Adam Hamilton Quotes

The devil can't make you do anything! Resistance is not futile. You can overcome temptation. Where

The sweeping message of the Bible is not a promise that those who believe and do good will not suffer. Instead the Bible is largely a book about people who refused to let go of their faith in the face of suffering.

God's role in superintending our world and our lives is neither absentee landlord nor micromanager.

The Bible calls us to love our neighbors, and to do justice and love kindness, not to indiscriminately kill one another.

In America our public schools are intended to be religiously neutral. Our teachers and schools are neither to endorse nor to inhibit religion. I believe this is a very good thing.

As a pastor, I have a deep desire to lead people to God and encourage people to pray, read the Bible, and carry their faith into every part of their lives.

I suspect that here theists and atheists would agree: Human beings have within them the ability to choose evil or good. We wake up each day facing the age-old struggle of good and evil. In some situations, mental illness clouds our judgment.

Our desire for certainty, our need to be right, and our tendency to miss the point have conspired to keep Christians from experiencing unity, and instead have led to endless divisions within the Christian faith.

Why did the earthquake and tsunami occur in Japan? Was it the act of an angry God? No, it was the result of the movement and collision of the earth's tectonic plates - a process driven by the earth's need to regulate its own internal temperature. Without the process that creates earthquake, our planet could not sustain life.

We don't need mandatory, non-sectarian prayers read over the loudspeaker to 'put God back in schools.' God never left the schools. God is still at work through the hundreds of thousands of gifted teachers and administrators, committed parents, and passionate volunteers who seek to help give our children 'a future with hope.'

Hope is a decision we make, a choice to believe that God can take the adversity, the disappointment, the heartache, and the pain of our journeys and use these to accomplish his purposes.

God's call on our lives is often surprising and usually is based on God's ability to see how our various elements in the past might fit together to accomplish God's purposes in the present.

What if God, in giving us life, invites us to collaborate in writing the story of our lives?

God's most common way of answering prayers is through people. But for that to work, Christians must pay attention and listen, we must put ourselves in a position to see others' needs, and we must respond when God calls.

Our mission at Christmas is not to get stuff for people to open on Christmas morning. It is to be people of hope who let Jesus' light shine through them.

Frequent prayer has great value. On its surface, this sounds simplistic. But if we're to keep prayer at the forefront of our ministry, we and our people have to pray again and again.

Jesus' own witness of sacrificial love and forgiveness, and his work to heal the sick and care for those in need, represent God's ways and vision for us.

We live on a planet that is amazing, beautiful, and full of wonder but not protected from powerful destructive forces of nature. We are capable of doing wonderful and selfless things but also self-absorbed and harmful things. This is the world we live in.

If God is not sending earthquakes, destroying economies and inflicting pain upon human beings, what is God doing? God works through people, calling them to help their neighbors in need. God comforts His people, walking with them even 'through the valley of the shadow of death.'

One of the hallmarks of our tendency to sin is that we feel the need to criticize, we take pleasure in gossiping, and we feel qualified to make judgments, often with very little information.

Jesus consistently put people before rules.

When sermons start where people live - their questions, struggles, and concerns - and then offer a timely and helpful word from the Scriptures, people are more interested in hearing what else the Scriptures have to say.

We share the gospel with others because we believe the gospel is not just about heaven, but about having life even here on earth.

The ideal is that your faith not be rigid and unpliable, but instead that it is capable of being stretched and remolded over time, and that your theological and spiritual life grows deeper and more mature with the passing years.

I'm convinced many of America's heroes are public school teachers and administrators. Many of these people do what they do because of their faith.

God seldom suspends the laws of nature, just as God does not remove free will to keep evil people from doing evil things.

I am a pastor, and I teach and preach the Bible to my congregation every week. But the Bible is not a manufacturer's handbook. Neither is it a science textbook nor a guidebook for public policy.

As I've taught our congregation, within the Christian faith the question of homosexuality is not a question of biblical authority, but biblical interpretation.

The earliest stories in Genesis were not written to tell primeval history. They were written to tell readers about themselves and about God.

The senseless killing of 20 children and their teachers and principal at Sandy Hook Elementary School was not part of God's grand plan. It was a thwarting of God's plan. It was the misuse of human freedom.

People are drawn to preaching that is passionate and offered with conviction. Passion comes when the preacher has spent significant time with the text, and when God has spoken through the text in a way that addresses the preacher's life first.

Basic Instructions Before Leaving Earth As fun as the acronym is, the Bible is neither basic nor simply instructions for what to do before you die.

God seeks to influence humanity. This is at the heart of the Christmas story. It is the story of light coming into the darkness, of a Savior to show us the way, of light overcoming the darkness, of God's work to save the world.

You are not indispensable to your church, but you are indispensable to your family.

Everything doesn't happen for a reason, if by this we mean evil is a part of God's plan. But God does ensure that evil will not prevail and that light will always, ultimately, overcome the darkness. If we follow God's lead, our work is to push back the darkness.

While some misuse their freedom to perpetrate evil, millions respond by feeling compelled to use their freedom to do good.

One thing that helps to stretch me is to listen to other preacher's sermons. Every year, I will listen to at least ten other preachers, both to hear God speak to me, and also to evaluate their preaching to see what I can learn and how I can improve my own preaching.

I think anger is a normal response to something horrible that someone has done, another human being has done, and to rob people of life, and that's actually healthy to have, to feel that. At some point you have to figure out, 'How do I let that go?'

And when we feel forsaken, hopeless, and in despair, we pray to one who walked this path before us.

Learning to read the Bible in the light of the times in which it was written is critical.

Husband, when you tell your wife to go for counseling alone (because you think going to see a counselor is a sign you have failed) is like having a car you love overheat and deciding it's not manly to take it to the mechanic. You can keep on driving it but eventually you will ruin the engine.

Those who are believers in God find strength from their faith in the face of suffering. They are compelled to give sacrificially to help those in need. And they have the hope that comes from knowing that, with God by their side, the tragedy they are facing is never the final word.

Many Christians do not believe God sends tornadoes. But they do believe that God walks with His children through the storms, that He sends His people to help after the storms, and that with and through God, there is always hope.