving will. We are called to love God and neighbor, but that is not the gospel. Christ need not have died on a cross for us to know that we should be better people. It is not that moral exhortations are wrong, but they do not have any power to bring about the kind of world that they command. These exhortations and directions may be good. If they come from the Word of God, they are in fact perfect. But they are not the gospel. — Michael S. Horton

Remember only the good, the bad will never forget you. — Douglas Horton

Jesus was not revolutionary because he said we should love God and each other. Moses said that first. So did Buddha, Confucius, and countless other religious leaders we've never heard of. Madonna, Oprah, Dr. Phil, the Dali Lama, and probably a lot of Christian leaders will tell us that the point of religion is to get us to love each other. "God loves you" doesn't stir the world's opposition. However, start talking about God's absolute authority, holiness, ... Christ's substitutionary atonement, justification apart from works, the necessity of new birth, repentance, baptism, Communion, and the future judgment, and the mood in the room changes considerably. — Michael S. Horton

If we fail to recognize there is a unified whole to Scripture, we will have only a pile of pieces. Simplistic slogans, formulas and catchphrases will not suffice in conveying the richness of the Scriptures. — Michael S. Horton

The passion of self-aggrandizement is persistent but plastic; it will never disappear from a vigorous mind, but may become morally higher by attaching itself to a larger conception of what constitutes the self. — Charles Horton Cooley

Sending his emissaries to sinners rather than sinners trying to make their way to God by their own skill, cleverness, imagination, or efforts. God has already accommodated himself to our weakness. He is not far from us, if we will but attend to the ministry of the Word. Therefore, we must resist "the sky's the limit" when it comes to accommodation. The Bible must be read, sung, and preached in the common language of the people, but when we introduce skits, musicals, and puppet shows on the basis of wanting to bring God down to the level of the people, they can only conclude that God has not already accommodated himself sufficiently through the ministry of the Word. — Michael S. Horton

People focus too much on weight, dress sizes, and tape measurements - and those aren't motivating. What gets me going is: I'm 52, and because I work out, I know my fitness will improve and my immune system will stay strong, and my body will prevent injuries. I like being fit, strong, coordinated, and agile. — Tony Horton

If you are always looking for an impact, a legacy, and success, you will not take the time to care for the things that matter. — Michael S. Horton

If I do not procure the edification of those who hear me, I am a sacrilege, profaning God's Word." Edification is central to proper preaching: "For God will have his people edified ... When we come together in the name of God, it is not to hear merry songs and to be fed with wind, that is vain and unprofitable curiosity, but to receive spiritual nourishment. — Michael S. Horton

Abuse a man unjustly, and you will make friends for him. — Douglas Horton

Instead of thinking that you put pieces together that will add up to a whole, I think you have to start with the premise that they're already together and you try to keep from destroying life by segmenting it, overorganizing it and dehumanizing it. You try to keep things together. The educative process must be organic, and not an assortment of unrelated methods and ideas. — Myles Horton

A church that is deeply aware of it's misery and nakedness before a holy God will cling tenaciously to an all sufficient Savior, while one that is self-confident and relatively unaware of its inherent sinfulness will reach for religion and morality whenever it seems convenient — Michael Horton

However, "the doers of the law" is not quite an empty set since Jesus fulfilled all righteousness on behalf of his coheirs. So we are saved by works after all, but by Christ's rather than by our own. It is not merely verse here and there that will be persuasive on this point, but the broader exegetical conviction that Christ has assumed Adam's representative role, fulfilling all righteousness (i.e., the covenant of works) and dispensing it to his coheirs in a covenant of grace. Otherwise, Christ's active obedience is suspended in midair. In the absence of Christ's active obedience in fulfilling the covenant of works, Wright substitutes the imperfect but Spirit-led faithfulness of the believers' whole life lived. P.28 — Michael S. Horton

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

If experimenters have free will, then so do elementary particles. — John Horton Conway

An implication of God's independence from the world is that he is who he is eternally and will always be. All of God's acts are consistent with his nature. God determines the world's course; the world does not determine God's course. — Michael S. Horton

Society is an interweaving and interworking of mental selves. I imagine your mind and especially what your mind thinks about my mind and what my mind thinks about what your mind thinks about my mind. I dress my mind before you and expect that you will dress yours before mine. Whoever cannot or will not perform these feats is not properly in the game. — Charles Horton Cooley

The Holy Spirit's work in assisting the student to understand the Bible is, however, not to be feared as a work that will lead into bizarre interpretations previously unknown. In fact, "when the Spirit guides into all truth, it is actually a matter of bringing forth or eliciting what is already known. — Stanley M. Horton

Our natural reason tells us that good people finish first and cheaters never prosper. However, believers have no right to God's common grace any more than they do to his saving grace. God remains free to show compassion on whomever he will, even to give breath, health, prosperity, and friends to those who breathe threats against him. — Michael S. Horton

your ego is nothing but a mean and cruel deceptive little freak living inside your head that will never bring joy and happiness to your life. What that ego will bring is frustration, depression, manipulation, and fear. — Tony Horton

They'll get my Kindle when they pry it from my cold dead hands, if my corpse will release it. — Elizabeth Horton-Newton

I am sincerely trying now to create a dance technique based entirely upon corrective exercises, created with a knowledge of human anatomy; a technique which will correct physical faults and prepare a dancer for any type of dancing he may wish to follow; a technique having all the basic movements which govern the actions of the body; combined with a knowledge of the origin of movement and a sense of artistic design. — Lester Horton

There are two kinds of prosperity gospels. One promises personal health, wealth, and happiness. Another promises social transformation. In both versions, the results are up to us. We bring God's kingdom to earth, either to ourselves or to society, by following certain spiritual laws or moral and political agendas. Both forget that salvation comes from above, as a gift of God. Both forget that because we are baptized into Christ, the pattern of our lives is suffering leading to glory in that cataclysmic revolution that Christ will bring when he returns. Both miss the point that our lives and the world as they are now are not as good as it gets. We do not have our best life or world now. — Michael S. Horton

Nothing will change until we change - until we throw off our dependence and act for ourselves. — Myles Horton

No one will be offended if we tell them that they are good people who could be a little better. The offense comes when we tell them that they - and we - are ungodly people who cannot impress God or escape his tribunal. Until our preaching of the law has exposed our hearts and God's holiness at that profound level, our hearers will never flee to Christ alone for safety even if they come to us for advice. — Michael Horton

When we hate a person, with an intimate, imaginative, human hatred, we enter into his mind, or sympathize
any strong interest will arouse the imagination and create some sort of sympathy. — Charles Horton Cooley

A man may lack everything but tact and conviction and still be a forcible speaker; but without these nothing will avail ... Fluency, grace, logical order, and the like, are merely the decorative surface of oratory. — Charles Horton Cooley

We may not always get what we want, but surely we will get what we deserve. — Douglas Horton

Life is only a brief stop on the road to eternity. Our loved ones, acquaintances, and strangers pass away before our very eyes on a daily basis. Yet each of us carries on with our lives as if we will live forever. This is merely an illusion; of course, as it is an inevitable consequence of life that each of us must die. — Jeff W. Horton

When salvation is viewed as man's program, it is left up to man as to whether he will let God do this or that, but when it is viewed as God's program, there is a confidence and a certainty that no one whom God regenerates will be a carnal Christian. — Michael Horton

As Scripture presents it, the Word itself - wielded by the heavenly agent (the Holy Spirit) and the earthly ambassador (the preacher) - does what it threatens in the law and promises in the gospel. The Word itself does this work, not because it provides an occasion for us to do something but simply by its being used by God according to his own sovereign will. — Michael S. Horton

We do not have even 1 percent of that kind of power. Rather, we have 100 percent of the natural freedom that God deemed appropriate to the creatures he made in his own image. Instead of pieces rationed between God (a larger portion) and creatures (a smaller portion), God has his "pie" (sovereign, Creator-style freedom) and we have our own as well from him (dependent, creature-style freedom). Our freedom is like his, but always with greater difference. "In him we live and move and have our being" (Ac 17:28), so even our ability to think, will, and act is dependent on God's sovereign gift. — Michael S. Horton

Each man must have his I; it is more necessary to him than bread; and if he does not find scope for it within the existing institutions he will be likely to make trouble. — Charles Horton Cooley

Most Americans - professing Christians - for a fairly long time thought that slavery was simply "where people are these days." Is it really loving to set aside the truth about sin and judgment and even to downplay the person and work of Christ as its answer simply because these are not the questions that are being asked by unbelievers? Imagine our elementary school teachers deciding that they will no longer teach the alphabet because the children aren't interested in learning it. — Michael S. Horton

A religion of human goodness will never sustain a people in times of disaster and threat. — Michael S. Horton

It's the opposite of people who live waiting for life to come to them. Then you're just a victim or you're a lottery winner, so I choose to live life with a plan or a goal. I lay out the steps to get there and then assess them constantly. But usually I only get a clear snapshot of my plan when I look in the rearview mirror and see what I did." - Beachbody CEO Carl Daikeler

Excerpt From: Tony Horton. "The Big Picture: 11 Laws That Will Change Your Life. — Tony Horton

Prudence and compromise are necessary means, but every man should have an impudent end which he will not compromise. — Charles Horton Cooley

Finally, Lutheran and Reformed traditions distinguish (without separating) three uses of the law: the first (pedagogical), to expose our guilt and corruption, driving us to Christ; the second, a civil use to restrain public vice; and the third, to guide Christian obedience. Believers are not "under the law" in the first sense. They are justified. However, they are still obligated to the law, both as it is stipulated and enforced by the state (second use) and as it frames Christian discipleship (third use). We never ground our status before God in our obedience to imperatives, but in Christ's righteousness; yet we are also bound to Christ, who continues to lead and direct us by his holy will. — Michael S. Horton

THE JOY OF DISCIPLINE OR THE PAIN OF REGRET, WHICH WILL IT BE TODAY? — Tony Horton

If we are not explicitly and regularly taught out of it, we will always turn the message of God's rescue operation into a message of self-help. — Michael S. Horton