Charles Colson Quotes

I know the resurrection is a fact, and Watergate proved it to me. How? Because 12 men testified they had seen Jesus raised from the dead, then they proclaimed that truth for 40 years, never once denying it. Every one was beaten, tortured, stoned and put in prison. They would not have endured that if it weren't true. Watergate embroiled 12 of the most powerful men in the world-and they couldn't keep a lie for three weeks. You're telling me 12 apostles could keep a lie for 40 years? Absolutely impossible.

It is not what we do that matters, but what a sovereign God chooses to do through us. God doesn't want our success; He wants us. He doesn't demand our achievements; He demands our obedience. The Kingdom of God is a kingdom of paradox, where through the ugly defeat of a cross, a holy God is utterly glorified. Victory comes through defeat; healing through brokenness; finding self through losing self.

You cannot live your life other than walking in the truth. Your means are as important as your ends.

But all at once I realized that it was not my success God had used to enable me to help those in this prison, or in hundreds of others just like it. My life of success was not what made this morning so glorious -- all my achievements meant nothing in God's economy. "No, the real legacy of my life was my biggest failure -- that I was an ex-convict. My greatest humiliation -- being sent to prison -- was the beginning of God's greatest use of my life; He chose the one thing in which I could not glory for His glory.

The BIBLE - banned, burned, beloved. More widely read, more frequently attacked than any other book in history. Generations of intellectuals have attempted to discredit it, dictators of every age have outlawed it and executed those who read it. Yet soldiers carry it into battle believing it more powerful than their weapons. Fragments of it smuggled into solitary prison cells have transformed ruthless killers into gentle saints

Where is the hope? I meet millions who tell me that they feel demoralized by the decay around us. Where is the hope? The hope that each of us have is not in who governs us, or what laws are passed, or what great things that we do as a nation. Our hope is in the power of God working through the hearts of people, and that’s where our hope is in this country; that’s where our hope is in life.

Tolerance once meant that we could use our reason to discern good and evil in open debate. Today tolerance has been used to call good evil and evil good.

Christians should never have a political party. It is a huge mistake to become married to an ideology, because the greatest enemy of the gospel is ideology. Ideology is a man-made format of how the world ought to work, and Christians instead believed in the revealing truth Scripture.

One of the most wonderful things about being a Christian is that I don't ever get up in the morning and wonder if what I do matters. I live every day to the fullest because I can live it through Christ and I know no matter what I do today, I'm going to do something to advance the Kingdom of God.

Remain at your post and do your duty - for the glory of God and His kingdom.

The church has been brought into the same value system as the world: fame, success, materialism and celebrity. We watch the leading churches and the leading Christians for our cues. We want to emulate the best known preachers with the biggest sanctuaries and the grandest edifices. Preoccupation with these values has perverted the church's message.

Moral crusaders with zeal but no ethical understanding are likely to give us solutions that are worse than the problems.

I meet millions who tell me that they feel demoralized by the decay around us. The hope that each of us has is not in who governs us, or what laws are passed... Our hope is in the power of God working in the hearts of people.

God doesn't want our success; He wants us. He doesn't demand our achievements; He demands our obedience.

Power is like saltwater; the more you drink, the thirstier you get.

The Bible's historical accuracy is a reminder that while "the heavens declare the glory of God," there's also plenty of evidence among the rubble and ruins.

Our society's obsession with tolerance leads to intolerance. Simply being a Christian today is an offense to our culture.

Today's marginalization of Christianity is a direct result of our failure to understand our faith as a total worldview.

What is true has never been a question to be decided by polls or popular opinion. Truth isn’t ‘democratic’—it’s something that God has written into the very fabric of nature.

In college, [Christian students] are assaulted by secular relativism, and if we don't prepare them, they will be like lambs led to slaughter.

In our day, you can mock religion in public and even get funds for doing it. But you can't show respect for religion in public - or you risk being hauled into court.

Christians need to take the lead in educating people that children are gifts, as my autistic grandson most surely is. By going down the path we're currently on, we might one day get rid of genetic diseases, but only at the cost of our own humanity.

... a widespread secularization increasingly descends into a moral, intellectual, and spiritual nihilism that denies not only the One who is the Truth but the very idea of truth itself.

What we do flows from who we are.

Knowing that we are fulfilling God's purpose is the only thing that gives rest to the restless human heart.

Great fiction can often present moral messages with greater power and clarity than instructional writing - since literature, after all, penetrates not just the intellect, but the imagination.

You are called not to be successful or to meet any of the other counterfeit standards of this world, but to be faithful and to be expended in the cause of serving the risen and returning Christ.

Few things are so deadly as a misguided sense of compassion.

Heroism is an extraordinary feat of the flesh; holiness is an ordinary act of the spirit. One may bring personal glory; the other always gives God glory.

When it comes to the culture, there's no such thing as peaceful coexistence. If we're not defending truth, fighting for Christian values in all of life, the truth will be sacrificed on the altar of mainstream secularism.

A government cannot be truly just without affirming the intrinsic value of human life.

I can work for the Lord in or out of prison.

Genuine Christianity is more than a relationship with Jesus, as expressed in personal piety, church attendance, Bible study, and works of charity. It is more than discipleship, more than believing a system of doctrines about God. Genuine Christianity is a way of seeing and comprehending all reality. It is a worldview.

Redeeming culture is the never ending mission of the church.

Frontline love. It is our one hope for breaking down barriers and for restoring the sense of community, of caring for one another, that our decadent, impersonalized culture has sucked out of us.

We must be the same person in private and in public. Only the Christian worldview gives us the basis for this kind of integrity.

The true mark of a Christian leader is trying to build up other people. Raise up other leaders!

Christians are called to redeem entire cultures, not just individuals.

Life is a mess. And theology must be lived out in the midst of that mess.

True tolerance is not a total lack of judgment. It's knowing what should be tolerated, and refusing to tolerate that which shouldn't.

The evidence for the resurrection of Jesus Christ is more powerful than anything else we believe. By His resurrection Jesus proved He is who He says He is. Be confident in this truth. Stand on the Holy Word of God. Don't sell the world a false bill of goods. Preach the word. Defend the faith. Live the faith.

Our culture has forgotten what the Founders knew: The American experiment is a moral, not just a political, exercise.

If our culture is to be transformed, it will happen from the bottom up - from ordinary believers practicing apologetics over the backyard fence or around the barbecue grill.

No, you can take it from an expert in cover-ups-I've lived through Watergate-that nothing less than a resurrected Christ could have caused those men to maintain to their dying whispers that Jesus is alive and is Lord. Two thousand years later, nothing less than the power of the risen Christ could inspire Christians around the world to remain faithful-despite prison, torture, and death.

When God wanted to defeat sin, His ultimate weapon was the sacrifice of His own Son. On Christmas Day two thousand years ago, the birth of a tiny baby in an obscure village in the Middle East was God's supreme triumph of good over evil.

Why, I wondered, is there such hostility to one faith in this Hindu culture that believes all roads lead to heaven? They should be the most tolerant of all. What is it about the Judeo-Christian message that makes it so offensive? Ironically, the Indians may understand the heart of the gospel - that Christ is King, with all that portends - better than many in the 'Christian' West.

Some say society must change in order to change people. No, people must be changed in order to change society.

The first 20 stories written about a public figure set the tone for the next 2,000 and it is almost impossible to reverse it.

Culture is religion incarnate.

People who reject transcendent authority can no longer persuade one another through rational arguments; everything is reduced to personal opinion. Debates about ideas thus degenerate into power struggles; we're left with no moral standard by which to measure the common good. For that matter, how can there be a 'common good' without an objective standard of truth?