Timothy Keller

A faith without some doubts is like a human body with no antobodies in it. People who blithely go through life too busy or indifferent to ask the hard questions about why they believe as they do will find themselves defenseless against either the experience of tragedy or the probing questions of a smart skeptic. A person's faith can collapse almost overnight if she failed over the years to listen patiently to her own doubts, which should only be discarded after long reflection.

God will only give you what you would have asked for if you knew everything he knows

To love our success more than God and our neighbor hardens the heart, making us less able to feel and to sense.

Jesus didn't come to tell us the answers to the questions of life, he came to be the answer.

A rich, vibrant, consoling, hard-won prayer life is the one good that makes it possible to receive all other kinds of goods rightly and beneficially. [Paul] does not see prayer as merely a way to get things from God but as a way to get more of God himself.

Everyone says they want community and friendship. But mention accountability or commitment to people, and they run the other way.

When we grasp that we are unworthy sinners saved by an infinitely costly grace, it destroys both our self-righteousn ess and our need to ridicule others.

To pray is to accept that we are, and always will be, wholly dependent on God for everything.

It is impossible to forgive someone if you feel superior to him or her.

Jesus came into this world not as a philosopher or a general but as a carpenter. All work matters to God.

Because creation was made in the image of a God who is equally one and many, the human race will finally be reunited and our racial and cultural diversity will remain intact in the renewed world. The human race finally lives together in peace and interdependence. Glory to God in the highest goes with peace on earth.

If you say: I believed in God, I trusted God and He didn't come through - You only trusted God to meet your agenda.

If God is treated as God during suffering, then suffering can reveal and present him in all his greatness.

Bad evangelism says: I'm right, you're wrong, and I would love to tell you about it

Job never saw why he suffered, but he saw God, and that was enough.

In the secular view, suffering is never seen as a meaningful part of life but only as an interruption.

Without the gospel we hate ourselves instead of our sin.

To be a Christian is a standing, a legal position. It means to be a child of God. You are or you are not, there is no try.

A job is a vocation only if someone else calls you to do it for them rather than for yourself. And so our work can be a calling only if it is reimagined as a mission of service to something beyond merely our own interests. Thinking of work mainly as a means of self-fulfillment and self-realization slowly crushes a person.

...Singles, too, must see the penultimate status of marriage. If single Christians don't develop a deeply fulfilling love relationship with Jesus, they will put too much pressure on their DREAM of marriage, and that will create pathology in their lives as well.

Sin is not just breaking the rules, it is putting yourself in the place of God as Savior, Lord, and Judge… There are two ways to be your own Savior and Lord. One is by breaking all the moral laws and setting your own course, and one is by keeping all the moral laws and being very, very good.