Os Guinness Quotes

Quotes about:

• We are not primarily called to do something or go somewhere; we are called to Someone. We are not called first to special work but to God. The key to answering the call is to be devoted to no one and to nothing above God himself.

  Os Guinness

  Keys, Special, Firsts

  Os Guinness (2008). “Rising to the Call”, p.40, Harper Collins

  75 Copy quote

• Either we conform our desires to the truth or we conform the truth to our desires.

  Os Guinness

  Desire, Conform

  Os Guinness (2002). “Time for Truth: Living Free in a World of Lies, Hype, and Spin”, Baker Books

  69 Copy quote

• Freedom is not the permission to do what you like. It's the power to do what you ought.

  Os Guinness

  You Like It, Permission, Ought

  73 Copy quote

• Christianity is the only religion whose God bears the scars of evil.

  Os Guinness

  Evil, Bears, Scar

  63 Copy quote

• In our day it's worse to judge evil than to do evil.

  Os Guinness

  Evil, Judging

  52 Copy quote

• We cannot find God without God. We cannot reach God without God. We cannot satisfy God without God - which is another way of saying that all our seeking will fall short unless God starts and finishes the search. The decisive part of our seeking is not our human ascent to God, but His descent to us. Without God's descent there is no human ascent. The secret of the quest lies not in our brilliance but in His grace.

  Os Guinness

  Lying, Fall, Grace

  40 Copy quote

• I live before the audience of One-before others I have nothing to gain, nothing to lose, nothing to prove.

  Os Guinness

  Audience Of One, Gains, Nothing To Lose

  Os Guinness (2003). “The Call: Finding and Fulfilling the Central Purpose of Your Life”, p.74, Thomas Nelson Inc

  81 Copy quote

• American views today are weak, confused, and divided. On one side, many progressive liberals still think that we humans are essentially good and getting better and better. On the other side, many postmoderns actually think it is worse to judge evil than to do evil. And in the middle, many ordinary folk plaster life with rainbows and smile buttons and wander through life on the basis of sentiment and clichés.

  Os Guinness

  Confused, Thinking, Views

  49 Copy quote

• Jesus made clear that the Kingdom of God is organic and not organizational. It grows like a seed and it works like leaven: secretly, invisibly, surprisingly, and irresistibly.

  Os Guinness

  Jesus, Kingdoms, Made

  "Os Guinness Calls for a New Christian Renaissance". Interview with Ginny Mooney, www.christianpost.com. June 18, 2011.

  54 Copy quote

• We are not primarily called to do something or go somewhere; we are called to Someone.

  Os Guinness

  Os Guinness (2008). “Rising to the Call”, p.40, Thomas Nelson Inc

  42 Copy quote

• The story of Christian reformation, revival, and renaissance underscores that the darkest hour is often just before the dawn, so we should always be people of hope and prayer, not gloom and defeatism. God the Holy Spirit can turn the situation around in five minutes.

  Os Guinness

  Christian, Prayer, People

  "Os Guinness Calls for a New Christian Renaissance". Interview with Ginny Mooney, www.christianpost.com. June 18, 2011.

  39 Copy quote

• Too often we forget that the great men of faith reached the heights they did only by going through the depths.

  Os Guinness

  Men, Depth, Height

  Os Guinness (1976). “In Two Minds: The Dilemma of Doubt & how to Resolve it”, IVP Books

  35 Copy quote

• The rewards of freedom are always sweet, but its demands are stern, for at its heart is the paradox that the greatest enemy of freedom is freedom.

  Os Guinness

  Sweet, Heart, Enemy

  "Have a Drink of Guinness". Interview with Kathryn Jean Lopez, www.nationalreview.com. November 5, 2012.

  43 Copy quote

• The question the doubter does not ask is whether faith was really useless or simply not used. What would you think of a boy who gave up learning to ride a bicycle, complaining that he hurt himself because his bicycle stopped moving so he had no choice but to fall off? If he wanted to sit comfortably while remaining stationary, he should not have chosen a bicycle but a chair. Similarly faith must be put to use, or it will become useless.

  Os Guinness

  Hurt, Moving, Fall

  64 Copy quote

• If Jesus Christ is the head of the church and hence the source and goal of its entire life, true growth is only possible in obedience to Him. Conversely, if the church becomes detached from Jesus Christ and His Word, it cannot grow however active and successful it may seem to be.

  Os Guinness

  Jesus, Successful, Goal

  Os Guinness (1993). “Dining with the Devil: The Megachurch Movement Flirts with Modernity”, p.39, Baker Books

  13 Copy quote

• Calling is not only a matter of being and doing what we are but also of becoming what we are not yet but are called by God to be.

  Os Guinness

  Calling, Matter, Becoming

  Os Guinness (2003). “The Call: Finding and Fulfilling the Central Purpose of Your Life”, p.30, Thomas Nelson Inc

  34 Copy quote

• What has happened to create this doubt is that a problem (such as a deep conflict or a bad experience) has been allowed to usurp God's place and become the controlling principle of life. Instead of viewing the problem from the vantage point of faith, the doubter views faith from the vantage point of the problem. Instead of faith sizing up the problem, the situation ends with the problem scaling down faith. The world of faith is upside down, and in the topsy-turvy reality of doubt, a problem has become god and God has become a problem.

  Os Guinness

  Reality, Views, Doubt

  52 Copy quote

• We may at times be unemployed, but no one ever becomes uncalled.

  Os Guinness

  May, Unemployed

  7 Copy quote

• Evangelicalism can only remain evangelical if it is passionately serious about truth and theology.

  Os Guinness

  Serious, Theology, Evangelical

  18 Copy quote

• People in the secular world have too much to live with, too little to live for.

  Os Guinness

  People, World, Littles

  Os Guinness (2010). “The Last Christian on Earth: Uncover the Enemy's Plot to Undermine the Church”, p.225, Gospel Light Publications

  18 Copy quote

• Interestingly, God's remedy for Elijah's depression was not a refresher course in theology but food and sleep... Before God spoke to him at all, Elijah was fed twice and given a good chance to sleep. Only then, and very gently, did God confront him with his error. This is always God's way. Having made us as human beings, He respects our humanness and treats us with integrity. That is, He treats us true to the truth of who we are. It is human beings and not God who have made spirituality impractical.

  Os Guinness

  Integrity, Sleep, Errors

  41 Copy quote

• At the supreme moment of his dying Jesus so identified himself with men and the depths of their predicament and agony that no man can now sink so low that God has not gone lower.

  Os Guinness

  Jesus, Men, Agony

  40 Copy quote

• Calling is a 'yes' to God that carries a 'no' to the chaos of modern demands. Calling is the key to tracing the story line of our lives and unriddling the meaning of our existence in a chaotic world.

  Os Guinness

  Keys, Stories, Calling

  Os Guinness (2003). “The Call: Finding and Fulfilling the Central Purpose of Your Life”, p.170, Thomas Nelson Inc

  9 Copy quote

• At root, evangelical anti-intellectualism is both a scandal and a sin. It is a scandal in the sense of being an offense and a stumbling block that needlessly hinders serious people from considering the Christian faith and coming to Christ. It is a sin because it is a refusal, contrary to Jesus' two great commandments, to love the Lord our God with our minds. Anti-intellectualism is quite simply a sin. Evangelicals must address it as such, beyond all excuses, evasions, or rationalizations of false piety.

  Os Guinness

  Christian, Jesus, Block

  8 Copy quote

• The problem with Western Christians is not that they aren't where they should be but that they aren't what they should be where they are.

  Os Guinness

  Christian, Problem, Should

  Os Guinness (2003). “The Call: Finding and Fulfilling the Central Purpose of Your Life”, p.157, Thomas Nelson Inc

  9 Copy quote

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