Matt Chandler quotes:

Trying to figure out God is like trying to catch a fish in the Pacific Ocean with an inch of dental floss.

No change of job, no increased income, no new home, no new electronic device, or no new spouse is going to make things better inside of you.

While we lament the apparent injustice of pain and suffering, how often do we forget that every good thing in a fallen world is wholly a gift of God's mercy and grace.

My sin in the past: forgiven. My current struggles: covered. My future failures: paid in full all by the marvelous, infinite, matchless grace found in the atoning work of the cross of Jesus Christ.

Nobody stumbles into godliness. Ever.

So quit looking for 'the one'. You have a better chance of finding an Oompa Loompa riding a unicorn, fighting Bigfoot.

The spiritual power in the gospel is denied when we augment or adjusting gospel into no gospel at all. When we doubt the message alone is the power of God for salvation we start adding or subtracting, trusting our own powers of persuasion or presentation.

Intellectual ascent to correct doctrine is not salvation

If you're not confident in the authority of the Scriptures, you will be a slave to what sounds right.

We spend so much time trying to put send to death that we don't spend enough time striving to know God deeply, trying to gaze upon the wonder of Jesus Christ and have that transform our affections to the point where our love and hope are steadfastly on Christ.

He can heal me. I believe He will. I believe I'm going to be an old surely Baptist preacher. And even if He doesn'tthat's the thing: I've read Philippians 1. I know what Paul says. I'm here let's work, if I go home? That's better. I understand that.

Men of God are those who walk in the fear of the Lord.

I think people can get a little weirded out by pain, suffering, and death. They don't know what to do so they end up saying things that are hurtful to people who have experienced loss.

Godliness is sexy in a way that physical attraction can never be.

It's so much more than a child's story. - Matt Chandler on LIFE Today.

Progress stems from education, culture, freedom and equality. Without these fundamentals, mankind will flounder.

Could it not be, that God loves me too deeply, by having people challenge me so that I know I'm not perfect.

Church is not meant to be fun. It's meant to be formative.

I've grown more OK with mystery as I've gotten older.

Truly, God's plan of redemption is about more than me and you and our neighbor down the street. It's about men and women from every tribe, tongue, and nation on earth becoming a part of His covenant community.

If we could understand how impossible our situation is, we would grow in reverence for the kingship of Christ.

Thanksgiving is worry's kryptonite.

The commands of God are given, not to rob me of joy, but lead me into the fullness of joy.

The drug of choice in the modern age is levity. We want everything to be light and bubbly. We just want to feel good.

We are supernaturalists first, not naturalists. The only reason we feel compelled to accommodate science is that science says we ought to. But it is science that should accommodate revelation. Revelation has been around much longer.

God is at work in the mess. That's the message of the Bible. That's why the Bible is not pretty. That's why it's grimy, because God is working in the mess. He's working in the tears.

If you're a beast in the pulpit but a coward in your neighborhood, something has gone wrong.

I've discovered most Christians don't know what to do with difficult situations because they have bought into the lie that God owes us (for our good behaviour). The reality of life is that if you live long enough you are going to bleed, cry and hurt. AND God is still God IN that.

As you consider selecting songs for your worship services, consider them in light of the truth of the gospel. Imagine the songs as teachers--because they are! If your people could understand your doctrine only through the music you sing, what would they know about God and His pursuit of us? If your people could understand your church's beliefs only through the music, what would they know?

I was used to being the smartest guy in the room, and then God dropped me in a place that was well beyond me. It was painfully awesome.

The pastor owns the opportunity to issue of the flock that it is OK not to be OK.

God does not regret saving you. There is no sin which you commit which is beyond the cross of Christ.

Augustine in City of God pictures a resurrection in which the bodily systems we no longer need to protect ourselves can use energy to praise God.

You are being discipled by something.

God doesn't want meerly action but hearts driving action.

Sin is a fundamental failure to rejoice in what we should rejoice in.

When sin becomes bitter, then Christ becomes sweet. Thomas Merton

We become what we behold.

This wasn't a legalistic play. He simply wanted more and more of God.

When the early Church recited the Apostles Creed, it was simultaneously their greatest act of rebellion, and their greatest act of submission.

God is not just intensely personal. He is infinitely powerful.

Often the question of, "Who am I?" should be answered with, "Whose am I?

Our ferocious commitment to our children's safety and success, along with our genuine love, drives us to endure the often unhappy experience of disciplining our children.

Because children already have a realization of their weakness, is this not the best opportunity to apply the gospel to their hearts?

He can heal me. I believe He will. I believe I'm going to be an old surely Baptist preacher. And even if He doesn't...that's the thing: I've read Philippians 1. I know what Paul says. I'm here let's work, if I go home? That's better. I understand that.

The theme of the Bible is not that the world's not messy but that God's at work in the mess.

If you look at Isis beheading women and children, if you are like me, you are not thinking, one of these would make a great missionary.

Whenever relationships can't be restored, it's because someone is not willing to move forward in the promises of God.

Truth is to be used as a scalpel, not a club.

Because a God who is ultimately most focused on his own glory will be about the business of restoring us, who are all broken images of him. His glory demands it. So we should be thankful for a self-sufficient God whose self-regard is glorious.

If you add to or subtract from the cross, even if it is to factor in biblically mandated religious practices like prayer and evangelism, you rob God of His glory and Christ of His sufficiency.

The context of the gospel message is not our benefit or our salvation; the context of the gospel is the supremacy of Christ and the glory of God.

Engaging the city around us and ministering to its needs reveal to us the remaining bastions of sin in our lives, the areas we refuse to surrender to God.

The more you make this world about you, the more miserable you will be.

If you want to grow in true wisdom, grow in a knowledge of the God of the Bible.

There's a strong victim mentality in my generation. I think it's spiritual laziness. They will agree that God is sovereign over all, but then they will say, "Well, I wish he would sovereignly take away my lust issue." There's just not a lot of fortitude, not a lot of fight in them.

If the gospel of Jesus Christ is not at the center of a wedding ceremony, it is likely not going to be at the center of the marriage. This would be a grave mistake, however, as marriage itself is designed to be a great reflector of that gospel.

"Being a good steward" and "placing your hope in" is not the same thing.

A Church worshipping as a Creature of the Word doesn't show up to perform or be entertained; she comes desperate and needy, thirsty for grace, receiving from The Lord and the body of Christ, and then gratefully receiving what she needs as she offers her praise- the only proper response to the God who saves us.

All ministry that is faithful & eventually fruitful finds its roots in the life, death, & resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Apart from worshiping God, everything becomes superficial. But when you understand the driving force behind everything, all of a sudden there's an eternal amount of joy at our disposal, because everything we do is enlightened and enlivened by the endless glory of the eternal God.

Choosing one thing over another doesn't necessarily mean we love the thing we choose. If given the choice to eat spinach or broccoli, you may choose broccoli. It may only mean you don't want to eat spinach. Heaven is not for people who just want to skip Hell. Heaven is reserved for those who love Jesus, who have been rescued by Him and who long to praise Him. If someone doesn't have much use for praising Him now, it's foolish to think they're ready for Heaven.

Church is missing transcendence. My generation was raised on a religion of moral control. Do this. Don't do that. And a lot of self-help religion. Feel better. Get out of debt. Six ways to overcome your fears. Seven ways not to lust. Ultimately that message didn't work. It was empty. There was no transcendence. The omniscient, omnipresent, all-powerful God of the universe wasn't the focus.

Comfort is the god of our generation, so suffering is seen as a problem to be solved, and not a providence from God.

Discipline will never bring about love for God, but love for God will bring about discipline.

Don't create theology about God so that you can feel better about Him.

Every missionary I know is extraordinarily ordinary. Everything they do, they do by the grace of God.

Every one of us loves Pauline theology, but few of us want Pauline pain.

Everybody knows something's broken in the world. But illogically, foolishly, we are looking for fixes from broken people with broken ideas in broken places.

Faith doesn't mean an absence of fear. It means facing fear and trusting that God's goodness is greater.

God doesn't NEED raw material. He MAKES material.

God doesn't need to have emergency meetings. He's never gathered the Trinity and asked 'What happened there'.

God is awesome; he doesn't need you to be awesome. He wants you to be obedient.

God is more interested in declaring than explaining.

God is not in love with some future version of you. It's not you tomorrow that He loves and delights in. It's not you when you get your act together....If you believe that Christ's love for you is a future love for you, then you dismiss the cross of Christ.

God ultimately raises up leaders for one primary reason: His glory. He shows His power in our weakness. He demonstrates His wisdom in our folly. We are all like a turtle on a fence post. If you walk by a fence post and see a turtle on top of it, then you know someone came by and put it there. In the same way, God gives leadership according to His good pleasure.

God's response to the belittlement of his name, from the beginning of time, has been the sacrifice of Jesus Christ on a Roman cross.

Grace does not make sin safe. But grace does make sinners safe.

Grace-driven effort wants to get to the bottom of behavior, not just manage behavior. If you're simply managing behavior but not removing the roots of that behavior, then the weeds simply sprout up in another place.

Have you read your Bible or has the Bible read you?

Heaven is not a place for those who are afraid of hell; it's a place for those who love God. You can scare people into coming to your church, you can scare people into trying to be good, you can scare people into giving money, you can even scare them into walking down an aisle and praying a certain prayer, but you cannot scare people into loving God. You just can't do it.

I believe the sovereign God of the universe justifies us freely, and then we are called to run with him in sanctification.

I don't believe in the end that God gave me cancer, but He certainly could have stopped it and didn't.

I have always deeply desired to be an honest man who said it when I struggled, stumbled and worried. I longed to be a man with real friends - friends who knew me at my worst and loved me.

I learned very early that people need to have a good grasp of God's goodness and God's sovereignty.

I preach hard against that idea and plead with people to make war against sin. I tell them it's not going to be easy. Some people are meant to wrestle with their sin a long time before God brings them to freedom, but let's wrestle. Let's fight. Let's do something besides just complain.

If all you got is "I don't want to be that" then sell insurance.

If someone doesn't have much use for praising Him now, it's foolish to think they're ready for heaven.

If we confuse the gospel with response to the gospel, we will drift from what keeps the gospel on the ground, what makes it clear and personal, and the next thing you know, we will be doing a bunch of different things that actually obscure the gospel, not reveal it.

If you are in Christ, you are fully and completely forgiven for all your sin-past, present and future.

If you're a church person and not a Jesus person, my heart hurts for you. It's like being engaged and never getting married. It's miserable.

I'm accepted by God and it has nothing to do with me.

I'm wise to be a good steward, but I'll never be my own rescuer. The worth thing you can do with fear and anxiety is to pretend you're too strong to have them. The best thing you can do is just to let Him be in charge of them

In 10,000 years you will not regret anything you didn't have or do in this life.

In essence, we are reconciled to reconcile.

In too many marriage conflicts, we work too hard at winning the argument and too little at winning the heart.

It's OK to not be OK - just don't stay there.

Jesus doesn't avoid those who mess up. Jesus runs to those who mess up.

Jesus doesn't need you to make him palatable...he needs you to be faithful.

Lots of neat Christian boys, not a lot of Godly men. And we are working our tails off for you to try to develop some into that. But do not settle, because it's better that you be lonely now than you be married and lonely later. Are you tracking me? It is better that you be lonely now than for you to get married to a man that will teach your kids everything but the way of Jesus.

Love says: I've seen the ugly parts of you, and I'm staying.

Love says: I've seen the ugly parts of you, and I'm staying. Our culture doesn't love love; It loves the idea of love. It wants the emotion without the sacrifice.

Many of the things that stifle growth are morally neutral. They're not bad things. Facebook is not bad. Television and movies are not bad. I enjoy TV, but it doesn't take long for me to begin to find humorous on TV what the Lord finds heartbreaking.

More often than not, we want him to have fairy wings and spread fairy dust and shine like a precious little star, dispensing nothing but good times on everyone, like some kind of hybrid of Tinker Bell and Aladdin's Genie. But the God of the Bible, this God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, is a pillar of fire and a column of smoke.

No one can out-sin the cross of Christ.

Our goal is transformed hearts that lead to transformed lives. Transformed lives do not lead to transformed hearts. Are you trackin' with that?

Our senses are never more awakened to our need for His love than when our need is most exposed.

Prayer does two things. It shows the complete sufficiency of God and the complete helplessness of man. It shows that God is not lacking, that He is in need of no thing, that He is infinitely and gloriously wealthy, that He can give to, He can bless and He can answer without the need of help from anyone or anything else. And it also shows that we are in desperate need of that kind of sufficiency.

Preach the Gospel with your life.

So relational evangelism? Go for it, as long as it turns into real evangelism. You hanging out having a beer with your buddy so he can see that Christians are cool is not what we're called to do. You're eventually going to have to open up your mouth and share the gospel. When the pure gospel is shared, people respond.

So what does it look like to live a life worthy of the gospel of Jesus Christ? It looks like walking with, loving with, and doing life with those who are different from you. What binds you together is Christ. It looks like striving together to make Christ known. What motivates you is Christ. And it looks like standing with courage against all oppressors, natural or supernatural. What secures you is Christ.

Some people are so moral they feel like they have no need for Jesus. True worshippers know they are in deep need of Jesus Christ and are transformed morally by "beholding Jesus" and seeing their lives transformed by the Spirit's power from the inside out rather than conformed to a pattern of religion from the outside in.

Stop going to church everywhere and start belonging to church somewhere.

The best of our best, without Jesus, looks like a pile of crap compared to Him.

The Christian views trials as a pathway to maturity.

The cross of Christ exists because mankind-loved by God, created by God, set in motion by God-betrayed God and prefers his stuff to him.

The cross of Christ is the response of God to men for belittling His name.