Jonathan Martin Quotes

#1. Many times in the Old Testament, God refers to human beings as His beloved. But when God called Jesus His beloved, Jesus did something truly remarkable: He believed Him. And He lived every moment of His life fully convinced of His identity.

Jonathan Martin

#2. Us and them" religion is poison to the soul, and it often takes a lifetime of humiliation to detoxify us from it. In the Christian tradition, those who are

Jonathan Martin

#3. The cross of Jesus says to us there is nothing God won't do to bring us home
except force us to choose him. The cross is God laying down his great power so we might be compelled by the beauty of his heart. He will not coerce us, but only woo us.

Jonathan Martin

#4. Each of us have monsters that live in our depths. Like all mythological sea monsters, they are too big and too powerful to be caged. The mysteries we attempt to cage are the ones most likely to eat us. We

Jonathan Martin

#5. When we begin to live like Jesus, people will perceive our peace as an indictment on their violence; they will see our security as an indictment on their insecurity.

Jonathan Martin

#6. IT is only when we are no longer in control
because of sickness, death, or our own bad choices
that we no longer cling. The path to salvation is the path of humiliation.

Jonathan Martin

#7. Increasingly, I'm coming to believe that fear is at the heart of all sin and disaffection. Fear that God will not be enough for us; fear that the identity we've been given is somehow incomplete.

Jonathan Martin

#8. When we protect ourselves from what we fear, we also undermine our capacity for wonder.

Jonathan Martin

#9. The fact that your current station in life would seem to conspire against your usefulness to God is of no consequence.

Jonathan Martin

#10. wisdom is not having the right answers but having a proper sense of scale and perspective.

Jonathan Martin

#11. We come to the table not because we are holy, but because we are in need of His holiness. We come to the table not because we are strong, but because we are weak and in need of His strength.

Jonathan Martin

#12. Patiently, hopefully, actively we are waiting for Jesus. And yet here is the astonishing twist: As we wait for our Lord and the bodily resurrection yet to come for the departed, the world waits for us. As we long for God, the world is longing for God in us.

Jonathan Martin

#13. The experience of drowning, through the lens of faith, is what Christians call "baptism." But no matter what you call it, the sensation of going under is entirely the same.

Jonathan Martin

#14. I follow Jesus not because I don't have any doubts. I follow Jesus because in my doubt, He has always been tender with me.

Jonathan Martin

#15. With the tension churning within us, knowing all the ways the earth is not yet as God intended it to be, we are driven to pray daily: "Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven." We are not looking for an escape from the world; we are looking for the restoration of the world.

Jonathan Martin

#16. Who are you really, behind the avatars you've created for yourself? What are you covering up? What are you afraid of? What are you hoping for? Where are you going?

Jonathan Martin

#17. I know much less about why God allows people to suffer than I know that He Himself is a suffering God.

Jonathan Martin

#18. I resented the feeling that God was constantly telling me to work on the foundation, because foundation building is very unsexy, underground work.

Jonathan Martin

#19. You can spot people who don't know Jesus very well because the world they see is always so ugly. Even if they use all sorts of religious language, don't be misled - people who get touched by Jesus don't ignore the hurt and pain in the world, and yet they see so much beauty in it.

Jonathan Martin

#20. Our scars reveal who we are. The fact that we have experienced profound suffering in life - the fact that we carry what may seem to be unsightly scars - does not disqualify us from following Jesus. It may be precisely what qualifies us.

Jonathan Martin

#21. There is no walking into the kingdom of God, or into the grace of God. We can only be carried,

Jonathan Martin

#22. It turns out that knowing how loved we are by God makes all the difference in the kind of people we will become.

Jonathan Martin