Vance Havner Quotes

Often we talk about God's ability to change lives without fully understanding how to access that power.

There is a vast difference between intellectual belief and the total conversion that saves the soul.

In Christ, it's never too late, you're never too old... it's never "too anything" for Him to work positive change in your life.

My life was changed in one breath from God.

It's like a jar of salad dressing sitting on a shelf... most of the seasoning settles to the bottom of the bottle. But when you shake that bottle up, all the ingredients mix together and then the dressing can add flavor to a salad. In the same way, we can stir ourselves up and regain the reverence, respect and awe we once had for the Lord.

When people are facing a severe illness or a major surgery, that may be one of the most significant opportunities for spiritual transformation that they will encounter.

Can human hearts be changed? Why, of course! It happens every day in the great missionary work of the Church. It is one of the most widespread of Christ's modern miracles. If it hasn't happened to you - it should.

A rebirth out of spiritual adversity causes us to become new creatures.

I was sixteen when I converted to Islam. Beyond the fraternal aspect, my conversion did not change my life. I was already living by the same principles - being righteous, having values.

As it is with spiritual discoveries and affections given at first conversion, so it is in all subsequent illuminations and affections of that kind; they are all transforming. There is a like divine power and energy in them as in the first discoveries; they still reach the bottom of the heart, and affect and alter the very nature of the soul, in proportion to the degree in which they are given. And a transformation of nature is continued and carried on by them to the end of life, until it is brought to perfection in glory.

The 'renewed' mind is the canvas on which the Spirit of God can paint.

From morning to night keep Jesus in thy heart, long for nothing, desire nothing, hope for nothing but to have all that is within thee changed into the spirit and temper of the holy Jesus.

The possibility of stepping into a higher plane is quite real for everyone. It requires no force or effort or sacrifice. It involves little more than changing our ideas about what is normal.

A soul mates purpose is to shake you up, tear apart your ego a little bit, show you your obstacles and addictions, break your heart open so new light can get in, make you so desperate and out of control that you have to transform your life, then introduce you to your spiritual master.

Read whatever chapter of scripture you will, and be ever so delighted with it - yet it will leave you as poor, as empty and unchanged as it found you unless it has turned you wholly and solely to the Spirit of God, and brought you into full union with and dependence upon him.

If you want to see God move make a move.

The Christian life is simply a process of having your natural self changed into a Christ self, and that this process goes on very far inside. One's most private wishes, one's point of view, are the things that have to be changed.

Nervous breakdowns can be highly underrated methods of spiritual transformation.

I was a runner who happened to be a Christian. I needed to become a Christian who happened to be a runner.

Being a Christian is not just about following commandments: it is about letting Christ take possession of our lives and transform them.

Christian holiness consists not of trying as hard as we can to be good but of learning to live in the new world created by Easter, the new world we publicly entered in our baptism. There are many parts of the world we can't do anything about except pray. But there is one part of the world, one part of physical reality, that we can do something about, and that is the creature each of us call "myself.

Jesus is knocking at your door. Take hold of the better life by letting him into your life. Make him the boss of your life. It'll change everything.

Today we need whatever methods or help we can receive to allow the Christian message to take us to a deeper level of transformation.

I did not go through the Book. The Book went through me.

The purpose of God's discipline is not to punish us but to transform us.