Inspirational Quotes by Erwin Lutzer

“Nothing will silence infidels so quickly as Christians everywhere being united.”

“These two instruments of grace must be applied in the right proportion. If we read the Word and do not pray, we may become puffed up with knowledge, without the love that builds others up. If we pray without reading the Word, we will be ignorant of the mind and will of God, and become mystical and fanatical, and liable to be blown around by every wind of doctrine”

“it is prayer and earnestness; prayer and watchfulness; prayer and thanksgiving. It is an instructive fact that throughout Scripture prayer is always linked with something else.”

“As one has well put it: “Depend upon it, prayer does not mean that I am to bring God down to my thoughts and my purposes, and bend His government according to my foolish, silly, and sometimes sinful notions.”

“When Martin Luther said, “My conscience is held captive by the Word of God. I cannot and will not recant,” he broke with 1,000 years of religious oppression. Until then, it was unthinkable that a man could say his conscience superseded the pope or tradition.”

“If we are honest with ourselves, we’ll admit that what too many fathers also are is missing—missing from too many lives and too many homes. They have abandoned their responsibilities, acting like boys instead of men. And the foundations of our families are weaker because of it. You and I know how true this is in the African-American community. We know that more than half of all African-American children live in single-parent households, a number that has doubled—doubled—since we were children. We know the statistics—that children who grow up without a father are five times more likely to live in poverty and commit crime; nine times more likely to drop out of schools and twenty times more likely to end up in prison. They are more likely to have behavioral problems or run away from home or become teenage parents themselves. And the foundations of our community are weaker because of it… But we also need families to raise our children. We need fathers to realize that responsibility does not end at conception. We need them to realize that what makes you a man is not the ability to have a child—it’s the courage to raise one.30”

“Someone has said that “a Christianity without courage is cultural atheism.”

“Church growth experts tell us that most people seeking a new church care little about its doctrines. They're mostly interested in the facilities of the church, its nursery, and opportunities for friendship. . . .The experts tell us that today's church members will switch churches at a moment's notice if they think that their personal and relational needs will be better met elsewhere--even if the doctrine taught is at best, suspect. Thus some will opt for better facilities and architecture even at the expense of jeopardizing their own soul.”

“Even in America this is a problem. In the summer of 2011, Middle East Quarterly published the results of an intensive four-year study on “sharia-adherence and the promotion of violent, jihadist literature in U.S. mosques.”14 The results? A stunning 81 percent carried jihad hate literature—with 51 percent carrying texts “rated as severely advocating violence,” and 30 percent carrying texts “rated as moderately advocating violence.”15 Especially disturbing was the discovery that “mosques with this literature were not merely repositories but incubators for the messaging of this material.”16 And fully 58 percent of the mosques “invited guest imams known to promote violent jihad.”17”

“Muslims cannot know the assurance of salvation, for in the end, Allah does with each person as he desires. According to the Hadith, Muhammad himself said he was unsure of his eternal salvation. He wrote, “Though I am an Apostle of Allah, yet I do not know what Allah will do to me!” (Bukhari 5.58.266). And the Quran states that only death by jihad assures a person of instant access into paradise. Christians, however, can know the assurance of their salvation. That’s because salvation is a free gift made available through the sacrifice and triumph of Jesus. No matter how great our sin, Jesus’ sacrifice on our behalf was greater. Because it is Christ who obtained our salvation and gives it to us, we cannot and will not lose it. As the apostle John said, “Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life. I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God so that you may know that you have eternal life” (1 John 5:12-13). This free gift is available to anyone who receives Christ as Savior: “To all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God” (John 1:12).”

“Yes, we might have ‘righteous anger’ as we see our culture destroyed, but if our anger spills over into our Christian witness, it only fuels the stereotype that the world already has of us. Yes, we are called to expose the sins of the world, but to do so with redemption, in humility and compassion. And, yes, with courage. And tears. Anger and rebuke change nothing. In fact, they cause our leftist friends to entrench themselves every deeper into their hatred of Christians. Moreover, these actions don’t represent our Master who ‘when he was reviled, he did not revile in return; when he suffered, he did not threaten, but continued entrusting himself to him who judges justly’ (1 peter 2:23). Anger, vengeance and a spirit of retaliation are not the ways of the Master. But as we shall see later in this book, neither is silence nor cowardice.”

“We are pilgrims out of step with the ever-changing culture - yet we are sent by Christ, the Head of the church. The church is the last barrier between the present moral breakdown and total chaos.”

“We will not impact the cities and towns of our world unless we live among those who need to hear the gospel through an authentic witness. It is not only church gathered that will win the world, but the church scattered that will show the beauty of Jesus to a world that is short on hope. Our impact will be marginal as long as we play safe; Jesus didn’t and neither can we.”

“I see a church that desperately needs to learn the lessons that the people of God have to RELEARN in each generation: We have to be a church that is, in some ways, repulsive to the world because of our authentic holiness and yet very attractive to the world because of our love & care. We need to be a courageous church at the time of weak knees and carnal living. In short, we have to live lives that are a credit to the gospel we preach and the Savior we worship. God has humbled us, and we must enter into our cultural decline not with a swagger but with humility and brokenness. And transparency”

“Many within the younger generation simply do not feel at home in our churches. They long to have honest sharing within a community of authentic believers who are realistic about their walk with God. They see many of our churches as being too formal, too rigid, and prepackaged.”

“Let those of us in our churches not sit in judgment of the world, however, for all too often, we are the world, sharing in our culture’s since and failures. Remember, it was because of Jonah and not the pagan sailors that the storm blew on the sea! Too often we are blind to our own darkness. We criticize the world for calling darkness, but perhaps we do the same.”

“The surviving church is one that has a holistic view of the scriptures and doesn’t simply cherry-pick themes and teachings that are more to individual likings and aptitude’s. It is a church that preaches to felt needs, to be sure, but emphasizes that when we stand in the presence of a holy God, our greatest felt need will be for the righteousness of Christ. It is a church that teaches us how to live on earth but with the greater purpose of preparing for the life to come. It is a church that is not afraid of talking about hell.”

“It is not possible to have a heart for God without having a heart for people and their deep abiding needs.”

“But by no means should we think that terroism is radical Islam’s most useful weapon. Indeed, many of these Islamic leaders decry terrorism in an effort to take the focus off of a more effective and insidious strategy, namely to subdue the West by civilizational jihad.”

“To overdo the sorrow aspect of the judgment seat of Christ is to make heaven into hell. To underdo the sorrow aspect is to make faithfulness inconsequential.”