Inspirational Quotes by D.A. Carson

“One of the principal arguments of this book is that confessional Christianity cannot wholly embrace either modernity or postmodernity, yet it must learn certain lessons from both; it must vigorously oppose many features of philosophical pluralism, without retreating to modernism.”

“Some Christians want enough of Christ to be identified with him but not enough to be seriously inconvenienced; they genuinely cling to basic Christian orthodoxy but do not want to engage in serious Bible study; they value moral probity, especially of the public sort, but do not engage in war against inner corruptions; they fret over the quality of the preacher’s sermon but do not worry much over the quality of their own prayer life.”

“To make it this way, with an emphasis on the love of Christ as that from which we cannot be separated, reminds us of the sheer glory and pleasure that is ours, both now and in eternity, to be in such a relationship. We are not simply acquitted; we are loved. We are loved not simply by a peer, but by God himself. Nor is this a reference to the general love that God has for his entire creation. What is at stake here is that special love that attaches to "all who have been called according to his purpose" (8:28).”

“But the form of his utterance emphasizes God’s sovereign providence even while implicitly acknowledging that providence is hard to read. God’s people must act responsibly, wisely, strategically in light of the circumstances that play out around them, knowing that God is in control.”

“Thus despite the best efforts we rebels can mount, God will not be gagged. We invent new ways of gagging God, of silencing him, of marginalizing or dismissing his revelation. But God has spoken, and by his Spirit through the Word still speaks.”

“Moreover, if we joyfully confess the lordship of Christ, then when we ask what is best for people our answers will be cast in terms of what he thinks is best for people, not necessarily what people think is best for themselves.”

“In every generation, what ultimately distinguishes the true from the false among God’s people, the blessed from the cursed, is faithfulness or unfaithfulness to the Word of God.”

“God's "name" is part of his gracious self-disclosure. It is a revelation of who he is (Ex. 3:14; 34:5-7, 14). God's "name," then, is brought very near us in the story of his wonderful deeds: that is, who God is is disclosed in the accounts of what he has done.”

“At time of writing, the National Education Standards and Improvement Council, set up by the Clinton Administration,61 is due to prescribe what students in grades five through twelve are supposed to know about American history. Not a single one of the thirty-one standards set up mentions the Constitution. Paul Revere is unmentioned; the Gettysburg address is briefly mentioned once. On the other hand, the early feminist Seneca Falls Declaration of Sentiments receives nine notices. Joseph McCarthy is mentioned nineteen times; there is no mention of the Wright brothers, Thomas Edison, Albert Einstein, Robert E. Lee; Harriet Tubman receives six notices. The Ku Klux Klan is mentioned seventeen times; the American Federation of Labor comes up with nine appearances. The role of religion, especially Christianity, in the founding and building of the nation is totally ignored; the grandeur of the court of Mansa Musa (King of Mali in fifteenth-century Africa) is praised, and recommended as a topic for further study.62 Such standards are linked in the minds of many with “outcome-based-education” (OBE). If the “outcomes” were well balanced and not less than thoroughly cognitive (though hopefully more than cognitive), there would be few objections. But OBE has become a lightening-rod issue precisely because in the hands of many it explicitly minimizes cognitive tests and competency skills, while focusing much more attention on attitudes, group conformity, and the like. In other words, granred the postmodernism that grips many educational theorists and the political correctness that shapes their values, this begins to look like one more experiment in social engineering.”

“God has graciously called us; now we must live up to that calling. That cannot mean less than that we should become increasingly holy, self-denying, loving, full of integrity, steeped in the knowledge of God and his Word, delighted to trust and obey our heavenly Father.”

“If we are to pray according to God’s will (1 John 5:14), then Luther was right: “Prayer is not overcoming God’s reluctance. Prayer is laying hold of God’s willingness.” It is not so much a means of talking God into a position repugnant to him, as a God-ordained means of obtaining the blessings that God in the perfection of his virtues is willing to bestow.”

“There is nothing that our generation needs more than to hear the Word of God-and this at a time of biblical illiteracy rising at an astonishing rate. Moreover, it needs to hear Christian leaders personally submitting to Scripture, personally reading and teaching Scripture-not in veiled ways that merely assume some sort of heritage of Christian teaching while actually focusing on just about anything else, but in ways that are reverent, exemplary, comprehensive, insistent, persistent. Nothing, nothing at all, is more urgent.”

“The situation is so serious that many pundits are commenting on it (though with no observable change thereby being effected). One of the best of these is the essay by Robert Brustein, which includes this memorable if slightly hyperbolic sentence: “The time is nigh when 8-year-olds will have more knowledge about Native American totem rituals than about the multiplication table and will be better instructed in how to use a condom than in how to apply the rules of grammar.”63”

“If we remember what we have been called to and devote ourselves to praying for what is best, we may care a little less about the opinions of a secular world and devote ourselves more scrupulously to serving the only Master whose opinion matters.”

“God sometimes allows evil to run its course, or much of its course, to expose its degradation; he is forbearing, leaving much time for repentance; he may have his own reasons, largely hidden, as in the book of Job. But always he is God, and his sovereignty is never truncated.”

“To be perfectly blunt, sin is being redefined within the evangelical tradition. What was sinful a generation ago is no longer sinful today. When confronted with this reality, evangelicals will more or less trivialize their heritage by saying, “Those behaviors were not really sinful, but a mere religious and social quirkiness of our forebears.”…Contemporary society is more permissive than that of the past, and the evangelical community is being affected by that permissiveness…. [T]here is less and less continuity with the past.58”

“Godliness rests in submission to the Almighty’s will, not in intercession that seeks to change that will.”

“Obedience to God, compassion toward one’s fellows, consistency in the leadership, covenantal faithfulness that extends to one’s pocketbook, repentance and restoration where there has been either corruption or rapacity—these were values more important than the building of the wall. If the wall had been rebuilt without rebuilding the people, the triumph would have been small.”

“in the same way that confessing Christians are constantly challenged by pluralists to justify the authority of their position in a world characterized by so much demonstrable empirical pluralism, so pluralists themselves must be challenged to justify the authority of their position. They are claiming things about God, truth, the nature of reality. The question is, How do they know?”

“The unvarnished truth is that what we most frequently give thanks for betrays what we most highly value. If”