68 Quotes by J. D. Greear

Lord, as You have been to me, so I will be to others. As I pray, I’ll measure Your compassion by the cross and Your power by the resurrection.

Planting always involves risk. We release control of something we need in the hopes that it will come back to us in multiplied measure. But once we let go of it, we forfeit any ability to use it for ourselves. Seeds you plant you can no longer consume. Yet without the act of planting, there will never be a harvest.

As we see the beauty of God and feel His weightiness in our hearts, our hearts begin to desire Him more than we desire sin. Before the Bible says,“Stop sinning”, it says,“Behold your God”.

Our feelings can quickly deceive us – a weakness our Enemy loves to exploit. He loves to approach us in the midst of a temptation, or in a time of spiritual defeat or depression, and tell us that if we really belonged to Jesus we would not feel this way. He tries to use our feelings to get us to doubt our faith. “Feelings,” however, are the fruit of faith. They should never be its source. Around our church we say, “Don’t feel your way into your beliefs; believe your way into your feelings.

Gospel change is the Spirit of God using the story of God to make the beauty of God come alive in our hearts.

Make the gospel the center of your life. Turn to it when you are in pain. Let it be the foundation of your identity. Ground your confidence in it. Run to it when your soul feels restless. Take solace there in times of confusion and comfort there in times of regret. Dwell on it until righteous passions for God spring up with in you. Let it inspire you to God-centered, death-defying dreams for His glory.

It is one thing to understand the gospel but is quite another to experience the gospel in such a way that it fundamentally changes us and becomes the source of our identity and security.

Our mission, according to Jesus, is not to gather audiences, but to grow disciples.

God sometimes answers our prayers by giving us what we would have asked for had we known what He knows.