Vance Havner Quotes
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What our Lord said about cross-bearing and obedience is not in fine type. It is in bold print on the face of the contract.
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When we are weakest and most despondent, Jesus is most considerate. When there is a break in our progress or we have a spell of depression, he sees the whole of our lives and in the light of that He is longsuffering with discordant details.
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We justify ourselves when we should judge ourselves. If we learned humility, it might spare us the humiliation.
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The preacher who jests and jokes with his people all week will soon find that he cannot stand in his pulpit on Sunday with power to reprove, rebuke and exhort. He may be the life of the party but it will be the death of the prophet.
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Faith has no value of its own, it has value only as it connects us with Him. It is a trick of Satan to get us occupied with examining our faith instead of resting in the Faithful One.
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A preacher should have the mind of a scholar, the heart of a child, and the hide of a rhinoceros. His problem is how to toughen his hide without hardening his heart.
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God's deepest secrets often miss the wise and prudent and are revealed unto babes. We say, "Children, be like your parents." Jesus said, "Parents, be like your children."
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Because the Lord loves us He chastens and rebukes us. Modern sentimentality has reduced God to a tolerant indulgent grandfatherly being who winks at our transgressions.
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Too many are not willing to give the Gospel a fair trial. They are too ignorant to speak wisely but not wise enough to speak ignorantly. A man is not a sinner because he is a skeptic; he is a skeptic because he is a sinner.
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Too many Christians live their Christian lives inside their heads; it never gets out through hands and feet and lips.
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People get so used to the dark that they think it's growing brighter. It's possible to fraternize with unbelievers until false doctrine becomes less and less objectionable.
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A wife who is 85 percent faithful to her husband is not faithful at all. There is no such thing as part-time loyalty to Jesus Christ.
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God has a place and purpose for you, somewhere for you to be and something for you to do. You never will be happy elsewhere, nor can you please God anywhere but there.
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It is one thing to say Jesus is all you want; until He is all you have and you discover He is all you ever needed.
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Satan does some of his worst work on exhausted Christians when nerves are frayed and the mind is faint.
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No man can be a Christian by knowingly and willfully taking Christ on the installment plan, as Savior now, and Lord later.
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I know that some are always studying the meaning of the fourth toe of the right foot of some beast in prophecy and have never used either foot to go and bring men to Christ. I do not know who the 666 is in Revelation but I know the world is sick, sick, sick and the best way to speed the Lord's return is to win more souls for Him.
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We have suffered from the preaching of cheap grace. Grace is free, but it is not cheap. People will take anything that is free, but they are not interested in discipleship. They will take Christ as Savior but not as Lord.
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There never has been a culture since this world began in which a New Testament Christian could feel at home.
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There are many who say they want to be victorious Christians, but few are willing to endure the discipline necessary to make one a good solider of Jesus Christ. There is a prize to possess, but before we possess it there is a price to be paid, and few will pay it.
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The same church members who yell like Comanche Indians at a ball game on Saturday sit like wooden Indians in church on Sunday.
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The devil is in constant conspiracy against a preacher who really prays, for it has been said that what a minister is in his prayer closet is what he is, no more, no less.
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Christmas is based on an exchange of gifts, the gift of God to man - His unspeakable gift of His Son, and the gift of man to God - when we present our bodies a living sacrifice.
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Nothing is needed so much as a holy indignation against sin. It is true that there is not enough love for God, and one sign of it is that there is not enough hatred for sin.