Michael Horton Quotes
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We cannot find God for the same reason that a thief can't find a police officer.
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You can't find a YouTube clip to become a craftsman, friend, parent - or disciple of Christ. It's all of grace. And to grow in that grace, you need two things: time and community.
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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.
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People ask me, 'Why pray if God is sovereign?' I respond, 'Why pray if He isn't?
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How can I trust that the Bible is reliable?
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To preach the Bible as 'the handbook for life,' or as the answer to every question, rather than as the revelation of Christ, is to turn the Bible into an entirely different book. This is how the Pharisees approached Scripture, as we can see clearly from the questions they asked Jesus. For the Pharisees, the Scriptures were a source of trivia for life's dilemmas.
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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.
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If we think the main mission of the church is to improve life in Adam and add a little moral strength to this fading evil age, we have not yet understood the radical condition for which Christ is such a radical solution.
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The power of God unto salvation is not our passion for God, but the passion He has exhibited toward us sinners by sending his own Son to redeem us.
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Eternal joy can never be taken from God's people. Therefore ambition, restlessness, and avarice can be put away for the first time as we rest more and more in the work of the Son of God.
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Excellence is being thwarted not only by laziness but by reckless attachment to causes, programs, and - in some cases, leaders.
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The gospel frees us to confess our sins without fear of condemnation.
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Jesus and spirituality can easily become therapies that merely help us cope with life. They can serve us if we chose Him over other service providers. We even talk about "making Jesus my personal Lord and Savior," as if we could make Him anything!
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God is not a supporting actor in our life movie. We exist for his purposes, not the other way around.
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If the focus of our testimony is our changed life, we as well as our hearers are bound to be disappointed.
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The gospel of submission, commitment, decision, and victorious living is not good news about what God has achieved but a demand to save ourselves with God’s help. Besides the fact that Scripture never refers to the gospel as having a personal relationship with Jesus nor defines faith as a decision to ask Jesus to come into our heart, this concept of salvation fails to realize that everyone has a personal relationship with God already: either as a condemned criminal standing before a righteous judge or as a justified coheir with Christ and adopted child of the Father.
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My conscience does not render a positive verdict in God’s courtroom when I look inside myself. The only reason I can sleep well at night is that even though my heart is filled with corruption and even though I am not doing my best to please him, I have in heaven at the Father’s right hand the beloved Son, who has not only done his best for himself but has fulfilled all righteousness for me in my place.
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The goal of Christian mission is not success, but faithful witness; not power, but proclamation; not technique, but truth; not method, but message.
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God’s Word does not merely impart information; it actually creates life. It’s not only descriptive; it’s effective too, God speaking is God acting.
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We need more Christians who take their place alongside believing and unbelieving neighbors in the daily gift exchange
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When the focus becomes 'What would Jesus do?' instead of 'What has Jesus done?' the conservative/liberal labels no longer matter.
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Theology, not morality, is the first business on the church's agenda of reform, and the church, not society, is the first target of divine criticism.
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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.
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Our society trains us to think of marriage as a contractual arrangement. If one party fails to fulfill his or her end, the contract is null and void. Increasingly children are raised in a contractual environment. When contractual thinking dominates our horizon, we can even make Jesus or the church an asset we think we can manage.