E. Stanley Jones Quotes

Your capacity to say "No" determines your capacity to say "Yes" to greater things.

Where sin has abounded in me, Grace now much more abounds in me. I live by that 'much more.'

Our intentions may be very good, but, because the intelligence is limited, the action may turn out to be a mistake - a mistake, but not necessarily a sin, for sin comes out of a wrong intention.

If we know how to pray, we know how to live.

When man listens, God speaks; when man obeys, God acts; when man prays, God empowers.

We find, sooner or later, that in prayer we either abandon ourselves or we abandon prayer.

The only thing you believe in is the thing you believe in enough to practice. Your creed is your deed.

Our actions are the results of our intentions and our intelligence.

You cease to move into yourself, away from others. You give up your antagonism. You begin to move toward others in love. God moved toward you in gracious, outgoing love, and you move toward others in that same outgoing love.

If you don't surrender to God, don't think you don't surrender. Everybody surrenders
to something.

A Rattlesnake, if Cornered will become so angry it will bite itself. That is exactly what the harboring of hate and resentment against others is - a biting of oneself. We think we are harming others in holding these spites and hates, but the deeper harm is to ourselves.

You don't grow old. You get old by not growing.

In the pure, strong hours of the morning, when the soul of the day is at its best, lean upon the window sill of God and look into his face, and get the orders for the day. Then go out into the day with the sense of a hand upon your shoulder and not a chip.

In the ordinary church, it is suppressed by respectability, by a desire to appear better than we really are.

Victorious living does not mean freedom from temptation, nor does it mean freedom from mistakes.

I have surrendered to God; therefore I surrender to nothing else.

Abundant living means abundant giving.

The early Christians did not say, in dismay, 'Look what the world has come to,' but, in delight, 'Look what has come to the world!

Don't wait for some miracle to be performed on you from without, lifting you above your fears and doubts and self-centeredness. You help God from within by turning in outgoing love to others, and miraculously your fears and doubts and self-centeredness will vanish. The miracle starts within, not from without.

There are two ways to be rich - one in the abundance of your possessions and the other in the fewness of your wants.

When you pray, you begin to feel the sense of being sent.

When we think of the ideal, we do not add virtue to virtue, but think of Jesus Christ, so that the standard of human life is no longer a code, but a character.

When we say we begin with God, we begin with our idea of God, and our idea of God is not God. Instead, we ought to begin with God's idea of God, and God's idea of God is Christ

Prayer means that the total you is praying. Your whole being reaches out to God, and God reaches down to you.

Earth's blackest day and earth's brightest day are only three days apart.

I see that I am inwardly fashioned for faith and not for fear. Fear is not my native land; faith is. I am so made that worry and anxiety are sand in the machinery of life; faith is oil. I live better by faith and confidence than by fear and doubt and anxiety. In anxiety and worry my being is gasping for breath - these are not my native air. But in faith and confidence I breath freely - these are my native air.

Continuing a Lenten series on prayer: Prayer is co-operation with God. It is the purest exercise of the faculties God has given us - an exercise that links these faculties with the Maker to work out the intentions He had in mind in their creation.

Some have said that the power of a Redeemer would depend upon two things: first, upon the richness of the self that was given; and second, upon the depths of the giving. Friend and foe alike are agreed on the question of the character of Jesus Christ.

In our Ashrams of East and West, places of spiritual retreat, we begin with what we call "The Morning of the Open Heart," in which we tell our needs ... We give four or five hours to this catharsis. The reaction of one member, who listened to it for the first time, was: "Good gracious, have we all the disrupted people in the country here?" My reply was: "No, you have a cross section of the church life honestly revealed." In the ordinary church, it is suppressed by respectability, by a desire to a appear better than we really are.

Recognize negativism and inferiority attitudes as enemies - do not try to dress them as your friends. you will be tempted to look upon negativism as prudence and inferiorities as humility. Strip off those false cloaks and see these attitudes in their nakedness - as enemies of you and of your possibilities.

The inner life is bruised by a running against the laws of the Kingdom. The bruises are guilt complexes, a sense of inferiority, of missing the mark, of being out of harmony with God and with oneself, a sense of wrongness. Divine forgiveness wipes out all that sense of inner hurt and condemnation. Brings a sense of at-homeness- at home with God and oneself and with life. The universe opens its arms and takes one in. You are accepted- by God, by yourself, and by life. All self-loathing, self-rejection, all inferiorities drop away. You are a child of God; born from above, you walk the earth, a conqueror, afraid of nothing. Healed at the heart, you can say to life: Come on, I'm ready for anything.

I never said the way of Christ is easy. Are you prepared to let go of everything He would not approve?

The action carries a sense of incompleteness and frustration, but not of guilt. Victorious living does not mean perfect living in the sense of living without flaw, but it does mean adequate living, and that can be consistent with many mistakes.

Nothing is ever really yours until you share it.

The universe does not make sense without God.

To talk with God, no breath is lost. Talk on! To walk with God, no strength is lost. Walk on! To wait on God, no time is lost. Wait on!

When prayer fades out, power fades out. We are as spiritual as we are prayerful; no more, no less.

The love of God invades me, the peace of God pervades me, the will of God persuades me, and I am wholly His.

Surrender the thing you fear into the hands of God. Turn it right over to God and ask Him to solve it with you. Fear is keeping things in your own hands; faith is
turning them over into the hands of God.

A nail-pierced hand holds the sceptre of the universe, and my knees bend before him.

Being born in a Christian home does not make you a Christian.

I have only to be true to the highest I know-success of failure is in the hand of God.

When Satan attacks you, command him in the Name of Jesus to bend his neck. On the back of it you'll find there's a nail scarred foot print!

The conscious mind determines the actions, the unconscious mind determines the reactions; and the reactions are just as important as the actions.

To live by worry is to live against reality

All coming to Jesus has the feeling of homecoming upon it. All going away from Him has the sense of estrangement upon it. The rich young ruler went away from Jesus "sorrowful." Everybody does. Not only estrangement from God, but also estrangement from oneself. And the universe! And from life! You are not at home with life, unless you are at home with Life. And Jesus is Life!

Many live in dread of what is coming. Why should we? The unknown puts adventure into life ... The unexpected around the corner gives a sense of anticipation and surprise. Thank God for the unknown future.

To implant fear in the minds of children is a crime. If parents try to rule the child by fear, then fear rules the child.

Prayer is aligning ourselves with the purposes of God.

If you don't make up your mind, your unmade mind will unmake you.

Prayer is commitment. We don't merely co-operate with God with certain things held back within. We, the total person, co-operate. This means that co-operation equals committment.

An hour spent in the presence of God brings the purest joy known to man.

Obviously God must guide us in a way that will develop spontaneity in us. The development of character, rather than direction in this, that, and the other matter, must be the primary purpose of the Father. He will guide us, but he won't override us. That fact should make us use with caution the method of sitting down with a pencil and blank sheet of paper to write down the instructions dictated by God for the day. Suppose a parent would dictate to the child minutely everything he is to do during the day. The child would be stunted under that regime. The parent must guide in such a manner, and to the degree, that autonomous character, capable of making right decisions for itself, is produced. God does the same.

We are not quite sure that the Sermon on the Mount is the Sermon for the mart. We are not
sure, and an unsure place is an unsafe place*
We must go on or go back. We must be more
Christian or less.

God, to redeem us at the deepest portion of our nature - the urge to love and be loved - must reveal His nature in an incredible and impossible way. He must reveal it at a cross.

If I throw out a boathook from the boat and catch hold of the shore and pull, do I pull the shore to me, or do I pull myself to the shore? Prayer is not pulling God to my will, but the aligning of my will to the will of God.

Worry and anxiety are sand in the machinery of life; faith is the oil.

If the Holy Spirit can take over the subconscious with our consent and cooperation, then we have almighty Power working at the basis of our lives, then we can do anything we ought to do, go anywhere we ought to go, and be anything we ought to be.

In the prayer time, the battle of the spiritual life is lost or won.

A reduced Christ is the same as a rejected Christ.

To pass from estrangement from God to be a son of God is the basic fact of conversion. That altered relationship with God gives you an altered relationship with yourself, with your brother man, with nature, with the universe.

At the cross God wrapped his heart in flesh and blood and let it be nailed to the cross for our redemption.

When the depths are upheld by the Holy Spirit, then the reaction is Christian.