Not God Enough: Best Quotes

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here are the best quotes from J.D. Greear‘s theology book Not God Enough published this year.

“A god small enough to be understood will never be big enough to be worshipped.” – Evelyn Underhill (pg. 24)

“Most Christians haven’t rejected God; they have just reduced him.” (pg. 38)

“Perhaps we should not assume that just because we cannot think of a good reason that something bad has happened means that there cannot be a good reason.” (pg. 58)

“We imagine a God of omnipotent power but with a brain no bigger than ours…” (pg. 59)

“If we make our faith contingent on being able to figure everything out, we’ll never believe.” (pg. 62)

“Even where we can’t trace [God’s] hand, we can trust his heart.” (pg. 67)

“In at least 322 places, Jewish prophets, who wrote hundreds of years before Jesus’s birth, predicted details about the coming Messiah’s life.” (pg. 89)

“If I can trust [Jesus’s] claim to be the Messiah, I can trust the Bible he left behind.” (pg. 92)

“Faith is accepting what you cannot understand on the basis of what you can understand.” (pg. 94)

“God is not ‘ours.’ He is his own. He’s not a salad bar where we take the items we have an appetite for and leave the others. He’s not the Burger King God, where you ‘have him your way,’ or a Build-A-Bear God, where you assemble the deity you like best.” (pg. 99)

“If God doesn’t make us mad, we’re not worshipping him, but ourselves.” – Karl Barth (pg. 102)

“Stress, worry, anxiety, strife, jealousy, and dissatisfaction are smoke rising from the altars we’ve erected to our false gods.” – Saint Augustine (pg. 103)

“You can take one of two postures toward God. You can shrink him down and carry him, or humble yourself and let him carry you.” (pg. 104)

“If Jesus is your ‘co-pilot,’ somebody is in the wrong seat.” (pg. 119)

“The opposite of love, it’s said, is not hate, but apathy.” (pg. 126)

“Experiencing pain or humiliation because of your sin may feel like God’s wrath, but it is actually the tender outworking of his compassion.” (pg. 128)

“In Christ, God did not overlook the guilt of the guilty; he poured it on a substitute – himself.” (pg. 130)

“The pursuing love of God is the greatest wonder in the spiritual universe.” – Donald Grey Barnhouse (pg. 142)

“Jesus didn’t die so we could play church. He didn’t die to be our source of serenity in a busy life. He didn’t endure the cross so we could huddle together in small groups and bemoan the deterioration of our culture. He died to turn us into white-hot worshipers and world-transformers. Jesus is not a safety net, a relief valve, an assistant, or a divine butler. He’s a God whose glory and love deserve our utmost allegiance.” (pgs. 151-152)

“Is what you are living for worth [Jesus] dying for?” (pg. 152)

“If you love something, you don’t need to be commanded to love it…” (pg. 156)

“Victorious, passionate Christian living is the result of finally seeing God for who he is – standing humbled before the heights of his holiness and awestruck at the depths of his love. Then, and only then, will we soar spiritually.” (pg. 160)

“If you want to overcome sin, don’t focus on shrinking your temptations; focus on enlarging your view of God.” (pg. 161)

“The reason it’s wrong for anyone to make themselves the center of their lives is simple: they’re not God.” (pg. 172)

“Death, the mighty enemy, has been reduced to a temporary, inconvenient nuisance.” (pg. 183)

“At any given moment God is doing about 10,000 different things in your life and you are probably aware of only 3 of them.” – John Piper (pg. 189)

“Every Christian here is either a missionary or an imposter.” – C.H. Spurgeon (pg. 192)

“We are not guaranteed safety. We are guaranteed Jesus. And he is enough.” (pg. 200)

“Feeling inadequate is a prerequisite to being used by God.” (pg. 209)

“A friend of mine explains it this way: When you say, ‘But I am such a terrible mom,’ or ‘I am a failure,’ God replies, ‘I am neither of those things! And if I am in you, you are not either.'” (pg. 212)

“The primary work we do for God, Jesus told us, is believing (Jn. 6:29). Believing that he is who he said he is and that he will do all he said he will do. Trust in Jesus is the most powerful force on the planet.” (pg. 226)