After putting this together for Saturday’s Christianity 201, I decided that it was worthy of more exposure…
Ravi Zacharias is one of the leading voices in the field of Christian apologetics, and an author of many significant books on the subject. RZIM, his organization is based in Atlanta, Georgia; and he has a daily radio program heard throughout Canada and the United States. These are in somewhat random order; so take a minute to pause between them; feel free to comment if one especially strikes you.
“We experience emptiness not when we are wearied by our trials, but when we are wearied by our happiness.”
“A man rejects God neither because of intellectual demands nor because of the scarcity of evidence. A man rejects God because of a moral resistance that refuses to admit his need for God.”
“One of the most staggering truths of the Scriptures is to understand that we do not earn our way to heaven. …works have a place–but as a demonstration of having received God’s forgiveness, not as a badge of merit of having earned it.”
“I do not believe that one can earnestly seek and find the priceless treasure of God’s call without a devout prayer life. That is where God speaks. The purpose of prayer and of God’s call in your life is not to make you number one in the world’s eyes, but to make him number one in your life. We must be willing to be outshone while shining for God. We hear very little about being smaller in our own self-estimate.”
“Philosophically, you can believe anything, so long as you do not claim it to be true.
Morally you can practice anything, so long as you do not claim that it is a ‘better’ way.
Religiously, you can hold to anything, so long as you do not bring Jesus Christ in to it.”
“There is no greater discovery than seeing God as the author of your destiny.”
“These days its not just that the line between right and wrong has been made unclear, today Christians are being asked by our culture today to erase the lines and move the fences, and if that were not bad enough, we are being asked to join in the celebration cry by those who have thrown off the restraints religion had imposed upon them. It is not just that they ask we accept, but they now demand of us to celebrate it too.”
“I think the reason we sometimes have the false sense that God is so far away is because that is where we have put him. We have kept him at a distance, and then when we are in need and call on him in prayer, we wonder where he is. He is exactly where we left him.”
“You cannot really have the world and hold on to it. It is all too temporary and the more you try to hold on to it, the more it actually holds you. By contrast, the more you hold on to the true and the good, the more you are free to really live.”
“Where the eye is focused, there the imagination finds its raw material. The right focus must be won at immense cost and discipline. Train the eye to see the good, and the imagination will follow suit.”
“It is theoretically and practically impossible to build any community apart from love and justice. If only one of these two is focused upon, an inevitable extremism and perversion follow.”
“It is a mindless philosophy that assumes that one’s private beliefs have nothing to do with public office. Does it make sense to entrust those who are immoral in private with the power to determine the nation’s moral issues and, indeed, its destiny? …. The duplicitous soul of a leader can only make a nation more sophisticated in evil.”
“Anyone who claims that all religions are the same betrays not only an ignorance of all religions but also a caricatured view of even the best-known ones. Every religion at its core is exclusive.”
“God is the shaper of your heart. God does not display his work in abstract terms. He prefers the concrete, and this means that at the end of your life one of three things will happen to your heart: it will grow hard, it will be broken, or it will be tender. Nobody escapes.”
“The tragedy is that just when we need to remember the most because we have climbed some pinnacle of blessing and success- that’s when the tendency is to turn our back upon God.
Sources:
Good Quotes, Quotation Collection, Christian Quotes, Liberty Tree, Christian Apologetics Forum, Just My Thoughts, Simply Quotastic
This is an awesome exercise to do. If there are any authors or speakers you’d like me to research, let me know, but I encourage you to do this sort of thing yourselves as well.
Thinking Out Loud 
Eva,
As much as I enjoyed reading your comment, it had nothing to do with Ravi Zacharias and nothing to do with apologetics; both of which would be suitable today. If something here triggered a more focused response, I don’t mind starting a discussion thread, but increasingly I find people don’t really grasp how the whole blog thing is designed to work.
Furthermore, the verse you sent has already been posted here: https://paulwilkinson.wordpress.com/2009/07/07/anyway/
Comment by paulthinkingoutloud — June 20, 2011 @ 9:37 pm
Some very good quotes there. I’ve never heard of him before but evidently he is well know in US and Canada.
I particularly appreciate the quote that begins “These days its not just that the line between right and wrong has been made unclear . . . ” That is so true of the way things are moving.
Comment by meetingintheclouds — June 21, 2011 @ 5:04 am
He’s an amazing person to hear live; he really commands an audience; and he’s on radio in North America daily. His own story is equally interesting. At least a couple of dozen of his books are available by order at Koorong, most indicate that they are in stock.
Comment by paulthinkingoutloud — June 21, 2011 @ 8:44 am