Inspirational Quotes by John Stott

“Llamar a Dios ‘Padre’ pero no confiar en él o llamar a Jesús ‘Señor’ pero desobedecerlo son maneras de usar en vano su nombre.”

“We state and commend the faith only in so far as we go out and put ourselves inside the doubts of the doubters, the questions of the questioners and the loneliness of those who have lost their way.”

“So consistent is this tradition of unpopular preaching, both in Scripture and in church history, and so contrary to the preacher’s natural inclination to be popular and to comfort people rather than disturb them, that we are prompted to enquire into its origin. We do not have far to look. The only possible explanation is that preachers like prophets believe themselves to be bearers of a Word from God and are therefore not at liberty to deviate from it.”

“Nothing is more important for mature Christian discipleship than a fresh, clear, true vision of the authentic Jesus.”

“Perhaps Phillips Brooks was consciously echoing Henry Ward Beecher, who gave the first Yale lectures in 1872 in memory of his father. “A preacher,” he said, “is, in some degree, a reproduction of the truth in personal form. The truth must exist in him as a living experience, a glorious enthusiasm, an intense reality.”7”

“For the discipleship principle is clear: the poorer our vision of Christ, the poorer our discipleship will be, whereas the richer our vision of Christ, the richer our discipleship will be.”

“I have had the privilege of preaching the gospel on every continent and in most countries of the world, and when I present the message of the simple gospel of Jesus Christ with authority, he takes the message and drives it supernaturally into human hearts.”

“The most effective preaching comes from those who embody the things they are saying. They are their message...Christians...need to look like what they are talking about. It is people who communicate primarily, not words or ideas...Authenticity...gets across from deep down inside people...A momentary insincerity can cast doubt on all that has made for communication up to that point...What communicates now is basically personal authenticity.3”

“Horne was both a Congregational minister and a member of the British parliament. He had a reputation for eloquence in the House of Commons, and for passion in the pulpit. H. H. Asquith often went to hear him preach because, he said, “he had a fire in his belly.” Being both a politician and a preacher, he was able from personal experience to compare the two vocations, and he had no doubt which was the more influential: The preacher, who is the messenger of God, is the real master of society; not elected by society to be its ruler, but elect of God to form its ideals and through them to guide and rule its life. Show me the man who, in the midst of a community however secularized in manners, can compel it to think with him, can kindle its enthusiasm, revive its faith, cleanse its passions, purify its ambitions, and give steadfastness to its will, and I will show you the real master of society, no matter what party may nominally hold the reins of government, no matter what figurehead may occupy the ostensible place of authority.48”

“So they campaigned, with indomitable perseverence, not only for the abolition of the slave-trade (“this most detestable and wicked practice” Wilberforce called it32) but also for the emancipation of the slaves.”

“And a century later still, the great Franciscan preacher St Bernardino of Siena (1380–1444) made this unexpected statement: “If of these two things you can do only one—either hear the mass or hear the sermon—you should let the mass go, rather than the sermon. . . . There is less peril for your soul in not hearing mass than in not hearing the sermon.”14”

“He felt oppressed by the ignorance, laziness, and licentiousness of the clergy, which had been exposed by a parliamentary committee in their report The First Century of Scandalous Malignant Priests (1643), which supplied one hundred shocking case histories. So Baxter addressed his Reformed Pastor to his fellow clergy,”

“The verbs to “know” and “believe” and “be persuaded” are liberally sprinkled throughout the New Testament. Faith and confidence are regarded as norms of Christian experience, not as exceptions.”

“We should not acquiesce in a condition of basic and chronic doubt, as if it were characteristic of Christian normality. It is not. It is rather a symptom of spiritual sickness in our spiritually sick age.”

“Such is the theological foundation for the ministry of preaching. God is light; God has acted; God has spoken; and God has caused his action and speech to be preserved in writing. Through this written Word he continues to speak with a living voice powerfully. And the church needs to listen attentively to his Word, since its health and maturity depend upon it. So pastors must expound it; it is to this they have been called.”

“P. T. Forsyth’s book Positive Preaching and the Modern Mind. These are its opening words: ‘It is, perhaps, an overbold beginning, but I will venture to say that with its preaching Christianity stands or falls.”

“For sin is ‘an implicitly aggressive quality – a ruthlessness, a hurting, a breaking away from God and from the rest of humanity, a partial alienation, or act of rebellion....Sin has a willful, defiant or disloyal quality: someone is defied or offended or hurt’ (p.19). To ignore this would be dishonest.”

“Perhaps it is a deep-seated reluctance to face up to the gravity of sin which has led to its omission from the vocabulary of many of our contemporaries. One acute observer of the human condition, who has noticed the disappearance of the word, is the American psychiatrist Karl Menninger. He has written about it in his book, Whatever Became of Sin? Describing the malaise of western society, its general mood of gloom and doom, he adds that ‘one misses any mention of “sin”’. ‘It was a word once in everyone’s mind, but is now rarely if ever heard. Does that mean’, he asks, ‘that no sin is involved in all our troubles...? Has no-one committed any sins? Where, indeed, did sin go? What became of it?’ (p.13). Enquiring into the causes of sin’s disappearance, Dr Menninger notes first that ‘many former sins have become crimes’, so that responsibility for dealing with them has passed from church to state, from priest to policeman (p.50), while others have dissipated into sicknesses, or at least into symptoms of sickness, so that in their case punishment has been replaced by treatment (pp.74ff.). A third convenient device called ‘collective irresponsibility’ has enabled us to transfer the blame for some of our deviant behaviour from ourselves as individuals to society as a whole or to one of its many groupings (pp.94ff.).”

“Use your sense of humour. Laugh about things, laugh at the absurdities of life, laugh about yourself, and about your own absurdity. We are all of us infinitesimally small and ludicrous creatures within God's universe. You have to be aerious, but never solemn, because if you are solemn about anything, there is the risk of becoming solemn about yourself.”

“The nature of the love of God for us is thereby revealed. It is not the love of an indulgent parent who gives into every whim of the child. In the end that is not the ‘love’ for the child but a form of self love for the parent. Despite the massive propaganda to the contrary, Our lord’s purpose for us is not to make us happy, but to make us holy. He loves us too much to leave us part saved, part remade, part sanctified. He wills our holiness, and since ‘suffering produces…’ (Rom 5:3), we may expect him to allow things in our lives which, in our self-centred pursuit of happiness, we ourselves would exclude. Yet even in the shadow of his love there is always mercy. Our sorrows are shared by him; he comes to us in our pain. The end of it all is not only his glory, which needs no justifying, but also our good.”