Here are ten great quotes (also known as “Adrianisms”) from the late Dr. Adrian Rogers, former pastor at Bellevue Baptist Church in Memphis, TN.

1. Just because it doesn’t make sense to you doesn’t mean it doesn’t make sense.
2. Most people want to serve God, but only in an advisory capacity.
3. If Satan can’t make you bad, he’ll make you busy.
4. Sin is not just breaking God’s laws; it is breaking His heart.
5. We ought to be living as if Jesus died yesterday, rose this morning, and is coming back this afternoon.
6. Has it ever occurred to you that nothing occurs to God?
7. It’s what you sow that multiplies, not what you keep in the barn.
8. If you have a Bible that’s falling apart, you’ll have a life that’s not.
9. I wouldn’t trust the best fifteen minutes I ever lived to get me into heaven.
10. God grades on the Cross not on the curve.

You can find more quotes like these in the two-volume series: Adrianisms: The Wit & Wisdom of Adrian Rogers. (Volume 2 here.) Do you have any favorite Adrian Rogers quotes?

Three Great Books by Adrian Rogers:

A vacation consists of:

Two weeks that are
too short, after which you are
too tired
to go back
to work, but
too broke
to afford not
to.  (Source unknown)

2 true. What say you?

Here is my favorite part in Charles Williams’ fantasy novel, War in Heaven (chapter 12, p. 187). Read it carefully. It is worth pondering.

The Archdeacon made no answer for a minute or two. Then he said, “I will not bargain anymore for anything, if I can help it. How can one bargain for anything that is worthwhile? And what else is worth bargaining for?”

“If one bargained for nothing, would everything be worthwhile?” Kenneth said, but more as a dream than a question.

(Charles Williams was a contemporary of C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien and a member of the Inklings. He wrote seven strange but wonderful novels, as well as some poetry and some theological works.)

Who knew? Lewis wrote the following to a child in response to a question about Reepicheep:

I love real mice. There are lots in my rooms in College but I have never set a trap. When I sit up late working they poke their heads out from behind the curtains as if they were saying, “Hi! Time for you to go to bed. We want to come out and play.” (from A Reader’s Guide to Prince Caspian, by Leland Ryken and Marjorie Lamp Mead)

No wonder Lewis portrays mice so positively in the Narnia Chronicles: Reepicheep and his warrior mice friends; the mice who freed Aslan in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe; etc. So, do you like mice? (HT: Out Walking)

Click here for Countdown to Caspian posts.
Click here for more Narnia and Caspian related posts.
Click here for Narnia sermon series.

Earl Palmer shares about the following exchange by letter between C. S. Lewis and a non-believer in his article, Evangelism Takes Time.
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A man who liked C. S. Lewis’s Screwtape Letters went on to read Mere Christianity and was infuriated. He wrote the author a scathing letter. Lewis’s response, in longhand, shows a master evangelist at work:

Yes, I’m not surprised that a man who agreed with me in Screwtape … might disagree with me when I wrote about religion. We can hardly discuss the whole matter by post, can we? I’ll only make one shot. When people object, as you do, that if Jesus was God as well as man, then he had an unfair advantage which deprives him for them of all value, it seems to me as if a man struggling in the water should refuse a rope thrown to him by another who had one foot on the bank, saying, “Oh, but you have an unfair advantage.” It is because of that advantage that he can help. But all good wishes. We must just differ; in charity I hope. You must not be angry with me for believing, you know; I’m not angry with you.

What impresses me about that exchange is the light touch. Lewis acknowledges the man’s complaint; he gives him one thing to think about—and he stops. He steps back as if to say, “Your move,” which opens the way for the man to write again. Evangelism, like sanctification, takes time. Therefore, we must take the time it takes.
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What do you think? Do we sometimes rush evangelism? Should we take a more patient approach?

I received Tim Keller’s The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism last night as a late birthday present. I have read many good reviews of this book which provides reasons for faith in God and have been looking forward to reading it. I got a kick out of the opening quote in the book, as did my boys — who are big Star Wars fans themselves.

I find your lack of faith—disturbing. (Darth Vader)

Related posts:

• Star Wars Pumpkins
• Yoda Promotes Small Groups
• Darth Vader Plays a Mean Harmonica
• Jedi Squirrels
• George Lucas Syndrome

C. J. Mahaney on dissatisfaction in preaching:

I think we should remain dissatisfied with our preaching, so that we are always motivated to grow in our preaching. But I think there is a difference between being dissatisfied and being discouraged. For me, when I’m discouraged, normally that reveals the presence of pride, that to some degree in my preaching I was attempting to impress rather than serve.

This is from a panel session at the T4G’08 Together For the Gospel Conference that is taking place Tuesday-Thursday this week in Louisville, Kentucky. All talks from the conference are available for free listening or download here: Free Audio Downloads from Together for the Gospel.

Vox Day waxes eloquent on the New Atheists:

This trio of New Atheists, this Unholy Trinity, is a collection of faux-intellectual frauds utilizing pseudoscientific sleight of hand in order to falsely claim that religious faith is inherently dangerous and has no place in the modern world. I am saying that they are wrong, they are reliably, verifiably and factually incorrect. Richard Dawkins is wrong. Daniel C. Dennett is wrong. Christopher Hitchens is drunk, and he’s wrong. Michel Onfray is French, and he’s wrong. Sam Harris is so superlatively wrong that it will require the development of esoteric mathematics operating simultaneously in multiple dimensions to fully comprehend the orders of magnitude of his wrongness.” (Vox Day; The Irrational Atheist: Dissecting the Unholy Trinity of Dawkins, Harris, and Hitchens, pp. 13-14)

HT: Evangelical Outpost

Here is a great quote I found over at Of First Importance:

“God could have poured out judgment on mankind in the Garden, therefore the only reason there is any history is because God has purposed to send his Son into the world, to pour out judgment on him and thereby bring salvation. Jesus is the only reason there is human history, and therefore he is the goal of human history. Thus everything God says and does in history explains and prepares for the salvation of his Son.” (Timothy Keller, “Preaching the Gospel in a Post-Modern World,” p. 34)

Here is a great quote from O. Hallesby on praying for your children:

See to it, night and day, that you pray for your children. Then you will leave them a great legacy of answers to prayer, which will follow them all the days of their life. Then you may calmly and with a good conscience depart from them, even though you may not leave them a great deal of material wealth. (O. Hallesby)

Albert Einstein’s response when asked by an interviewer if he was an atheist:

“I’m not an atheist. The problem involved is too vast for our limited minds. We are in the position of a little child entering a huge library filled with books in many languages. The child knows someone must have written those books. It does not know how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written. The child dimly suspects a mysterious order in the arrangement of the books but doesn’t know what it is. That, it seems to me, is the attitude of even the most intelligent human being toward God. We see the universe marvelously arranged and obeying certain laws but only dimly understand these laws.” (First published as “What Life Means to Einstein,” Saturday Evening Post, October 26, 1929. Quoted in Walter Isaacson, Einstein: His Life and Universe; New York: Simon & Schuster, 2007, p. 386.)

Source: Kairos Journal (subscription required)

Fred R. Shapiro, the editor of The Yale Book of Quotations, has compiled a list of the Ten Most Memorable Quotes for 2007. Shapiro clarifies: “I’m not listing the most admirable quotes, the most eloquent quotes. It’s the most memorable quotes.” Be careful what you say in 2008. The words you speak may follow you around for a long time.

Top 10 Most Memorable Quotes for 2007

1. “Don’t tase me, bro!” (September 17, 2007) — College student Andrew Meyer shouted out these words as officers removed him from a speech by Senator John Kerry at the University of Florida. Meyer’s words have since become a catch phrase around the nation, appearing on t-shirts and even recorded as ringtones.
    
2. “I personally believe that U.S. Americans are unable to do so because some people out there in our nation don’t have maps and I believe that our education like such as in South Africa and the Iraq and everywhere like such as and I believe that they should our education over here in the U.S. should help the U.S. or should help South Africa and should help the Iraq and the Asian countries so we will be able to build up our future for us.” (August 24, 2007) — South Carolina beauty contestant Lauren Caitlin Upton became a YouTube phenomenon after she gave this rather disjointed response at the 2007 Miss Teen USA pageant. She was answering a question about why one-fifth of Americans can’t locate the U.S. on a map. Here is the video:


 

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