Jerry B. Jenkins Quotes

If a man fights his way through his doubts to the conviction that Jesus Christ is Lord, he has attained to a certainty that the man who unthinkingly accepts things can never reach.

In fact, I thought that Christianity was very a good and a very valuable thing for us. But after a while, I began to feel that the story that I was told about this religion wasn't perhaps completely whole, that something was left out.

I'd, you know, I'd believed in God my whole life. And then started thinking about it. I was like, 'Am I living like - this stuff I'm reading - am living like we are called to live; to put Christ first, and to live for Christ? Maybe I'm not living like I'm supposed to.'

I'd been raised Mormon, but there comes a time where you are not following what you've been taught, but discovering for yourself if it's true.

I was raised - and still consider myself to be - Catholic, though I'm non-practicing and haven't fulfilled my Easter duty since sometime during the Nixon years. I'm assailed by all kinds of stimulating doubts, but I do believe in God.

I was a Christian in Creed, but nobody ever asked me.

I'm always in a place that is sincere but conflicted about different things that come with being a Christian and being an active, churchgoing Christian.

I have the greatest love for the rituals of organised religion - the sense of community and belonging it can confer to people. But me, I'm more a questioner than a follower; not by whim or fashion, but as a decision painfully arrived at after much, much thought.

I have always had a deep connection with my faith, and I was fortunate to have been brought up in a Christian environment. My faith is a very important part of who I am.

As a teenager, I increasingly had questions about religion to which I found no good answers.

There was definitely a time where I did not believe in the Lord. I needed to understand the love of God.

Being born in a Christian home does not make you a Christian.

If a man cannot be a Christian in the place where he is, he cannot be a Christian anywhere.

I don't know what 15-year-old doesn't have a desire to separate themselves from their parents and prove their independence.

The teenage years are the years to examine faith - the need to be independent and the need to be anchored. Who made all this? And what do I have to do with it?

I'm a practicing Catholic. And faith is very, very important to me. It was pounded in my head as a kid, and I hated it. And I sort of lost my way in my 20s and part of my 30s and then found my way back. And I don't know what I'd do without it. It's huge in my life.

I don't feel confident at all in my beliefs about God. That's definitely scary. But I don't believe anymore that God hates almost all of mankind. I don't think that, if you do everything else in your life right and you happen to be gay, you're automatically going to hell. I don't believe anymore that WBC has a monopoly on truth.

I use a few phrases to let people know a little bit about who I am. One of them is I belong to Jesus, which is a phrase I always wear on a shirt during the most important moments of my professional career.

What I realized was that CrossFit wasn't what defined me as a human being, it was the sacrifice that Christ made for me and all of us that defined who I was.

For reasons I can't remember, my family eventually stopped attending church, and I started questioning the Catholic Church's beliefs. I dabbled a little, but nothing stuck.

From the early Seventies to the mid-Eighties, I approached Rome at a snail's pace. Having concluded that God existed, I could not seriously entertain the thought of not trying to be in contact with Him.

I did not set out to convert anyone to Christianity.

I'm interested in youth culture - when your parents are running your life, but you think you're the big man - but I'm not trying to make a statement.

And it took me, since I was 17 and left home, running from God, to now, as a 30-year-old man, when I honestly feel like I've come full circle and my heart's finally in the right place.

There are a lot of people who consider themselves 'spiritual,' but that can mean a lot of things to a lot of people. I don't really talk about it that often, because there's too much talk in the world. Especially with Christians, there's more proselytizing than there is actual living proof of it. That's kind of sad.