Vance Havner Quotes

A crucified Savior will never be content to have a self-pleasing, self-indulging, worldly-minded people.

Saint Mochua was the son of a certain Cronan, of noble race, and spent his youth in fighting. At the age of thirty, he laid aside his arms and burnt a house, with all its contents, which had been given to him by his uncle, saying that a servant of Christ should take nothing from sinners.

Repentance is more than just sorrow for the past; repentance is a change of mind and heart, a new life of denying self and serving the Savior as king in self's place.

By the cross we, too, are crucified with Christ; but alive in Christ. We are no more rebels, but servants; no more servants, but sons!

There was a day when I died; died to self, my opinions, preferences, tastes and will; died to the world, its approval or censure; died to the approval or blame even of my brethren or friends; and since then I have studied only to show myself approved unto God.

No repentance, obedience, self-denial, prayers, tears, reformation or ordinances, without the new creation, avail any thing to the salvation of thy soul.

As Christ was born of the Virgin's womb, so must He be spiritually formed in our hearts. As He died for sin, so must we die to sin. And as He rose again from the dead, so must we also rise to a divine life.

When Jesus died on the cross, so did your sin; when He rose from the dead, so did your HOPE.

To identify with the death of Jesus Christ means that we must die to everything that was never a part of Him.

How wonderful to know that when Jesus Christ speaks to you and to me, he enables you to understand yourself, to die to that self because of the cross, and brings the real you to birth.

Sanctification is the outcome and inseparable consequence of regeneration. He who is born again and made a new creature receives a new nature and a new principle and always lives a new life.

My thing is, get Jesus to come and live inside, and let Him start cleaning house.

In order to mount to the Cross, the summit of sacrifice, and to God, the summit of immateriality, Christ passed through all the stages which the man who struggles passes through.

My life is such a contradiction. My soul yearns for holiness and then runs from the mortification necessary to attain it.

I want this world to come alive, to see that yes, you're dead in your trespasses, but you have been made alive in Christ.

That soul is dead to which the Spirit of Christ is not given in the work of regeneration; and all its works are dead works.

If any man would come after me, let him deny himself." The disciple must say to himself the same words Peter said of Christ when he denied him: "I know not this man." Self-denial is never just a series of isolated acts of mortification or asceticism. It is not suicide, for there is an element of self-will even in that. To deny oneself is to be aware only of Christ and no more of self, to see only him who goes before and no more the road which is too hard for us. Once more, all that self denial can say is: "He leads the way, keep close to him.

Jesus does not offer to make bad people good but to make dead people alive.

Go to the cross of Christ, all you that want to be delivered from the power of selfishness.

When I was born again, I received the very life of the risen Lord from Jesus Himself.

Those who have been touched by forgiveness and new life and have thus entered into God's rule become, like Jesus, bearers of that rule.

The glory of God always comes at the sacrifice of self.

God takes that which is nothing and makes something out of it. When you become a Christian, you cannot patch your Christianity onto your old life. You are to start over. Accept God's call as a promotion. Burn the old bridges and fix it so you cannot go back ; then serve God with all your heart.

Christ, in short, asks us to give everything, all our false redemption in the lifeboat, all our false ideas about who God is, all our trust in something other than God to redeem us. In so doing, we die to our broken natures in exchange for His perfect nature, and find unification with Him that will allow God to see us as one.

All God's plans have the mark of the cross on them, and all His plans have death to self in them.