American Christian author (1949- )
Everyone who believes in God carries around a basic assumption of how God acts in relation with us. The French novelist Flaubert said that a great writer should stand in his novel like God in his creation: nowhere to be seen, nowhere to be heard. God is everywhere and yet invisible, silent, seemingly absent and indifferent. A few intellectuals may enjoy worshiping such an absentee God, but most Christians prefer Jesus' image of a God as a loving father. We need more than a watchmaker who winds up the universe and lets it tick. We need love and mercy and forgiveness and grace -- qualities only a personal God can offer.
PHILIP YANCEY
Reaching for the Invisible God: What Can We Expect to Find?
Some who attempt prayer never have the sense of anyone listening on the other end. They blame themselves for doing it wrong.... Prayer requires the faith to believe that God listens.
PHILIP YANCEY
Prayer: Does It Make Any Difference?
We in the church have humility and contrition to offer the world, not a formula for success. Almost alone in our success-oriented society, we admit that we have failed, are failing, and always will fail.
PHILIP YANCEY
Reaching for the Invisible God: What Can We Expect to Find?
I am learning that mature faith, which encompasses both simple faith and fidelity, works the opposite of paranoia. It reassembles all the events of life around trust in a loving God. When good things happen, I accept them as gifts from God, worthy of thanksgiving. When bad things happen, I do not take them as necessarily sent by God -- I see evidence in the Bible to the contrary -- and I find in them no reason to divorce God. Rather, I trust that God can use even those bad things for my benefit.
PHILIP YANCEY
Reaching for the Invisible God: What Can We Expect to Find?
Grace, like water, flows to the lowest part.
PHILIP YANCEY
Reaching for the Invisible God: What Can We Expect to Find?
When I don't know the answer to something, I write a book about it because it gives me a chance to explore it and go to some people who do have the answers.
PHILIP YANCEY
"The Question that Never Goes Away: An Interview with Philip Yancey", Preaching Magazine
I would say my being disheartened has more to do with American culture than anything else. We are becoming a very shallow culture. My goodness, the celebrity ethos has taken over completely. Turn on the television and you see that over and over. There's very little substance. And so, everything gets shorter. Everything is entertainment oriented. Our churches reflect that. A thirty-five minute sermon without a Power Point or video clips is rare these days. That's not true in other countries so much.
PHILIP YANCEY
"The High Calling of Journalism: A Candid Interview with Philip Yancey", The High Calling, Jan. 18, 2011
Prayer is to the skeptic a delusion, a waste of time. To the believer it represents perhaps the most important use of time.
PHILIP YANCEY
Prayer: Does It Make Any Difference?
Endurance is not just the ability to bear a hard thing, but to turn it into glory.
PHILIP YANCEY
Disappointment with God: Three Questions No One Asks Aloud
I have found that lived out, the hardest place to be a Christian is to be in a nice prosperous country with a lot of entertainment options because there’s so many distractions.
PHILIP YANCEY
"Interview: Philip Yancey on U.S. Christianity, Faith That Matters", Christian Post, Oct. 2, 2010
A God wise enough to create me and the world I live in is wise enough to watch out for me.
PHILIP YANCEY
Where Is God When It Hurts?
A faithful person sees life from the perspective of trust, not fear. Bedrock faith allows me to believe that, despite the chaos of the present moment, God does reign; that regardless of how worthless I may feel, I truly matter to a God of love; that no pain lasts forever and no evil triumphs in the end. Faith sees even the darkest deed of all history, the death of God's Son, as a necessary prelude to the brightest.
PHILIP YANCEY
Reaching for the Invisible God: What Can We Expect to Find?
When Jesus came to earth, demons recognized him, the sick flocked to him, and sinners doused his feet and head with perfume. Meanwhile he offended pious Jews with their strict preconceptions of what God should be like. Their rejection makes me wonder, could religious types be doing just the reverse now? Could we be perpetuating an image of Jesus that fits our pious expectations but does not match the person portrayed so vividly in the Gospels?
PHILIP YANCEY
The Jesus I Never Knew