Top 100 James MacDonald Quotes
#1. When God promises, He's not saying, I'll try. He means, I can and I will.
James MacDonald
#2. While you can't keep fear from visiting, you can slam the door in its face. With God's promise in your hand, that's exactly what you are able to do.
James MacDonald
#3. Times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord (Acts 3:20).
James MacDonald
#4. Only when we have done all we knew to do can we wait by faith for God to do what only He can do.
James MacDonald
#5. Be loving in conflict or be loving in frustration or let love command your every interaction because love never fails.
James MacDonald
#6. The counselee should be aware that you are not God. Better yet, she should be aware that you are aware that you are not God.
James MacDonald
#7. The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?
James MacDonald
#8. More of anything other than God will never fill that longing for fulfillment He has placed within you and me.
James MacDonald
#9. Let's embrace the expectation that we will not be treated better than the early disciples when we share Christ the way they did.
James MacDonald
#10. I experience transcendence when something infinite reminds me I am finite.
James MacDonald
#11. God looked through eternity past and He saw you and He chose to reach out and redeem you by His own grace. It's hard to imagine that kind of love.
James MacDonald
#12. Fear is the contradiction of faith. Faith says, Whatever it is, it'll be okay because of God.
James MacDonald
#13. Faith sees the opportunity; doubt sees the obstacles. What you see is what you get!
James MacDonald
#14. If we believe God is present in our worship as He promises to be,20 then we must frame all language of worship as to Him and not merely about Him.
James MacDonald
#15. We all know the disappointments that come when we base anticipation on what we and other humans can deliver. God will never have a problem delivering!
James MacDonald
#16. Where is the church persevering in the priority of prayer?
James MacDonald
#17. Our hearts are wired for worship, and our worship is directly tied to our sense of hope.
James MacDonald
#18. I have been studying now for about 2 years, on a rather intensive basis, the UFO problem. I have interviewed several hundred witnesses in selected cases, and I am astonished at what I have found.
James MacDonald
#19. I've learned to be careful of becoming a critic. Criticism really sours your heart.
James MacDonald
#20. We are only prepared to receive and comprehend the grace of God when we have understood His infinite holiness and our incredible sinfulness.
James MacDonald
#21. If you don't tell your kids/grandkids what God has done for you, don't expect their hearts to be captured by your God! Worst
James MacDonald
#22. Attentive reading of God's Word will set you up for frequent Holy Spirit warnings as He uses Scripture to set off alarms of danger in your life. As you grow spiritually, you may discover direct "prompts" God's Spirit gives, but they will always be in harmony with what God says in His Word.
James MacDonald
#23. Revival is renewed interest after a period of indifference or decline. He wants to wake us up, to refresh our faith - to fire us up again.
James MacDonald
#24. A real encounter with the living God changes everything. First, it magnifies the Lord, and then it puts me and my ego and my sin and my burdens all in their rightful place.
James MacDonald
#25. Transcendence is a healthy dose of insignificance to a race whose root sin is pride. Transcendence cuts us all down to our proper proportion before an awesome God. That you and I are not significant is a wonderful, freeing discovery, and that's what church is for.
James MacDonald
#26. A continual diet of the Word satisfies, and it builds an appetite for more.
James MacDonald
#27. Given the impossibility of not failing one another, when the Bible says, "We all stumble in many ways,"7 the only way forward in loving community with one another is forgiveness.
James MacDonald
#30. God brings us low, even to the point of death, in order to bring us up again.
James MacDonald
#32. Too many times we're looking for ways to get around deep waters and dangerous fires, rather than through them. Has this ever been your experience?
James MacDonald
#33. The body of Christ is about doing life together, and by doing life together sin is revealed.
James MacDonald
#34. You would think that the more a man knows and loves God, the deeper he gets into understanding His Word, and the further he progresses in personal holiness, the better he would be at being a watchful man, but that is sadly not the case.
James MacDonald
#35. Worship is the actual act of ascribing worth directly to God. Worshipful actions may do this indirectly, but when the Bible commands and commends worship as our highest expression, it is not talking about anything other than direct, intentional, Vertical outpouring of adoration.
James MacDonald
#36. I've never seen the Holy Spirit, but I've seen His powerful wind blowing through people's lives.
James MacDonald
#37. One of the consequences of covetousness is that it destroys the capacity to discern sufficiency. It distorts our thinking to the point where: Enough is never enough.
James MacDonald
#38. The role of biblical counselors is facilitate the discovery of a greater God awareness through spiritual eyes that look at life through scriptural lenses.
James MacDonald
#39. Jesus washing the disciples feet is the most supreme act of humility in all of God's word.
James MacDonald
#40. Human sin is stubborn, but not as stubborn as the grace of God and not half as persistent, not half so ready to suffer to win its way
James MacDonald
#41. A soul that is happy in the things of God can overcome tremendous obstacles.
James MacDonald
#42. When we ask people what they want in church instead of giving them what they were created to long for, we play in the very idolatry that church was created to dismantle.
James MacDonald
#43. Colossians 2:6 says, "As you received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in him." The path to salvation by faith travels down the way of repentance and we never leave that road.
James MacDonald
#44. Only God is perfect! None of us comes within a country, not a country mile, but a whole country, in proximity to perfection.
James MacDonald
#45. God's Word doesn't change, the message doesn't shift. It can't be compromised in any way. It's where we stand firm.
James MacDonald
#46. Wake up, dude! It's not about who you are. It's all about who God is.
James MacDonald
#47. Tell them," God said through Isaiah, "hard times are coming, but don't give up - now or ever. Don't let them underestimate My power to reorder the universe. Tell them to keep trusting Me and living the way I told them to in spite of what's coming.
James MacDonald
#48. Church leaders raised on rationalism lead ministries where the supernatural, the Vertical, is suppressed and where God Himself is at best an observer and certainly seldom, if ever, and obvious participant in church.
James MacDonald
#49. God shows up powerfully when our worship is sincere and fervent in spite of whatever difficult circumstance we might be experiencing.
James MacDonald
#50. Don't get a bad attitude like they did back in the wilderness, or you're going to be joining them.
James MacDonald
#51. If He wasn't going to use that hard thing for your good, it wouldn't have happened. He had to sign off on every single thing that touches your life.
James MacDonald
#52. Every step with God is a step of faith. Every lesson learned is a lesson of faith. Every victory won is a victory by faith. That's the prominence of faith in the New Testament.
James MacDonald
#53. Proverbs 18:10, "The name of the LORD is a strong tower.
James MacDonald
#54. Who we are is not a question we can ask without seeking to understand the context in which we live. Biblical counselors seek to understand the influences that shape the responses of the human heart.
James MacDonald
#55. One of the most frequent sins of omission is the failure to get adequate rest.
James MacDonald
#56. Love is selfless! Love is "you before me" decision making. Need it shorter? Love = Ub4me! There it is.
James MacDonald
#57. Satan's kryptonite is separation through slander. He slanders God to us and us to God.
James MacDonald
#58. The Scriptures were written with built-in tension between texts and its resultant theology.
James MacDonald
#59. We need to stop shuffling service parts randomly and set our sights on a goal, something we are moving toward in every service element.
James MacDonald
#60. To complain is to say in effect; "God, You blew it! You had a chance to meet my expectations, but You couldn't handle it! Nice try, God, close - but not close enough." So complaining definitely injures you and the Lord.
James MacDonald
#61. We preach so that people can hear the voice of God, period.
James MacDonald
#62. The Christian way is a life of faith. In order to hold on to the promises of God, you've got to believe them and live by them.
James MacDonald
#63. Plain and simple, men need community with other men. Loving, you-before-me, dedicated relationship. If you have never had it, you don't really get it yet, and if you had that community and lost it, you know the cavity it leaves in your soul until you discover it again.
James MacDonald
#64. Take a deep breath and take this to heart; God has nothing to do with broken promises. When He says, I promise, mark it down it's going to happen.
James MacDonald
#65. At the end of life, each of us must answer the question, Whose story captured my soul?
James MacDonald
#66. In his recent book Unexplainable, he said, "[God] wants to do the inconceivable, the uncommon, the unexpected, the remarkable, the incomprehensible, so that He - God - is the only explanation for what occurs in our lives."3
James MacDonald
#67. Vertical Church teaches its people to judge every circumstance and opportunity in terms of its potential to reveal "the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ."21 That is the goal for every person in our church
James MacDonald
#68. Of course God went after Jonah, inquiring gently, "Do you do well to be angry?"10 However, insane from isolation, Jonah answers remarkably, "Yes, I do well to be angry, angry enough to die."11 Wow!
James MacDonald
#69. But extraordinary life is possible - find it. There's a better, higher, eternal life that can begin during this earthly life. It is an awesome life found in Christ! And we can live it now!
James MacDonald
#70. It's not unlikely that God would lie that would be a matter of probability. It is impossible for God to lie.
James MacDonald
#71. Within the nature of God is a strength that is fashioned in His perfection. Strength flows from the fountain of God's integrity. Honest people are the strongest people.
James MacDonald
#72. Men who are cut off, careful, and closed are also lonely and just as vulnerable in a different way as their wives alone in a dark alley after midnight.
James MacDonald
#73. Prayer is the easiest thing to assume in church and the hardest thing to maintain. Prayer is the first thing our flesh stops when times get easy, and true prayer is the last thing we resort to when times get tough.
James MacDonald
#74. Nothing worse than a man who makes excuses, blames others, and refuses responsibility for his own actions. No doubt there were real experiences that underlined the worthlessness of excuse makers for these men.
James MacDonald
#75. When your soul is satisfied, you have everything even if you have nothing. And when your soul is not at peace, you have nothing no matter what you have attained or acquired.
James MacDonald
#76. Most men are not alert, not paying attention, and not watching out for their families as God commands them to.
James MacDonald
#77. If you're wrong in the way you're right, you're wrong even if you're right.
James MacDonald
#78. What kind of future is in God's plan? A good one to which you can look forward. That's why you can hope.
James MacDonald
#79. Most counseling cases today involve good desires that have become overgrown. In these cases most relevant passages of Scripture may not be those that rebut particular manifestations of sin, but those that remind us to love God with all our hearts.
James MacDonald
#80. God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth (John 4:24).
James MacDonald
#81. Ed Welch says that all counseling is a variation on a single theme: knowing and praying for the counselee. Of all the questions the counselor might ask, then, the central guiding question in the counselor's mind is, How can I pray for you?
James MacDonald
#82. It doesn't matter what has happened, better things are coming. God's plan produces hope in me.
James MacDonald
#83. You can't teach a person to love something. But you can get him to feel the heat of your love for something.
James MacDonald
#84. Strong men serving together thrive in the strength their friendship provides.
James MacDonald
#85. A rebellion against God, even as believers, is fueled by the toxic fumes of unbelief.
James MacDonald
#86. I challenge you to be finished with rationalizations and hypocrisy.
James MacDonald
#87. We are less interested in the number of disciples and more interested in the quality of discipleship.
James MacDonald
#88. When I know God's place, I can know my place - then things start to fall into place.
James MacDonald
#89. If our counseling is truly Christ-centered, then the topic of forgiveness will inevitably come up in the journey toward growth and change.
James MacDonald
#90. Beware of begging God for things you don't have to have.
James MacDonald
#91. the unpopularity of an obviously right action should not hinder the execution of an obviously right decision. My
James MacDonald
#92. I want nothing to be off-limits to God. He can have free access to all that I am, everywhere I go, all the time.
James MacDonald
#93. Acting like a man means developing a non-anxious presence that sees the big picture, remains calm in a crisis, and won't cave in under pressure. Godly men respond; they don't react.
James MacDonald
#94. Because in prayer I expand my sense of how I have offended God. And I thereby lower my sense of how much others have offended me. Prayer is changing me.
James MacDonald
#95. The Christian life is the life of Jesus in me by the Holy Spirit. Christianity is not me striving to live like Jesus as a "thank-you" for saving me. Christianity is Christ taking up residence in me by the Holy Spirit and living His resurrection life through me.
James MacDonald
#96. God brings tests into your life because your faith in Him
your belief that He is in control and that He is good
can be proved only in times when life is hard.
James MacDonald
#97. I'll take a bath and then I'll return. No, God is the bath.
James MacDonald
#98. In healthy churches, the pastors life, not just his words, sets the tone for the church.
James MacDonald
#99. When we experience God for who He really is, we suddenly see ourselves for who we are.
James MacDonald
#100. You don't get to a better place with God until you recognize that where you are is not as good.
James MacDonald
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