Francis Chan Quotes

Jesus says if you want to have me, you must give up that other thing that has you.

The decision to grow always involves a choice between risk and comfort. This means that to be a follower of Jesus, you must renounce comfort as the ultimate value of your life.

Renounce and give up. What did Christ say? "He that loseth his life for my sake shall find it." Again and again did he preach renunciation as the only way to perfection. There comes a time when the mind awakes from this long and dreary dream-the child gives up its play and wants to go back to its mother. Renunciation is not asceticism. Are all beggars Christ? Poverty is not a synonym for holiness; often the reverse.

I gave up what I can't keep for something I can never lose.

I can say that I never knew what joy was like until I gave up pursuing happiness, or cared to live until I chose to die. For these two discoveries I am beholden to Jesus.

When we say yes to the grace of God, we are learning how to die.

Money can come and go, and fame comes and goes. Peace of mind and a relationship with God is far more important, so this is the precedent that we've set in our lives. The bottom line is, we all die, so Jesus is the answer.

Faith is the ticket to the feast, not the feast.

In order to have a peace that surpasses all understanding, you have to give up your right to understand

Salvation is not a religion. It's not rules or regulations or rituals. Salvation is a relationship. That relationship doesn't begin when you get to Heaven; it begins here on Earth.

Heaven is on the other side of that feeling you get when you’re sitting on the couch and you get up and make a triple-decker sandwich. It’s on the other side of that, when you don’t make the sandwich. It’s about sacrifice... It’s about giving up the things that basically keep you from feeling. That’s what I believe, anyway. I’m always asking, "What am I going to give up next?" Because I want to feel.

The sacrifice which causes sorrow to the doer of the sacrifice is no sacrifice. Real sacrifice lightens the mind of the doer and gives him a sense of peace and joy. The Buddha gave up the pleasures of life because they had become painful to him.

Salvation is free, but discipleship costs everything we have

Discipleship is crucial to our ultimate destiny, but its cost is total commitment.

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

The way of the Cross is not easy, yet it is the tuneful, the rhythmic, the beautiful, the lovely way.

He who desires to worship God must harbor no childish illusions about the matter but bravely renounce his liberty and humanity.

Everybody wants to go to Heaven, but no one wants to die to get there!

A religious life is a struggle and not a hymn.

The Christ path is the path I've walked all my life, so it's normal and natural. And I have no reason to abandon it because it leads to where I want to go.

This is what people don't understand. When they might see me do something that's not 'God-like,' then they say, 'Well, I thought you were saved?' I am saved. I'm not perfect. I have emotions still. My name's still Gary. These things here are not all cleaned up. I'm showing you my path.

I know that Jesus is in charge; he's walking with me.

You might say, 'Can't we have a more human Christianity, without the cross, without Jesus, without stripping ourselves?' In this way we'd become pastry-shop Christians, like a pretty cake and nice sweet things. Pretty, but not true Christians.

Now I begin to be a disciple... Let fire and cross, flocks of beasts, broken bones, dismemberment... come upon me, so long as I attain to Jesus Christ.

I can remember the night I became a Christian. And man, this weight came off of me and all that kind of stuff. What I didn't realize was, that was just the beginning - of a huge journey.