Matt Chandler Quotes

Anytime we're not converting to others the same glorious realities that sealed our own redemption in Christ, we're always an inch or less away from doing something wicked to somebody else - from not listening to them, not caring about them, not working hard for them, not valuing them, and all the various, ugly expressions that our lack of real love can embody. We won't give people the benefit of the doubt. We won't feel inclined to be gracious. We'll all too quickly assume our attack positions, establishing ourselves on a war footing. We'll flare up at perceived injustices and fight back with counterstrikes. We'll turn against people. We'll do it all. And know we're doing it. And sometimes, we won't even care. ~ Matt Chandler

Men of God are those who walk in the fear of the Lord. ~ Matt Chandler

Lazy people are some of the most exhausted, dissatisfied, and ill-tempered folks around because the joy-backed promises of laziness our lies. ~ Matt Chandler

Shared grief is just pride with a sad face. ~ Matt Chandler

Most people are pleasant when the world is going the way they want. But a person's character can be seen most clearly when the brokenness of the world has invaded his or her peace, when the way he or she thinks things ought to be is interrupted, disrupted, and dismantled. ~ Matt Chandler

What does it look like to live life in a manner worthy of the gospel? It looks like dying with Christ to one's self and being raised in Christ to walk in the newness of life with our brothers and sisters. It means living grace-filled lives that grant patience and mercy and gentleness for the spiritual journeys of others and a respect for the differences and idiosyncrasies we all bring to the Lord's table. ~ Matt Chandler

Heaven is not for people who just want to skip hell. Heaven is reserved for those who love Jesus, who have been rescued by Him and who long to praise Him. ~ Matt Chandler

So what does it look like to live a life worthy of the gospel of Jesus Christ? It looks like walking with, loving with, and doing life with those who are different from you. What binds you together is Christ. It looks like striving together to make Christ known. What motivates you is Christ. And it looks like standing with courage against all oppressors, natural or supernatural. What secures you is Christ. ~ Matt Chandler

nobody told me the second I gave my life to him, he would start tilling up the very deep places of my heart, revealing the darkest, nastiest things. Nor was I told about the stuff that would come to the surface so that I could deal with it and find my way to joy, through the cross. No one really preached that message. ~ Matt Chandler

The work of God in the cross of Christ strikes us as awe-inspiring only after we have first been awed by the glory of God. ~ Matt Chandler

When we join God in his plan for his global glory, we get to be a part of the cosmic take-your-kid-t o-work day. ~ Matt Chandler

Apart from worshiping God, everything becomes superficial. But when you understand the driving force behind everything, all of a sudden there's an eternal amount of joy at our disposal, because everything we do is enlightened and enlivened by the endless glory of the eternal God. ~ Matt Chandler

In 10,000 years you will not regret anything you didn't have or do in this life. ~ Matt Chandler

The sovereign God of the universe said, "This one is Mine." Over and against all the prerequisites I had invented for placing my faith in God, the Father had placed His Spirit in me. ~ Matt Chandler

God is more interested in declaring than explaining. ~ Matt Chandler

We must help men and women see the epic in the ordinary details of life. ~ Matt Chandler

It is an EVIL thing to be an expert in the weaknesses of our brothers and sisters. We need to be experts in the strengths of our brothers and sisters. ~ Matt Chandler

One of the big lies with sin is that we are already waist-deep and might as well just plunge in. ~ Matt Chandler

Preach the Gospel with your life. ~ Matt Chandler

Our churches must be fully centered on Jesus and His work, or else death and emptiness is certain, regardless of the worship style or sermon series. Without the gospel, everything in a church is meaningless. And dead. ~ Matt Chandler

From Paul's perspective, in the light of the gospel, everything must serve the purpose of the glory of Christ, so it isn't therefore a tragedy that Paul's in prison being persecuted within or unjustly maligned without. No, it is a privilege. Paul considers it a blessing to be considered worthy to suffer for the cause of Christ. This is not the kind of Christianity any of us end up with except through a profound experiencing of Christ's cross applied to our lives. ~ Matt Chandler

The general confusion is that our moral behavior is what justifies us before God. Most of us would never say that with our mouths but we feel that lie in our heart and believe it in our minds. You can be morally upright and not be a worshipper of Christ at all. ~ Matt Chandler

Forgiveness is the ultimate expression of God's unique beauty. ~ Matt Chandler

God doesn't need to have emergency meetings. He's never gathered the Trinity and asked 'What happened there'. ~ Matt Chandler

Brothers, do not be children in your thinking. Be infants in evil, but in your thinking be mature. (1 Cor. 14:20) ~ Matt Chandler

The commands of God are given, not to rob me of joy, but lead me into the fullness of joy. ~ Matt Chandler

The context of the gospel message is not our benefit or our salvation; the context of the gospel is the supremacy of Christ and the glory of God. This story of the good news is personal, but it is also cosmic. ~ Matt Chandler

To obey the commands of Scripture can finally become a delight when we see that the reasons almost always center around God's love and provision for us in Christ. ~ Matt Chandler

And so creation itself is eagerly watching the sons and daughters of the King, waiting for the last one to come into the kingdom so that the rocks and trees can be set free. ~ Matt Chandler

Discipline will never bring about love for God, but love for God will bring about discipline. ~ Matt Chandler

Moses challenged parents both to teach the faith diligently and to maximize normal encounters or ongoing discussion. ~ Matt Chandler

When the people in a church dwell together in the unity of the gospel and together pursue the building up of one another in love, they are providing fertile soil for the roots of deep joy. But ~ Matt Chandler

Love says: I've seen the ugly parts of you, and I'm staying. ~ Matt Chandler

He has broken the bonds that held us back. He has set us free. He has given us life. He has given us the empowering Spirit. So run! Make a break for it. Pursue Him and Him alone, with force, oomph, and passion. Why? To know Him. What stirs your affections for Jesus? What robs you of those affections for Christ? Answering those two questions is serious business, and there is joy to be had once you answer them! ~ Matt Chandler

But isn't the whole idea of sanctification the fact that we're not really there yet? That we're still growing and becoming? Still learning how to live the gospel out? Then why this obsession with pretending to be something for other people, who are pretending to be something for us? It's madness. You see that, don't you? The cross of Jesus, while definitely meant to include us in the family of God, is also designed to out us as people who desperately need what its forgiveness and power provide. The ~ Matt Chandler

The miracles of Jesus are signs of the right order of things. Jesus was not so much turning things upside down as turning them rightside up or, at least, giving his followers glimpses of the rightside up. The miracles of healing, deliverance, provision, and resurrection all reveal that God, through Jesus, is making all things new, that he is restoring what once was unbroken. ~ Matt Chandler

The Word of God bares weight on all ages always. ~ Matt Chandler

A lot of times, the reason we struggle to feel and receive the love of God - to see ourselves as His beloved, adopted children - is because we're not pursuing in our everyday lives those things His Word describes as being valuable and significant. ~ Matt Chandler

If the gospel is reduced because of our preferences or misunderstandings, we leave ourselves open to heresies and to attacking our brothers-in-arms. ~ Matt Chandler

When history as the world knows it no longer exists, and there are no longer any great kings or great wars or great political machinations; when there are no histories of countries left to cherish, no more dollars; when it's no longer the strong versus the weak, and all that's left is the story of the great God and King, and all has been righted, and the heroes are now the missionaries and the ministers of grace - of which every believer can be - and our eyes behold Him as He truly is ... words fail. That is where our heart ought to be. But we are not there. And yet, we are. Let us wait for that day, expectantly and eagerly. Let us fix our eyes on heaven, where our citizenship is held securely, where we are presently united to Christ in spirit. Only let us hold true to what we have already attained. And we will yet attain it. ~ Matt Chandler

So where's the rationale for Christian pride and presumption, seeing as that's all the hand you ever played in your salvation? Where does all this woof-woofing come from, like you're scaring off the bad guys, swaggering out into the octagon cage? Get over yourself. You were saved by grace alone through faith alone. Therefore, God gets all the glory alone. And when you understand this one basic issue, you'll stop going into you and start going into the Lord - just ~ Matt Chandler

The Word, the Gospel, creates not just people individually but A people collectively ~ Matt Chandler

As you consider selecting songs for your worship services, consider them in light of the truth of the gospel. Imagine the songs as teachers
because they are! If your people could understand your doctrine only through the music you sing, what would they know about God and His pursuit of us? If your people could understand your church's beliefs only through the music, what would they know? ~ Matt Chandler

Augustine in City of God pictures a resurrection in which the bodily systems we no longer need to protect ourselves can use energy to praise God. ~ Matt Chandler

God doesn't NEED raw material. He MAKES material. ~ Matt Chandler

The glory of God is that you can't outs in His grace. ~ Matt Chandler

The reality is that all God has to do is reveal himself to you,and you'll gladly join the mission in service to his kingdom. He doesn't force the issue; he just has to reveal himself as is: mighty,wondrous, gracious, loving, and radically saving. No man goes back to saltine crackers when he's had fillet mignon. ~ Matt Chandler

Men, let me plead with you: The greatest fight of your life is not lust. You may think it is, but it isn't. The greatest fight of your life will be rejecting the passivity that has infected your heart since the fall. Your natural default, especially as it pertains to sacrificial leadership of your wife, will be to mutely witness. ~ Matt Chandler

God is awesome; he doesn't need you to be awesome. He wants you to be obedient. ~ Matt Chandler

Until Christ is our treasure, any other motivation we have to suffer for him is a fool's errand. ~ Matt Chandler

More often than not, we want him to have fairy wings and spread fairy dust and shine like a precious little star, dispensing nothing but good times on everyone, like some kind of hybrid of Tinker Bell and Aladdin's Genie. But the God of the Bible, this God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, is a pillar of fire and a column of smoke. ~ Matt Chandler

Godliness is sexy in a way that physical attraction can never be. ~ Matt Chandler

Jesus says, "No one takes My life from Me. I lay it down" (John 10:18). ~ Matt Chandler

While we lament the apparent injustice of pain and suffering, how often do we forget that every good thing in a fallen world is wholly a gift of God's mercy and grace. ~ Matt Chandler

Grace does not make sin safe. Grace does make sinners safe. ~ Matt Chandler

We are saved, sanctified, and sustained by what Jesus did for us on the cross and through the power of his resurrection. If you add to or subtract from the cross, even if it is to factor in biblically mandated religious practices like prayer and evangelism, you rob God of his glory and Christ of his sufficiency. Romans ~ Matt Chandler

The great preacher Dwight Moody once quipped, "Some day you will read in the papers that D. L. Moody, of East Northfield, is dead. Don't you believe a word of it! At that moment I shall be more alive than I am now."1 ~ Matt Chandler

What has defined our faith since the beginning is open-ended gladness. ~ Matt Chandler

Sin is the native language in every ZIP code. ~ Matt Chandler

But there is a beauty even in loving without response because that kind of love is truly selfless. When we love with no expectation or promise of reciprocity, we know what it means to sacrifice and deny ourselves in ways we wouldn't otherwise. ~ Matt Chandler

Relationships, sex, and intimacy are God's ideas, and even though our selfish rebellion fractured God's good design, God reconciled everything back to himself through the life, death, and resurrection of his Son, Jesus Christ. This includes sex and relationships! Our gracious God has not left us in the dark. ~ Matt Chandler

If you just know God, have a sense of His depth of love and abundance of grace all for you in Christ, you'll consequently find wealth appropriately unimpressive and suffering appropriately untroubling. This ~ Matt Chandler

We spend so much time trying to put send to death that we don't spend enough time striving to know God deeply, trying to gaze upon the wonder of Jesus Christ and have that transform our affections to the point where our love and hope are steadfastly on Christ. ~ Matt Chandler

There isn't a violent soul on the planet that God might not save and transform for himself. ~ Matt Chandler

We've been given the covenant community because we need each other, and together we'll be more mature, experience more life, and know more joy than we ever would apart from one another. ~ Matt Chandler

Our senses are never more awakened to our need for His love than when our need is most exposed. ~ Matt Chandler

Institutions and cultures are not immortal. Humans, Christian and non-Christian, are. Compared to us, our country is a gnat. ~ Matt Chandler

This passage, by the way, doesn't just give us the comparative negative of hell, but it translates well into a theology of suffering. With these words of Jesus in mind, I can now know that it is better never to hold my children, it is better never to run my fingers through my wife's hair, it is better not to be able to brush my own teeth, it is better never to be able to drive a car, it is better to be paralyzed and never feel anything from the neck down, and it is better to have stage III anaplastic oligondendroglioma than to find myself outside the kingdom of God.
It is better never to see the sunset or the sunrise, never see the stars in the sky, never to see my daughter in her little dress-up clothes, never to see my son throw a ball - it is better never to have seen those things than to have seen those things and yet end up outside the kingdom of God. How horrible hell must be. ~ Matt Chandler

We've got to get past this idea that God is most glorified when we're rich, healthy and wealthy and we go, "Isn't God grand? Look at all He gave me." Because if anybody joins us in that and says, "Oh, if you love Jesus, you get a house and health and cars? Then I love Jesus too." Because then all of a sudden you've got a different religion. You have the religion of cars and houses, not God. ~ Matt Chandler

Where your delight is, the rest of your world is going to follow. ~ Matt Chandler

The more a church is tapped into the gospel, the more transformative power will be present by the Holy Spirit in that church. But the more that church gets away from the centrality of the gospel, the more a church will run on fumes, seeing people conformed to a pattern of religion rather than transformed by the Spirit of God. ~ Matt Chandler

Community is only as strong as what it's built upon. ~ Matt Chandler

Every single person, whether religious or irreligious, actively worships. They have identified something bigger than themselves that they believe is worthy of their money, time, and the meditations of their hearts. ~ Matt Chandler

You don't really need to make a vow to stick with someone in the best of times. The inclination to run doesn't exist then. It's the low times the covenant is made for. ~ Matt Chandler

Although there appears to be a deep desire to approach dating, marriage, and sex in a way that pleases God, there nevertheless seems to be a profound lack of wisdom and practical know-how. There is a sizable gap between our understanding of the gospel and our knowledge of the Scriptures on one hand and our application of that knowledge on the other. The sheer amount of confusion, heartbreak, and fear that I have witnessed at The Village Church in regard to romantic relationships and sex provides my primary motivation for writing this book. ~ Matt Chandler

Rather than respond to his incalculable God-ness with our slide rules and flowcharts, we would do better to worship him with reverence and awe. ~ Matt Chandler

Remember, marriage is not a contractual arrangement. True love doesn't say, "Make me feel this way if you want me to stay." That's not love. Instead, true love says in commitment, "I'm giving myself to you regardless. ~ Matt Chandler

Hospitality can be an expression of doctrine beyond the pulpit. Hospitality is the means by which the Church, from the ground level, models the gospel to others. ~ Matt Chandler

He can heal me. I believe He will. I believe I'm going to be an old surely Baptist preacher. And even if He doesn't ... that's the thing: I've read Philippians 1. I know what Paul says. I'm here let's work, if I go home? That's better. I understand that. ~ Matt Chandler

Proverbs 12:15 says, "The way of a fool is right in his own eyes, but a wise man listens to advice." The ~ Matt Chandler

Fearless faith results from holding on to Christ as our treasure. Gospel courage comes from gospel preciousness. If we truly believed that our reward in heaven far surpasses all the comfort and convenience and collections of the world, we, too, would be willing to consider them all as loss. ~ Matt Chandler

Why do we try so hard to make Jesus cool?! He doesn't need a makeover. ~ Matt Chandler

From what we know of Paul, he's a pretty tough guy. A man's man, perhaps. But he is moved ~ Matt Chandler

Worship shadows eternity and provides supernatural encouragement. ~ Matt Chandler

What stirs up in my heart is, 'Oh would we see an outpouring of the Holy Spirit.' ~ Matt Chandler

I was used to being the smartest guy in the room, and then God dropped me in a place that was well beyond me. It was painfully awesome. ~ Matt Chandler

Get over yourself. You were saved by grace alone through faith alone. Therefore, God gets all the glory alone. And when you understand this one basic issue, you'll stop going into you and start going into the Lord - just laying out all the smelly, rotten groceries, shaking all the stuff out of your pockets, bringing it all out into the open, and saying, Here, would You please get rid of this for me? ~ Matt Chandler

Really, all frustration is birthed out of unmet expectations, and so is nearly every conflict. ~ Matt Chandler

This avoidance of the difficult things of Scripture - of sinfulness and hell and God's notable severity - is idolatrous and cowardly. If a man or a woman who teaches the Scriptures is afraid to explain to you the severity of God, they have betrayed you, and they love their ego more than they love you. ~ Matt Chandler

Even though every identity marker I have can be taken from me, the grace and peace of the Trinity overflows into the life of the believer. ~ Matt Chandler

Moralistic, therapeutic deism is fine with sin hiding in a foxhole. The gospel wants to nuke the hole. ~ Matt Chandler

It's OK to not be OK - just don't stay there. ~ Matt Chandler

We don't come to Jesus because He makes life better. We come to Jesus because He's better than life. - Matt Chandler ~ Jan Elder

God does not regret saving you. There is no sin which you commit which is beyond the cross of Christ. ~ Matt Chandler

The foundation, the motivation of a life of humility, is the example of Jesus Christ's humble life and sacrificial death on the cross. ~ Matt Chandler

God is not just intensely personal. He is infinitely powerful. ~ Matt Chandler

The net that catches me when I confront traumatic events is that 10,000 years from now, they will be a reason for rejoicing. ~ Matt Chandler

Because marriage is meant to reflect the great sacrificial and sanctifying love Christ has for his church, it makes sense to connect your married life to a local Christian congregation. ~ Matt Chandler

We don't want a life-sized salvation; rather, we want an eternity-sized salvation. ~ Matt Chandler

God loves us and has adopted us exactly as we are, knowing every single thing about us. And if He's not ashamed of us, then why should we be? ~ Matt Chandler