Every church planter faces pressures: schedules, expectations, family life and of course, preaching. If you need a one-week breath of fresh air from the pulpit, preach grace. Go back to the basics and boldly declare the grace of God. Here are 15 quotes that will prime the pump.
“We are born broken. We live mending. The grace of God is the glue.” —Eugene O’Neill
“If grace is an ocean, we’re all sinking.” —John Mark McMillan
“I do not at all understand the mystery of grace—only that it meets us where we are are but does not leave us where it found us.” —Anne Lamott
“Grace is not opposed to effort, it’s opposed to earning.” —Dallas Willard
“Humanism was not wrong in thinking that truth, beauty, liberty and equality are of infinite value, but in thinking man can get them himself without grace.” —Simone Weil
“My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” —2 Corinthians 12:9
“Grace, like water, flows to the lowest part.” —Philip Yancey
“Without a heart transformed by the grace of Christ, we just continue to manage external and internal darkness.” —Matt Chandler
“In the New Testament, grace means God’s love in action toward men who merited the opposite of love. Grace means God moving heaven and earth to save sinners who could not lift a finger to save themselves.” —J.I. Packer
“All the natural movements of the soul are controlled by laws analogous to those of physical gravity. Grace is the only exception. Grace fills empty spaces, but it can only enter where there is a void to receive it, and it is grace itself which makes this void.” —Simone Weil
“Grace saves us from life without God—even more, it empowers us for life with God.” —Richard Foster
“God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble.” —Proverbs 29:23 and James 4:6 and 1 Peter 5:5
“Before we can sing God’s song, we must fill our lungs with grace.” —Ray Hollenbach
“I rejected the church for a time because I found so little grace there. I returned because I found grace nowhere else.” —Philip Yancey
“If a person has grasped the meaning of God’s grace in his heart, he will do justice. If he doesn’t live justly, then he may say with his lips that he is grateful for God’s grace, but in his heart he is far from him. If he doesn’t care about the poor, it reveals that at best he doesn’t understand the grace he has experienced, and at worst he has not really encountered the saving mercy of God. Grace should make you just.” —Timothy Keller
