Grace Quotes

Only unconditional grace can transform a hardened heart into a grateful heart. Only a free gift can demolish any notion of quid pro quo. Only an utterly merciful act of love can fashion a new creation capable of love. As theologian Karl Barth puts it, 'As the beloved of God, we have no alternative but to love him in return.

~ Mark Galli

God is the comic shepherd who gets more of a kick out of that one lost sheep once he finds it again than out of the ninety and nine who had the good sense not to get lost in the first place. God is the eccentric host who, when the country-club crowd all turned out to have other things more important to do than come live it up with him, goes out into the skid rows and soup kitchens and charity wards and brings home a freak show. The man with no legs who sells shoelaces at the corner. The old woman in the moth-eaten fur coat who makes her daily rounds of the garbage cans. The old wino with his pint in a brown paper bag. The pusher, the whore, the village idiot who stands at the blinker light waving his hand as the cars go by. They are seated at the damask-laid table in the great hall. The candles are all lit and the champagne glasses filled. At a sign from the host, the musicians in their gallery strike up Amazing Grace.

~ Frederick Buechner

Cheer up! You're a worse sinner than you ever dared imagine, and you're more loved than you ever dared hope.

~ Jack Miller

Sin and grace, absence and presence, tragedy and comedy, they divide the world between them and where they meet head on, the Gospel happens.

~ Frederick Buechner

The moments you are given are your true wealth. You don't need power, influence, or fame. The sunlight brings the power; the wind carries the influence. And as for fame, well, when you allow yourself to notice all those hands that have made your growth possible, you will also recognize what you have made possible for countless others — and how famous you already are. In this very moment, one of those others may be telling a story about how you helped them grow forward.

~ Dawna Markova

The saints shall persevere in holiness, because God perseveres in grace.

~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon

The inmost significance of the exaggerated value which is set upon hard work appears to be this: man seems to mistrust everything that is effortless; he can only enjoy, with a good conscience, what he has acquired with toil and trouble; he refused to have anything as a gift.

~ Josef Pieper

...it is a mistake to reduce every decision about Christian living to a Heaven-or-Hell issue.For example, some ask if the Bible specifically says a certain action is a sin or will send them to Hell. If not, they feel free to indulge in that action unreservedly and ignore any scriptural principles involved. But this approach is legalistic, which means living by rules or basing salvation on works. It treats the Bible as a law book, focusing on the letter and looking for loopholes.By contrast, the Bible tells us that we are saved by grace through faith, not by our works (Ephesians 2:8-9). Grace teaches us how to live righteously, and faith leads us into obedience. (See Titus 2:11-12; Romans1:5; Hebrews 11:7-8.)

~ David K. Bernard

We are all trophies of God’s grace, some more dramatically than others; Jesus came for the sick and not the well, for the sinner and not the righteous. He came to redeem and transform, to make all things new. May you go forth more committed than ever to nourish the souls who you touch, those tender lives who have sustained the enormous assaults of the universe. (pp.88)

~ Philip Yancey

The question is not whether or not change and challenge are going to happen. They are. The question is, when they do happen, how are we going to choose to look at them, contextualize them, and navigate them?

~ Jeffrey R. Anderson

There is no question of doing is purely on our own. But we must act. Grace is opposed to earning, not to effort. And it is well-directed, decisive, and sustained effort that is the key to the keys of the kingdom and to the life of restful power in ministry and life that those keys open to us.

~ Dallas Willard

If it wasn’t for all those silver wings spread out to help you on your journey, you would’a been dead or someplace screamin’ in a nut house a long time ago.

~ Aberjhani

Quietly...softly, God taps on our tense shoulders with His love.

~ Shawntel Jefferson

When she remembers to look at herself in a spiritual light, she sees the deep capacity for love this pain has brought her. The realization fills her with wonder. Now she can rise in the morning and greet the new day with eagerness and grace.

~ Harold Kemp

He would know a number of grown women in his life who did not possess even a small portion of the grace his middle sister owned at the age of fourteen.

~ James Carlos Blake

Genius is a sovereign power; it forms schools; it lays hold on the spirits of men, with irresistible might; and it exercises an immeasurable influence on the whole condition of human life. This sovereignty of genius is a gift of God, possessed only by his grace. It is subject to no one and is responsible to him alone who has granted it this ascendancy.

~ Abraham Kuyper

We are no longer under the 'Law', but rather the Grace of God in Christ.~R. Alan Woods [2013]

~ R. Alan Woods

Hey, if you're going to say what I think you're going to say…wait, are you going to say it?” he asked, smiling down at me.“Yes, yes I think so.” I grinned shyly back.“Well, then I think we should say it at the same time, yes?” he suggested.“Count of three?” I asked. He nodded.“One…” I started.“Two…” he said, eyes twinkling.“Three,” we said together. We both paused, smiling hugely, and then I took a deep breath.“Jack, I love you.”“I know,” he said at the same time.Ass…“Ass!” I said, smacking him on the arm.“That was great!” he laughed.

~ Alice Clayton

Let today be the day you learn the grace of letting go and the power of moving on.

~ Steve Maraboli

Gratitude goes beyond the 'mine' and 'thine' and claims the truth that all of life is a pure gift. In the past I always thought of gratitude as a spontaneous response to the awareness of gifts received, but now I realize that gratitude can also be lived as a discipline. The discipline of gratitude is the explicit effort to acknowledge that all I am and have is given to me as a gift of love, a gift to be celebrated with joy.

~ Henri J.m. Nouwen

The Lord bestows his blessings there, where he finds the vessels empty.

~ Thomas À Kempis

Do you know whether or not you are in God's grace?Joan: If I am not, may God put me there; and if I am, may God so keep me.

~ Jeanne D'arc

Someone who is determinedly trying to show God how good he or she is is likely to become an insufferable prig.

~ N.t. Wright

We are all the walking wounded in a world that is a war zone. Everything we love will be taken from us, everything, last of all life itself. Yet everywhere I look, I find great beauty in this battlefield, and grace and the promise of joy.

~ Dean Koontz

One of these days you who are now a 'babe' in Christ shall be a 'father' in the church. Hope for this great thing; but hope for it as a gift of grace, and not as the wages of work, or as the product of your own energy.

~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon

Secrets aren’t the same as lying,' Vaughn commented, because they both had the muddiest of ethics, which was an odd thing to have in common.

~ Sarra Manning

God can't clean the house of you when you're still in it.

~ Anne Lamott

When life tries to define you with its hardship, you gotta push back, look it straight in the eye and say, ‘No matter what life throws at me, I’m going to keep telling myself that I will overcome.’ And every time you own that truth, you write your own life script.

~ Nikki Rosen

The wave is the signature of every experience of life. By understanding the nature of waves and their characteristics, and applying that understanding to our lives, we can navigate life with a little more grace.

~ Jeffrey R. Anderson

Paul saith, 'Not of works, lest any man should boast.' Now, faith excludes all boasting. The hand which receives charity does not say, 'I am to be thanked for accepting the gift'; that would be absurd. When the hand conveys bread to the mouth it does not say to the body, 'Thank me; for I feed you.' It is a very simple thing that the hand does though a very necessary thing; and it never arrogates glory to itself for what it does. So God has selected faith to receive the unspeakable gift of His grace, because it cannot take to itself any credit, but must adore the gracious God who is the giver of all good.

~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon

For the Word of God is not received by faith if it flits about in the top of the brain, but when it takes root in the depth of the heart . . . the heart's distrust is greater than the mind's blindness. It is harder for the heart to be furnished with assurance [of God's love] than for the mind to be endowed with thought.

~ John Calvin

Our weaknesses may never go away but when we give them to God, His grace will turn them into something beautiful...

~ Heather Bixler

Grace does not work like a penny in a slot machine. Grace will move you only when you want it to move you, and only when you let it move you. The supernatural order supposes the freedom of the natural order, but it does not destroy it.

~ Fulton J. Sheen

Certainly there is life and there is death, but even in death, if we look closely enough, we will find grace.

~ Jeffrey R. Anderson

I remember the revelation it was to me when I realized I'd rather be smart in the way Elvis Presley was than in the way, say, Ludwig Wittgenstein was. The thing was, you could imagine you could be smart like Wittgenstein by just thinking hard enough, but Elvis just had it. It was almost spiritual. A kind of grace.

~ Richard Hell

God has made us to be conduits of his grace. The danger is in thinking the conduit should be lined with gold. It shouldn't. Copper will do.

~ John Piper

We have another chance to navigate, perhaps in a slightly different way than we did yesterday. We cannot go back. But we can learn.

~ Jeffrey R. Anderson

Christians are God's delivery people, through whom he does his giving to a needy world. We are conduits of God's grace to others. Our eternal investment portfolio should be full of the most strategic kingdom-building projects to which we can disburse God's funds.

~ Randy Alcorn

Properly understood, the doctrine of sin means that believers are never as good as our true worldview should make us. Similarly, the doctrine of grace means as messed up their false worldview should make them.

~ Timothy J. Keller

All things acceptable to God the Father must come from God the Son, whether us or our works.

~ Paul Viggiono