Vance Havner Quotes

To some Christianity is an argument. To many it is a performance. To a few, it is experience.

I myself believe that the evidence for God lies primarily in inner personal experiences.

For us to know that the Book of Mormon is true, we must read it and make the choice found in Moroni: pray to know if it is true. When we have done that, we can testify from personal experience to our friends that they can make that choice and know the same truth.

A Theologian has nothing on a man who has experienced God

They proved to me by convincing reasons that God does not exist; Afterwards I saw God, for he came and embraced me. And now what am I to believe- the reasoning of others or my own experience? Truth is what the soul has seen and experienced; the rest is appearance, prejudice and opinion.

Your personal testimony, however meaningful it is to you, is not the gospel.

It doesn't matter whether one uses God or doesn't. What matters is which experience a person has.

I felt the Lord at a young age. And it was one of those things where that seed was planted, you know, when I was a kid.

God cannot be realized through the intellect. Intellect can lead one to a certain extent and no further. It is a matter of faith and experience derived from that faith.

I gave my heart to the Lord, and I remember the incident vividly. The Lord spoke to me. I know that sounds funny. It was not an audible voice or anything of that nature.

This thing comes to me, not by the hearing of the ear, but by my own personal experience: I know of a surety that Jesus manifests Himself unto His people as He doth not unto the world.

I had a wonderful experience being Catholic.

I have a story that will make you believe in God.

God is a feeling experience and not a believing experience. If your religion is a believing experience ... then that's not truly God.

in my opinion, the Divine is revealed to all men once at least in their lives.

Verse by verse, the Bible becomes more than theory. It becomes my firsthand experience.

When the truth is preached, the Spirit of God brings each person face to face with God Himself.

A testimony is a most precious possession because it is not acquired by logic or reason alone, it cannot be purchased with earthly possessions, and it cannot be given as a present or inherited from our ancestors. We cannot depend on the testimonies of other people. We need to know for ourselves. President Gordon B. Hinckley said, ‘Every Latter-day Saint has the responsibility to know for himself or herself with a certainty beyond doubt that Jesus is the resurrected, living Son of the living God.

I can't do it. It would be like, say, trying to fall in love with somebody, or trying to convince yourself that your favorite food is pancakes. You don't decide those things, they just happen to you. If God is real, He needs to happen to me.

If you and I have not seen God, we cannot bear witness to God.

Men who believe that, through some exceptional grace or good fortune, they have found God, feel little need of culture.

A really religious person has no theology. Yes, he has the experience, he has the truth, he has that luminosity, but he has no theology.

Faith is a belief in things that your senses have not experienced and your mind does not understand, but you have touched them in other ways and have accepted them. It is easy for one to speak of faith; it is another thing to live it.

I can tell you that God is alive because I talked to him this morning.

An intimate encounter with Jesus is the most transforming experience of human existence. To know him as he is, is to come home. To have his life, joy, love, and presence cannot be compared. A true knowledge of Jesus is our greatest need and our greatest happiness.