Vance Havner Quotes

The more the diamond is cut the brighter it sparkles; and in what seems hard dealing, there God has no end in view but to perfect His people.

To pass from estrangement from God to be a son of God is the basic fact of conversion. That altered relationship with God gives you an altered relationship with yourself, with your brother man, with nature, with the universe.

The story of Christian reformation, revival, and renaissance underscores that the darkest hour is often just before the dawn, so we should always be people of hope and prayer, not gloom and defeatism. God the Holy Spirit can turn the situation around in five minutes.

Religion is essentially the art and the theory of the remaking of man. Man is not a finished creation.

I have been all things unholy. If God can work through me, he can work through anyone.

You can change. You can 'come unto Christ, and be perfected in him.'

If there's something in your life that you know needs changing, make sure you change it before God's got to change it. Because if God's got to change it, you ain't going to like it.

Only the holy spirit, the spirit of the lord, can transform us.

The Gospel purifies and renews: it bears fruit wherever the community of believers hears and welcomes the grace of God in truth and lives in charity. This is my faith; this is my joy.

Faith given back to us after a night of doubt is a stronger thing, and far more valuable to us than faith that has never been tested.

For Christians, they need to access the power of Jesus and not look at Christianity as a religion. It is our Lord Jesus that makes you change, and Christians need to actualize it and put it into practice.

I do not at all understand the mystery of grace - only that it meets us where we are but does not leave us where it found us.

Every time I see my brother, I just praise God for God's grace in his life. Because if God can change Franklin from a prodigal into a man of God, he can do it for anybody.

Throughout our lives, God's grace bestows temporal blessings and spiritual gifts that magnify our abilities and enrich our lives. His grace refines us. His grace helps us become our best selves.

Christianity is a religion of continuity and discontinuity as well. It's about what stays the same and what changes in the twinkling of an eye. Both are necessary truths, but sometimes it's important to accentuate the discontinuity, the sudden leap, the way you go up a tree, Zacchaeus, and come down a saint.

We often read the Bible as if it were fundamentally about us: our improvement, our life, our triumph, our victory, our faith, our holiness, our godliness.

I don't think God's through with me.

The Lord opened the understanding of my unbelieving heart, so that I should recall my sins.

Most people already know what they're doing wrong. When I get them to church I want to tell them that you can change.

We need to understand that Christianity is about changing; it is not about a religion.

Our job is not to change people; our job is to connect people to Jesus, and it's Jesus' job to change people.

I've been praying that we might have a spiritual awakening. But I think that becomes possible as individuals surrender their lives fresh and anew to Christ.

I'm not perfect. I'm never going to be. And that's the great thing about living the Christian life and trying to live by faith, is you're trying to get better every day. You're trying to improve.

We are always on the anvil; by trials God is shaping us for higher things.

It's disheartening to write goals from year to year, looking back only to see you are in the same place. You can make so many promises that you get sick of yourself, but what is it that God can't do?