MAX LUCADO

Be a doer, not a stewer.

My book centers in on the New Testament, the goal being to help a person who wants to understand the Bible to see how what God did as revealed in the New Testament will reveal to them their own personal story.

One of the greatest gifts we can give people is the hope that their death is nothing to fear - you know, not that it has no fear in it, but the promise of scripture is that God will lead us through the valley of the shadow of death.

My first encounters with faith came about the time I was a Boy Scout, at about 14 or 15. I made the logical deduction that they operate the same way; I treated my faith like earning a merit badge, and everything about Christianity was about earning merit badges.

You know people just assume, 'Well, all my life I'll be a worrier.' That doesn't have to be true. There's a way to drink from God's presence so much that worry begins to dissipate.

There is a time for risky love. There is a time for extravagant gestures. There is a time to pour out your affections on one you love. And when the time comes - seize it, don't miss it.

I think that a church should be setting the pace for social justice.

If we think that this life is all there is to life, then there is no interpretation of our problems, our pain, not even of our privileges. But everything changes when we open up to the possibility that God's story is really our story too.

God is not troubled by one who is conservative or liberal, and He certainly never inclines His ear toward a donkey or an elephant.

Initially, when I first became a Christian and got into ministry, my thought was that God existed to make my life better and to take me to Heaven. Now I realize that it is not about me at all. It is all about God and that He did this to display His plan to restore the Earth to the Garden of Eden state.

A man who wants to lead the orchestra must turn his back on the crowd.

Sentences are like just caught fish. Spunky today, stinky tomorrow.

God's glory is the big news of the Bible, and my desire is that it would be all about me, but really it's all about God's glory.

A season of suffering is a small assignment when compared to the reward. Rather than begrudge your problem, explore it. Ponder it. And most of all, use it. Use it to the glory of God.

The idea of a spiritual heart transplant is a vivid image to me; once you have the heart of somebody else inside you, then that heart is there. Jesus' heart is inside me, and my heart is gone. So if God were to place a stethoscope against my chest, he would hear the heart of Jesus Christ beating.

When grace happens, we receive not a nice compliment from God but a new heart. Give your heart to Christ, and he returns the favor.

For years I thought my assignment or the Church's assignment was to articulate the Gospel and nothing more. Now I believe that if we don't support the verbal expression of the Gospel with physical demonstration of compassion, we are not imitating Jesus.

Lower your expectations of earth. This isn't heaven, so don't expect it to be.

A nation is blessed when it has godly leaders.

What we realize is number one, people want to know what the Bible says. In their heart, they want to know the Bible but it is just hard to understand the big picture of it. And number two, they want to know where they plug in.

We are Jesus Christ's; we belong to him. But even more, we are increasingly him. He moves in and commandeers our hands and feet, requisitions our minds and tongues. We sense his rearranging: debris into the divine, pig's ear into silk purse. He repurposes bad decisions and squalid choices. Little by little, a new image emerges.

Compassion in evangelical churches is out of balance. When I talk about it, I get a lot of glazed expressions.

Become a worry-slapper. Treat frets like mosquitoes. Do you procrastinate when a bloodsucking bug lights on your skin? 'I'll take care of it in a moment.' Of course you don't! You give the critter the slap it deserves. Be equally decisive with anxiety.

One of the things I discover a lot in marriage counseling is the husband or wife trying to get their spiritual thirst quenched by their partner; I think that's a real common mistake that we make.

I don't believe our works save us, but I believe they follow us into heaven and bring glory to God.