David Platt Quotes

The gospel beckons our sin-sick souls to simple trust in Christ, the only One who is truly radical enough.

There is indescribable joy, deep satisfaction and an eternal purpose in dying to ourselves and living for Christ.

If we were left to ourselves with the task of taking the gospel to the world, we would immediately begin planning innovative strategies and plotting elaborate schemes. We would organize conventions, develop programs, and create foundations ... But Jesus is so different from us. With the task of taking the gospel to the world, he wandered through the streets and byways ... All He wanted was a few men who would think as He did, love as He did, see as He did, teach as He did and serve as He did. All He needed was to revolutionize the hearts of a few, and they would impact the world.

My prayer is that people will see that following Jesus costs you everything you are and everything you have. And my prayer is that people will see that Jesus is worth it.

When I think about the history of the SS United States, I wonder if she has something to teach us about the history of the church. The church, like the SS United States, has been designed for battle. The purpose of the church is to mobilize a people to accomplish a mission. Yet we seem to have turned the church as troop carrier into the church as luxury liner. We seem to have organized ourselves, not to engage in battle for the souls of peoples around the world, but to indulge ourselves in the peaceful comforts of the world.

We don't go to Scripture for permission to do what we think is best, but for direction to do what He says is best.

If you claim to be a follower of Christ, I encourage you to consider your present commitment to a local church.

By God's design, he has wired his children for spiritual reproduction. He has woven into the fabric of every single Christian's DNA a desire and ability to reproduce.

This is how God works. He puts people in positions where they are desperate for his power, and then he shows his provision in ways that display his greatness

Why make disciples? Because heaven and hell exist, and the end of the world is coming.

The purpose of God's Word is to transform people in every country and every century into the image of God.

For God to be holy does not just mean He is without error. It means He is without equal. May it not be said of any one of us that there is not respect for the author of the universe. He is sovereign over all nature, over all nations and over every single one of our lives.

The purpose of prayer is not for the disciple to give information to God. The purpose of prayer is intimacy with God.

The gospel does not prompt you to mere reflection; the gospel requires a response. In the process of hearing Jesus, you are compelled to take an honest look at your life, your family, and your church and not just ask, 'What is he saying?' but also ask, 'What shall I do?'

Clearly our greatest need is not more regulations in order to merit salvation.

And what if Christ's call in our lives is not to comfort in our culture? What if Christ in us actually compels us to counter our culture?

Though you and I find ourselves surrounded by the lure of temporary pleasure, we must fasten our affections on the one who promises eternal treasure that will never spoil or fade. If your life or my life is going to count on earth, we must start by concentrating on heaven. For then, and only then, will you and I be free to take radical risk, knowing that what awaits us is radical reward.

Do you realize the weight of the one who has invited us to follow him? He is worthy of more than church attendance and casual association; he is worthy of total abandonment and supreme adoration.

When Jesus looked at the harassed and helpless multitudes, apparently his concern was not that the lost would not come to the Father. Instead his concern was that his followers would not go to the lost.

That is why none of these man-made catch phrases are in the Bible. You will not find a verse in Scripture where people are told to "bow your heads, close your eyes, and repeat after me." You will not find a place where a superstitious sinner's prayer is even mentioned. And you will not find an emphasis on accepting Jesus.8 We have taken the infinitely glorious Son of God, who endured the infinitely terrible wrath of God and who now reigns as the infinitely worthy Lord of all, and we have reduced him to a poor, puny Savior who is just begging for us to accept him.

The war against materialism in our hearts is exactly that: a war. It is a constant battle to resist the temptation to have more luxuries, to acquire more stuff, and to live more comfortably. It requires strong and steady resolve to live out the gospel in the middle of an American dream that indentifies success as moving up the ladder, getting the bigger house, purchasing the nicer car, buying the better clothes, eating the finer food, and acquiring more things.

The Good News of Jesus spread not through extravagant preachers, but through everyday people whose lives had been transformed by the power of Christ.

Disciples like Peter, Andrew, James, and John show us that the call to follow Jesus is not simply an invitation to pray a prayer; it is a summons to lose our lives.

Being a member of a church means so much more than standing next to someone else and singing some songs once a week. Being a member of a church means realizing that we are responsible for helping the brothers and sisters around us to grow as disciples of Jesus.

Accept him? Do we really think Jesus needs our acceptance? Don't we need him? Jesus is no longer one to be accepted or invited in but one who is infinitely worthy of our immediate and total surrender.

There is a God-designed way for us to live our lives here, and do church here, for the sake of people around the world who don't know Christ.

Making disciples by going, baptizing, and teaching people the Word of Christ and then enabling them to do the same thing in other people's lives - this is the plan God has for each of us to impact nations for the glory of Christ

God grows the Church through holiness in Christians.

The Life of Christ determines everything about us.

Therefore, when I look for a church, I look for the music that best fits me and the programs that best cater to me and my family. When I make plans for my life and career, it is about what works best for me and my family. When I consider the house I will live in, the car I will drive, the clothes I will wear, the way I will live, I will choose according to what is best for me. This is the version of Christianity that largely prevails in our culture. But it is not biblical Christianity.

The goal of the disciple of Jesus, then, is not to answer the question, "What is God's will for my life?" The goal, instead, is to walk in God's will on a moment-by-moment, day-by-day basis.

The author describes the adoption process in which he and his wife participated as "a paperwork pregnancy".

To be a Christian is to be loved by God, pursued by God, and found by God. To be a Christian is to realize that in your sin, you were separated from God's presence, and you deserved nothing but God's wrath. Yet despite your darkness and in your deadness, his light shone on you and his voice spoke to you, inviting you to follow him. His majesty captivated your soul and his mercy covered your sin, and by his death he brought you life. Do you know for sure that you are his child, not ultimately because of any good you have done - any prayers you have prayed, steps you have taken, or boxes you have checked - but solely because of the grace he has given?

No teachers (including Jesus) in the New Testament ever promise material wealth as a reward for obedience.

In every genre of biblical literature and every stage of biblical history, God is seen pouring out his grace on his people for the sake of his glory among all peoples.

God involves us in his mission not because he needs us but because he loves us.

To be a disciple of Jesus is to make disciples of Jesus.

God has designed us to depend on His Word to lead his people in ways that are utterly disproportionate to who we are.

Let's not merely contemplate the Word of God in the world around us; let's do what it says (see James 1:22-25).

May even the concept of unreached peoples be totally intolerable to us.

It is biblically, spiritually, and practically impossible to be a disciple of Christ apart from total devotion to a family of Christians.

Why not begin operating under the idea that God has given us excess, not so we could have more, but so we could give more?

When we realize we have the responsibility to teach the word, it changes everything about how we hear the Word.

It is not that he needs to stop his sexual immorality to be saved. That would mean he would need to earn his salvation. No, he needs to trust in Christ, which will result in a changed heart with a desire to obey Christ in this area of his life.

This is the reality about humanity. We are each born with an evil, God-hating heart. Genesis 8: 21 says that every inclination of man's heart is evil from childhood, and Jesus' words in Luke 11: 13 assume that we know we are evil.

Craig Bellamy's got pace, but he's also rapid as well

There is indescribable joy to be found, deep satisfaction to be felt, and an eternal purpose to be fulfilled in dying to ourselves and living for him.

If we want to know the Glory of God, if we want to experience the beauty of God, and if we want to be used by the hand of God, then we must LIVE in the WORD of God.

At the cross of Christ, God shows the full expression of both his wrath and his love, as Jesus is stricken, smitten, afflicted, wounded, crushed, and chastised for the sake of sinners.

Anyone wanting to proclaim the glory of Christ to the ends of the earth must consider not only how to declare the gospel verbally but also how to demonstrate the gospel visibly in a world where so many are urgently hungry. If I am going to address urgent spriitual need by sharing the gospel of Christ or building up the body of Christ around the world, then I cannot overlook dire physical need in the process.

And ultimately, If you sin against an infinitely holy and eternal God, you are infinitely guilty and worthy of eternal punishment.

Yet the penalty for sin is not determined by our measure of it. Instead, the penalty for sin is determined by the magnitude of the one sinned against.

What if followers of Christ stopped looking for work in places where the MOST number of Christians Christians lived and started looking for work places where the LEAST Christians lived?

God blesses his people with extravagant grace so they might extend his extravagant glory to all peoples on the earth.

We email, Facebook, tweet and text with people who are going to spend eternity in either heaven or hell. Our lives are too short to waste on mere temporal conversations when massive eternal realities hang in the balance. Just as you and I have no guarantee that we will live through the day, the people around us are not guaranteed tomorrow either. So let's be intentional about sewing the threads of the gospel into the fabric of our conversations every day, knowing that it will not always be easy, yet believing that eternity will always be worth it.

My life is a blank check before God ... No strings attached.

Our greatest need is not to try harder. Our greatest need is a new heart.

And while we stand with conviction and courage, we must live with compassion. Amid a world with massive social needs around us, ranging from desperate poverty and orphan crises and millions of girls being trafficked for sex, to the degradation of marriage and the abortion of babies, we need to speak and act with selfless love on all of these issues.

We are starting to redefine Christianity. We are giving in to the dangerous temptation to take the Jesus of the Bible and twist him into a version of Jesus we are more comfortable with. A nice, middle-class, American Jesus. A Jesus who doesn't mind materialism and who would never call us to give away everything we have. A Jesus who would not expect us to forsake our closest relationships so that he receives all our affection. A Jesus who is fine with nominal devotion that does not infringe on our comforts, because, after all, he loves us just the way we are. A Jesus who want us to be balanced, who wants us to avoid dangerous extremes, and who, for that matter, wants us to avoid danger altogether. A Jesus who brings us comfort and prosperity as we live out our Christian spin on the American dream.

God chose to set his love on the Israelites not because of any merit in them but solely because of mercy in him.

Passionate worship always leads to personal witness. Always. And what that means is ... if we're not witnessing, there's a problem with our worship. We're not seeing God for who He is! We're not realizing what He's done! We're not realizing the magnitude of what He's done for our souls!

We desperately need to explore how much of our understanding of the gospel is American and how much is biblical.

God delights in revealing Himself to you when you are bold enough to bother Him. In fact, I think He would say that the only thing that bothers Him is when you don't come to Him.

We are molding Jesus into our image. He's beginning to look a lot like us because, after all, that is who we are most comfortable with. The danger now is when we gather in our church buildings to sing, and lift up our hands in worship, we may not actually be worshiping the Jesus of the Bible. Instead, we may be worshiping ourselves.

What else am I going to do with my retirement? I just want to tell as many people about the gospel as I can." If

God stands ready to allocate his power to all who are radically dependent on Him and radically devoted to making much of Him.

BECAUSE SELF IS NO LONGER OUR GOD,
SAFETY IS NO LONGER OUR CONCERN.

[ ... ]there is no injustice in God. The injustice lies in Christians who possess the gospel and refuse to give their lives to making it known among those who haven't heard.

When we delight in something, we declare our delight. When we adore someone, we announce our adoration. Isn't this, then, the essence of worship - lifting up with our lips and our lives the one we love above everything else?

If people are dying and going to hell without ever even knowing there is a gospel, then we clearly have no time to waste our lives on the American dream.

Repentance is a rich biblical term that signifies an elemental transformation in someone's mind, heart, heart, and life.

Instead of trying to conquer sin by working hard to change our actions, we can conquer sin by trusting Christ to change our affections.

I want to be apart of something that can only be explained by the hand of God!

I had the faith of a sermon, but not the faith of his son. – John Wesley

[ ... ]not even dying a martyr's death is classified as extraordinary obedience when you are following a Savior who died on a cross.

Every saved person this side of heaven owes the gospel to every lost person this side of hell.

Multitudes of men and women at this moment think that they are saved from their sins when they are not.

We have a master who deserves radical sacrifice.

I can almost picture the disciples faces. No, not the drink-my-blood speech! We'll never get on the list of fastest-growing movements if you keep asking them to eat you!

Disciple making is not a call for others to come to us to hear the gospel but a command for us to go to others to share the gospel.

The modern-day gospel says, 'God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life. Therefore, follow these steps, and you can be saved.' Meanwhile, the biblical gospel says, 'You are an enemy of God, dead in your sin, & in your present state of rebellion, you are not even able to see that you need life, much less to cause yourself to come to life. Therefore, you are radically dependent on God to do something in your life that you could never do.

Salvation has absolutely nothing to do with human merit and absolutely everything to do with divine mercy.

The dangerous assumption we unknowingly accept in the American dream is that our greatest asset is our own ability.

The faith in Christ that saves us from our sins involves an internal transformation that has external implications.

In the process we have unnecessarily (and unbiblically) drawn a line of distinction, assigning the obligations of Christianity to a few while keeping the privileges of Christianity for us all.

As I looked at material and spiritual poverty in the world around me, including approximately 2 billion people who haven't even heard the gospel, I knew that I needed to make some major changes in my life.

I believe that the gospel and the American Dream have fundamentally different starting points. The American Dream begins with self, exalts self, says you are inherently good and you have in you what it takes to be successful so do all you can, work with everything you have to make much of yourself. The gospel begins with God, the reality that we were created to exalt his name to the ends of the earth.

You and I can choose to continue with business as usual in the Christian life and in the church as a whole, enjoying success based on the standards defined by the culture around us. Or we can take an honest look at the Jesus of the Bible and dare to ask what the consequences might be if we really believed him and really obeyed him.

People who claim to be Christians while their lives look no different from the rest of the world are clearly not Christians

We are afraid that if we stop and really look at God in his Word, we might discover that he evokes greater awe and demands deeper worship than we are ready to give him.

My biggest fear, even now, is that I will hear Jesus' words and walk away, content to settle for less than radical obedience to Him.

When God tells us to give extravagantly, we can trust Him to do the same in our lives. And this is really the core issue of it all. Do we trust Him? Do we trust Jesus when He tells us to give radically for the sake of the poor? Do we trust Him to provide for us when we begin using the resources He has given us to provide for others? Do we trust Him to know what is best for our lives, our families, and our financial futures?

The more Christ fulfills the cravings of our souls, the more he changes our taste capacities from the inside out. The more we walk with him, the more we want him. The more we taste of him, the more we enjoy him. And this transforms how we live and what we live for.

The price of our non-discipleshi p is high for those without Christ.

If we conclude that people can get to heaven apart from faith in Christ, then this would mean there is something else they can do to get to heaven. Such a conclusion would not only undercut the proven truth we saw in Romans; it would also be tantamount to saying to Jesus, Thank you for what you did on the cross, but we could have gotten to God another way.

God actually delights in exalting our inability. He intentionally puts his people in situations where they come face to face with their need for him.

The boss says that games in hand are no good unless you turn them into points. What he's getting at is that games in hand aren't much good unless you turn them into points.

Ask, could my gifts, education, career, or experience be used to spread the gospel where it's needed most?

Unreached peoples are unreached for a reason. They're hard, difficult, and dangerous to reach. All the easy ones are taken

The good news that the just and gracious Creator of the universe has looked upon hopelessly sinful men and women and has sent his Son, Jesus Christ, God in the flesh, to bear his wrath against sin on the cross and to show his power over sin in the resurrection, so that everyone who turns from their sin and themselves and trusts in Jesus as Savior and Lord will be reconciled to God forever.