Vance Havner Quotes

Jesus is all we have; he is all we need and all we want. We are shipwrecked on God and stranded on omnipotence!

We are not bearing our crosses every time we have a headache; an aspirin tablet will take care of that. What is meant is the trouble we would not have if we were not Christians.

Worse than blind leaders of the blind are bland leaders of the bland.

If you lack knowledge, go to school. If you lack wisdom, get on your knees.

God's Word is its own best argument.

God knows His own. It is well that He does, for sometimes it would be difficult for us to determine who are His!

Beware of being a religious poseur, trying to live up to a dramatized version of yourself.

Some ministers preach from notes and some don't. They have argued about it for centuries. Let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind. Two Welsh preachers were on their way to a meeting. One noticed that the other carried written outlines. 'Ah,' he remonstrated, 'you cannot carry fire on paper.' 'True,' replied his companion, 'but you can use paper to start a fire!'

If you can't pray as you want to, pray as you can. God knows what you mean.

God uses broken things. It takes broken soil to produce a crop, broken clouds to give rain, broken grain to give bread, broken bread to give strength. It is the broken alabaster box that gives forth perfume. It is Peter, weeping bitterly, who returns to greater power than ever.

If the fire of hell is not literal, it is worse than actual fire, and if the gates of the Celestial City are not actual gold, they are far finer.

Revival precedes evangelism. The church must first repent. This is the blind spot in our eye today.

We are so prone to expect to become good Christians by some sudden experience that lifts us all at once to higher ground without the gradual climb. We forget that we are to "grow in grace" and that normal growth is not a matter of fits and starts.

Today I am one day nearer Home than ever before.

There is a trend today that would put a new robe on the prodigal son while he is still feeding hogs. Some would put the ring on his finger while he still in the pigsty. Others would paint the pigsty and advocate bigger and better hog pens.

It is debatable which is causing us more harm - hot-headed ignorance or cold-hearted intellectualism.

We justify ourselves when we should judge ourselves. If we learned humility, it might spare us the humiliation.

Nothing is needed so much as a holy indignation against sin. It is true that there is not enough love for God, and one sign of it is that there is not enough hatred for sin.

Most of the notable turn out to be the not-able. God's greatest truths still belong to babes.

Faith doesn't wait until it understands; in that case it wouldn't be faith.

We are not to be isolated but insulated, moving in the midst of evil but untouched by it.

A wife who is 85 percent faithful to her husband is not faithful at all. There is no such thing as part-time loyalty to Jesus Christ.

I preach on specific sins because people are not convicted by sermons on sin in general. It was when our Lord said to the Samaritan woman, 'Go call thy husband ... ' (John 4:16), that she really faced up to her sinfulness.

Every Christian is a priest, not offering a sacrifice for sins - since that has been done once and for all - but offering his person, praise and possessions.

Not everyone who has made peace with God has realized the peace of God.

You have not really learned a commandment until you have obeyed it. The Church suffers today from Christians who know volumes more than they practice.

Our Lord holds the keys to the doors of Christian service. You don't have to chase 'key men' around if you know the Keeper of the keys!

I wouldn't cross the street to hear Ingersoll preach on the mistakes of Moses, but I'd love to hear Moses preach on the mistakes of Ingersoll!

A soft and sheltered Christianity, afraid to be lean and lone, unwilling to face the storms and brave the heights, will end up fat and foul in the cages of conformity.

Progress is a farce because man's head and hand have created wonders that stun the imagination, but his heart does not keep step and his morals undo all that his mind has wrought.

Where are the marks of the cross in your life? Are there any points of identification with your Lord? Alas, too many Christians wear medals but carry no scars.

To the average professed Christian today, living so far below normal, New Testament Christianity would be a shock.

The first step towards the evangelizing of the world is the christianizing of the church.

We are suffering from a believism that never has believed, and a receivism that never has received, and it leads to deceivism.

Simply wait upon Him. So doing, we shall be directed, supplied, protected, corrected, and rewarded.

It is only the life that is lost for Him that is found in Him.

Too many are not willing to give the Gospel a fair trial. They are too ignorant to speak wisely but not wise enough to speak ignorantly. A man is not a sinner because he is a skeptic; he is a skeptic because he is a sinner.

God is on the lookout today for a man who will be quiet enough to get a message from Him, brave enough to preach it, and honest enough to live it.

Sin has gotten men into more trouble than science can get him out of.

Some preachers ought to put more fire into their sermons or more sermons into the fire.

It would not be better if things happened to men just as they wish.

Many people are in a rut and a rut is nothing but a grave - with both ends kicked out.

What gives the Word of God authority is simply the fact that it is the word of God!

If they had a social gospel in the days of the prodigal son, somebody would have given him a bed and a sandwich and he never would have gone home.

One of the greatest errors in the church today is the artificial distinction we have created between accepting Christ as Savior and confessing Him as Lord. We have made two experiences of it, but the New Testament makes them one.

The thermometer of a church is its prayer meeting.

I have often been reminded of the wild duck that came down on migration into a barnyard and liked it so well that he stayed there. In the fall his erstwhile companions passed overhead and his first impulse was to rise and join them, but he had fed too well and could rise no higher than the eaves of the barn. The day came when his old fellow travelers could pass overhead without his even hearing their call. I have seen men and women who once mounted up with wings like eagles but are now content to live in the barnyard of this world.

The real test of your Christianity is not how pious you look at the Lord's table on Sunday, but how you act at the breakfast table at home. If it takes two cups of coffee to make you fit to live with, you had better go to the mourner's bench.

We are fighting the greatest battle of all time with the most untrained army on earth. If strict discipline is necessary in art and athletics, how can we expect to be advanced Christians and stay in kindergarten?

God isn't a talent scout looking for someone who is "good enough" or "strong enough." He is looking for someone with a heart set on Him, and He will do the rest.

Before we can strengthen believers or win the lost, we must be converted from the self-life to the Christ-life ... "Not I, but Christ."

When we sin, we are often upset, not because we have grieved the Spirit but because our pride has been injured.

The middle of the road is a poor place to walk. It is a poor place to drive. It is a poor place to live.

Civilization today reminds me of an ape with a blowtorch playing in a room full of dynamite. It looks like the monkeys are about to operate the zoo, and the inmates are taking over the asylum.

Somehow the idea has gotten around that it is unchristian to take a stand against heresy. Some of us need to read the New Testament again.

Where God guides He provides. He is not responsible for expenses not on His schedule. He does not foot the bill when we leave His itinerary.

The man who sets out to live the life worthwhile-to follow his vision and speak his heart-need not look for position, honors, prosperity.

Life is like a grain of wheat: to plant it is to recognize its value; to keep it is to destroy its value. The 'planted' Christian counts life dear not unto himself but unto God.

Sometimes your medicine bottle has on it, 'Shake well before using.' That is what God has to do with some of His people. He has to shake them well before they are ever usable.

Salvation is a helmet, not a nightcap.

The only way to meet the modern demon-stration of the powers of darkness is by a demonstration of the power of God.

People get so used to the dark that they think it is growing brighter.

No man can be a Christian by knowingly and willfully taking Christ on the installment plan, as Savior now, and Lord later.

If you stand on the Word, you do not stand with the world.

Satan is not fighting churches; he is joining them. He does more harm by sowing tares than by pulling up wheat. He accomplishes more by imitation than by outright opposition.

When a man makes alliance with the Almighty, giants look like grasshoppers.

No nation can last long when it stops praying and takes up playing.

No life is great that does not point to Christ.

The preacher who is concerned with gaining a reputation, rising in his profession, is always in bondage. The itch for bigness is a dangerous thing. It has made a castaway of many a man whom God once richly blessed. A man should desire to be neither larger nor smaller than pleases God. Better than that, he should not bother at all about how large or how small but rather how faithful he shall be.

You can't preach it like it is if you don't believe it like it was.

The early Christians condemned false doctrine in a way that sounds almost unchristian today.

In other days people chose a church on the basis of their doctrinal convictions. Now, lacking doctrinal convictions, they choose for social reasons.

Too many Christians live their Christian lives inside their heads; it never gets out through hands and feet and lips.

We've learned how to lengthen life, but we don't know how to deepen it.

It is a matter of whether one wants to get rich or be rich. We can be rich in Christ Jesus or perhaps get rich in Egypt, but we cannot do both.

Humility is not thinking meanly of oneself, but rather it means not thinking of oneself at all.

If we don't come apart; we will come apart.

Plenty of church members are shaky about what they believe, while not many are shaken by what they believe.

If you are what you've always been, you are not a Christian. A Christian is a new creation.

There are no trivial assignments in the work of the Lord.

A preacher who is too big for a little crowd would be too little for a big crowd.

To build character of purpose and integrity is our high mark, and that cannot be done in a world where there are no adverse elements.

We have suffered from the preaching of cheap grace. Grace is free, but it is not cheap. People will take anything that is free, but they are not interested in discipleship. They will take Christ as Savior but not as Lord.

Christmas is based on an exchange of gifts, the gift of God to man - His unspeakable gift of His Son, and the gift of man to God - when we present our bodies a living sacrifice.

A true preacher is best measured not by how many bouquets have been pinned on him but by how many brickbats have been pitched at him. Prophets have been on the receiving end of mud more than medals.

The detour is always rougher than the main road

Popularity has killed more prophets than persecution.

The last word of our Lord to the church was not the Great Commission. The last thing He said to the church was 'Repent.' He said that to five out of seven.

People used to blush when they were ashamed. Now they are ashamed if they blush. Modesty has disappeared and a brazen generation with no fear of God before its eyes mocks at sin. We are so fond of being called tolerant and broadminded that we wink at sin when we ought to weep.

The Word of God is either absolute or obsolete.

When we are weakest and most despondent, Jesus is most considerate. When there is a break in our progress or we have a spell of depression, he sees the whole of our lives and in the light of that He is longsuffering with discordant details.

Blessed is that Christian who can accept at the start by simple faith that which others reach only through years of questioning and reach it only then because they give up trying to analyze it and decide to accept it.

We need to be preaching a dynamic Gospel and living firecracker lives.

Too many Christians are stuffing themselves with gospel blessings while millions have never had a taste.

The primary qualification for a missionary is not love for souls, as we so often hear, but love for Christ.

We are not going to move this world by criticism of it nor conformity to it, but by the combustion within it of lives ignited by the Spirit of God.

The gospel is for lifeboats, not showboats, and a man must make up his mind which boat he is going to operate.

When the Lord's sheep are a dirty grey, all black sheep are more
comfortable.

Abraham did not know where he was going immediately, but he knew where he was going ultimately. He did not know the Whither but he knew the Whom. He believed God, and, being sure of his destiny, he did not worry about his destination.

If you are a Christian, you are not a citizen of this world trying to get to heaven; you are a citizen of heaven making your way through this world.