Erwin W. Lutzer Quotes

There is more grace in God's heart than there is sin in your past.

If we haven't learned to be worshipers it doesn't really matter how well we do anything else. Worship changes us or it has not been worship. To stand before the Holy One of eternity is to change. Worship begins in holy expectancy, it ends in holy obedience.

You become stronger only when you become weaker. When you surrender your will to God, you discover the resources to do what God requires.

People do not have a constitutional right to be married any more than we could say that someone has a constitutional right to a driver's license. You either meet the requirements or you don't. In the case of marriage, homosexuals do not meet the requirements of marriage.

Generally, the arguments for same-sex marriage go along these lines: 'I have a civil right.' What the homosexual movement wants to do is to hitch their agenda to the civil rights movement, but I point out that this is illegitimate for a number of reasons. Number one, no black person has ever left his black-ness or changed his black-ness, but plenty of people have come out of the homosexual movement. What we need to do is distinguish between race and behavior.

Everything that God brings into our life is directed to one purpose: that we might be conformed to the image of Christ.

When the mask of self-righteousness has been torn from us and we stand stripped of all our accustomed defenses, we are candidates for God's generous grace.

We must worship in truth. Worship is not just an emotional exercise but a response of the heart built on truth about God. "The Lord is near to all who call upon Him, to all who call upon Him in truth" (Psm. 145:18). Worship that is not based on God's Word is but an emotional encounter with oneself.

Someone has said that the marks of a strong church are wet eyes, bent knees, and a broken heart. We'll never be powerful until we let God be God and jealously guard His honor.

Within evangelicalism is a distressing drift toward accepting a Christianity that does not demand a life-changing walk with God. Many evangelicals (today) do not realize that the church has always been an island of righteousness in a sea of paganism, but as a result they turned the world upside-down.

Don't ever think that there are many ways to the Divine. Jesus is the one qualified mediator, the only qualified sacrifice, and the only qualified savior.

The activities we do for God are secondary. God is looking for people who long for communication with Him.

Better to love God and die unknown than to love the world and bea hero; better to be content with poverty than to die a slave towealth; better to have taken some risks and lost than to havedone nothing and succeeded at it.

Keep in mind that when sin is viewed superficially, it is dealt with superficially.

Often the doorway to success is entered through the hallway of failure.

No matter how many pleasures Satan offers you, his ultimate intention is to ruin you. Your destruction is his highest priority.

God has a program of character development for each of us. He wants others to look at our lives and say, He walks with God, for he lives like Christ.

How do you know you have a servant's heart? Look at your reaction when you are treated like one.

Those who have failed miserably are often the first to see God's formula for success.

Those who give much without sacrifice are reckoned as having given little.

There’s no such thing as a bitter person who keeps the bitterness to himself.

It is not enough to do God's work; it must be done in His way and for His credit.

Worship is not an external activity precipitated by the right environment. To worship in spirit is to draw near to God with an undivided heart. We must come in full agreement without hiding anything or disregarding His will.

Temptation is God's magnifying glass; it shows us how much work he has left to do in our lives.

Prayer, desperate prayer, seems so simple, but it’s a step rarely taken by those in family conflict.

Spiritual maturity is marked by being comfortable with the unpredictability of God.

Men look for better methods, but God looks for better men.

Are we as willing to go into debt for the work of God as we are for a vacation to Hawaii?

Christianity demands a level of caring that transcends human inclinations.

Mass communication can aid in personal evangelism and the development of Christians, but it cannot be a substitute for the world seeing the truth lived through us.

In salvation, God both declares us guilty and pays our debt. Only he can satisfy his own requirements. A savior less than God would be disqualified; God must do it himself.

Worship is not just an emotional exercise but a response of the heart built on truth about God.

Thanksgiving for God’s faithfulness in our pain is the indisputable proof that we believe God is a part of our pain.

Only those who see themselves as utterly destitute can fully appreciate the grace of God.

If there is one single reason why good people turn evil, it is because they fail to recognize God’s ownership over their kingdom, their vocation, their resources, their abilities, and above all their lives.

To make sure our convictions, views, and assumptions about our Creator stay based on biblical truth and not on popular consensus, we must continually check what we believe against the Scriptures.

Thank God for the way He made you. You are special, distinct, and unique. You were not made from a common mold. Thank Him that you are special.

The work that God does in us when we wait is usually more important than the thing for which we wait!

At death we cross from one territory to another, but we'll have no trouble with visas. Our representative is already there, preparing for our arrival. As citizens of heaven, our entrance is incontestable.

The most important part of us is the part that no one ever sees.

If Melanchthon were alive today, he might not weep because of controversies that surround the Lord's Supper, but he might well sorrow because of our indifference to its meaning and importance.

Forgiveness is always free. But that doesn't mean that confession is always easy. Sometimes it is hard. Incredibly hard. It is painful to admit our sins and entrust ourselves to God's care.

Our response to temptation is an accurate barometer of our love for God.

To those who say that they are Christian and gay, what we must keep in mind is that absent in that kind of lifestyle is a call to holiness, a call to celibacy and integrity. Obviously, it is a capitulation toward one's desires and the sexual sins that the Bible so strongly condemns.

A Christian life based on feeling is headed for a gigantic collapse.

Satan exploits pain by making it the central focus of the man’s (or woman’s) thoughts and attitudes.

Christianity spread rapidly during the first century because all Christians saw themselves as responsible for disseminating the gospel.

The ability to make judgments lies at the heart of Christian living. Unless we are able to judge doctrine, lifestyles, and entertainment, unless we are able to distinguish between outer appearance and inner character, we just might miss the purpose for which God placed us on this earth. We might end up accepting a stone for bread and a snake for a fish.

There are no shortcuts to spiritual maturity. It takes time to be holy.

God does not make our choices easier because temptation is his character development curriculum.