Erwin W. Lutzer quotes:

If Melanchthon were alive today, he might not weep because of controversies that surround the Lord's Supper, but he might well sorrow because of our indifference to its meaning and importance.

Temptation is God's magnifying glass; it shows us how much work he has left to do in our lives.

Mass communication can aid in personal evangelism and the development of Christians, but it cannot be a substitute for the world seeing the truth lived through us.

God has a program of character development for each of us. He wants others to look at our lives and say, He walks with God, for he lives like Christ.

It is not enough to do God's work; it must be done in His way and for His credit.

Each temptation leaves us better or worse; neutrality is impossible.

To make sure our convictions, views, and assumptions about our Creator stay based on biblical truth and not on popular consensus, we must continually check what we believe against the Scriptures.

God does not make our choices easier because temptation is his character development curriculum.

Someone has said that the marks of a strong church are wet eyes, bent knees, and a broken heart. We'll never be powerful until we let God be God and jealously guard His honor.

Within evangelicalism is a distressing drift toward accepting a Christianity that does not demand a life-changing walk with God. Many evangelicals (today) do not realize that the church has always been an island of righteousness in a sea of paganism, but as a result they turned the world upside-down.

When the mask of self-righteousness has been torn from us and we stand stripped of all our accustomed defenses, we are candidates for God's generous grace.

Spiritual maturity is marked by being comfortable with the unpredictability of God.

There are no shortcuts to spiritual maturity. It takes time to be holy.

At death we cross from one territory to another, but we'll have no trouble with visas. Our representative is already there, preparing for our arrival. As citizens of heaven, our entrance is incontestable.

Those who give much without sacrifice are reckoned as having given little.

To those who say that they are Christian and gay, what we must keep in mind is that absent in that kind of lifestyle is a call to holiness, a call to celibacy and integrity. Obviously, it is a capitulation toward one's desires and the sexual sins that the Bible so strongly condemns.

People do not have a constitutional right to be married any more than we could say that someone has a constitutional right to a driver's license. You either meet the requirements or you don't. In the case of marriage, homosexuals do not meet the requirements of marriage.

How do you know you have a servant's heart? Look at your reaction when you are treated like one.

Those who have failed miserably are often the first to see God's formula for success.

The ability to make judgments lies at the heart of Christian living. Unless we are able to judge doctrine, lifestyles, and entertainment, unless we are able to distinguish between outer appearance and inner character, we just might miss the purpose for which God placed us on this earth. We might end up accepting a stone for bread and a snake for a fish.

We must worship in truth. Worship is not just an emotional exercise but a response of the heart built on truth about God. "The Lord is near to all who call upon Him, to all who call upon Him in truth" (Psm. 145:18). Worship that is not based on God's Word is but an emotional encounter with oneself.

Keep in mind that when sin is viewed superficially, it is dealt with superficially.

There is more grace in God's heart than there is sin in your past.

If we haven't learned to be worshipers it doesn't really matter how well we do anything else. Worship changes us or it has not been worship. To stand before the Holy One of eternity is to change. Worship begins in holy expectancy, it ends in holy obedience.

Generally, the arguments for same-sex marriage go along these lines: 'I have a civil right.' What the homosexual movement wants to do is to hitch their agenda to the civil rights movement, but I point out that this is illegitimate for a number of reasons. Number one, no black person has ever left his black-ness or changed his black-ness, but plenty of people have come out of the homosexual movement. What we need to do is distinguish between race and behavior.

You become stronger only when you become weaker. When you surrender your will to God, you discover the resources to do what God requires.

Better to love God and die unknown than to love the world and bea hero; better to be content with poverty than to die a slave towealth; better to have taken some risks and lost than to havedone nothing and succeeded at it.

Everything that God brings into our life is directed to one purpose: that we might be conformed to the image of Christ.

Don't ever think that there are many ways to the Divine. Jesus is the one qualified mediator, the only qualified sacrifice, and the only qualified savior.

There's no such thing as a bitter person who keeps the bitterness to himself.

The activities we do for God are secondary. God is looking for people who long for communication with Him.

Worship is not an external activity precipitated by the right environment. To worship in spirit is to draw near to God with an undivided heart. We must come in full agreement without hiding anything or disregarding His will.

Prayer, desperate prayer, seems so simple, but it's a step rarely taken by those in family conflict.

No matter how many pleasures Satan offers you, his ultimate intention is to ruin you. Your destruction is his highest priority.

In salvation, God both declares us guilty and pays our debt. Only he can satisfy his own requirements. A savior less than God would be disqualified; God must do it himself.

Christianity demands a level of caring that transcends human inclinations.

The most important part of us is the part that no one ever sees.

I thank God for the way he made you, distinct, special and unique. You were not made from a common mold.

If there is one single reason why good people turn evil, it is because they fail to recognize God's ownership over their kingdom, their vocation, their resources, their abilities, and above all their lives.

Our response to temptation is an accurate barometer of our love for God.

A Christian life based on feeling is headed for a gigantic collapse.

Satan exploits pain by making it the central focus of the man's (or woman's) thoughts and attitudes.

Children who are brought up with one parent or another parent or shared parenthood, when there has been a divorce and hatred within families, it breeds a tremendous amount of instability in the life of a child. And many of these children end up in the homosexual movement. Even if they don't, they take so much baggage into their marriages, that they are unable sometimes, at least theoretically unable, to stand against all of the cultural forces that would disrupt them and their families.

Forgiveness is always free. But that doesn't mean that confession is always easy. Sometimes it is hard. Incredibly hard. It is painful to admit our sins and entrust ourselves to God's care.

Temptation is not a sin; it is a call to battle.

Money is emphasized in Scripture simply because our temptation to love it is inexplicably powerful.

Winning the world to Christ means winning individuals.

Men look for better methods, but God looks for better men.

Often the doorway to success is entered through the hallway of failure.

Paul taught that religions evolved because man did not honor the true God. Because of rebellion, they "exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for an image in the form of the corruptible man and birds and four-footed animals and crawling creatures." One characteristic of idolatry is that it always confuses the creature with the creator.

The man who commits immorality does so because he thinks it will maximize pleasure if he can minimize the pain by keeping it secret.

Milk many cows but make your own butter.

God loves the world. Go thou and do likewise.

We cannot say no to temptation without saying yes to something far better.

Christianity spread rapidly during the first century because all Christians saw themselves as responsible for disseminating the gospel.

Are we as willing to go into debt for the work of God as we are for a vacation to Hawaii?

Faith is only as good as the object in which it is placed.

Only those who see themselves as utterly destitute can fully appreciate the grace of God.

Our brothers and sisters in Muslim countries can't celebrate Christmas-or any aspect of their faith-openly for fear of persecution and death. And yet we, with all our freedoms, often choose to make Christmas a celebration of commercialism!

Christmas can be transformed into a celebration more attuned to honoring the One whose birthday we celebrate.

Better to love God and die unknown than to love the world and be a hero.

Thanksgiving for God's faithfulness in our pain is the indisputable proof that we believe God is a part of our pain.

The work that God does in us when we wait is usually more important than the thing for which we wait!

Only eternal values can give meaning to temporal ones. Time must be the servant of eternity.

Every time we love, we increase our capacity to be hurt.

Make no mistake about the intention of these secularists: It is to discredit the voice of Christians so that America will tolerate only one view.

There is a clear intent to keep Christian thinking out of the mainstream of the media and the nation's political life.

Emotional peace and calm come after doing God's will and not before.

God in His sovereign goodness often uses the painful and at times debilitating injury of a spear thrower to make us readier for His service. ... One thing you discover about spear throwers is that though it's not necessary for them to be good, it's essential for them to appear good.

Worship is not just an emotional exercise but a response of the heart built on truth about God.

I think that as Christians we need to walk the delicate balance between standing in opposition to same-sex marriages and yet showing that we can do that without becoming angry or hateful.

We must distinguish between genes that cause physical characteristics, like the color of your eyes or hair, over which you have no control, and what we could call 'behavioral dispositions'. We are responsible for our behavior, no matter what those dispositions are.

We need a broad-based coalition that is way beyond the bounds of Christianity to be able to help people to understand that there is a groundswell of support for the marriage amendment and for opposition to same-sex marriages.