35 Quotes by Scott Sauls

it is in seeing and owning that we are crazy and damaged, it is in crying “uncle” to our failed self-reformation projects, it is in recognizing that we are most certainly “so unlike our Christ”—that Christ begins to change us. It is when we become tired of ourselves, weary of our own failed efforts, that Jesus meets us with hope.

Those of us who are concerned about the 'church-less Christian' phenomenon ... must first look at ourselves and ask to what degree *we* have contributed to the conditions that tempt some to hit eject on the local church.

[It is] our inclination to replace Jesus’ call to deny ourselves, take up our crosses and follow him. We replace his call with a self-serving path in which we deny our neighbors, take up our comforts and follow our dreams.

When I get honest, I admit I am a bundle of paradoxes. I believe and I doubt, I hope and get discouraged, I love and I hate, I feel bad about feeling good, I feel guilty about not feeling guilty. I am trusting and suspicious. I am honest and I still play games. Aristotle said I am a rational animal; I say I am an angel with an incredible capacity for beer. – BRENNAN MANNING.

We must never presume to understand what it is like to walk in shoes we will never wear.

Sometimes it takes having differences, not understanding one another, and even being a little bit irritated by and bored with one another, to remind us that the church is a family and not a club. At its best, this family dynamic of the local church functions as God’s fertile soil for growing us beyond mere tolerance toward true expressions of love and unity.

What matters more to us – that we successfully put others in their place, or that we are known to love well? That we win culture wars with carefully constructed arguments and political power plays, or that we win hearts with humility, truth, and love? God have mercy on us if we do not love well because all that matters to us is being right and winning arguments.

As strange as it may sound, it is the hypocrisy of Christians in the Bible that sometimes encourages me more than anything else. It reminds me that God’s relentless grip on me, not my relentless grip on God, keeps me in his love.

When suffering invades the human experience, people usually respond in one of three ways. Some assume a “pie in the sky” perspective, clinging to superficial “Bible Band-Aids.” They affirm, rightly, that “God is good all the time; all the time God is good,” but they fail to acknowledge the feelings of being betrayed by God, which are expressed in the Bible as well.