Mark Driscoll Quotes

Stop looking for the path of least resistance and start running down the path of greatest glory to God and good to others, because that's what Jesus, the Real Man, did.

You don't need to beat yourself up in order to make God love you. Jesus already took your beating.

A single woman should only marry a man she can follow: Ladies if you are single, be very, very careful who you date and marry. Don't just date a man who you can put up with, marry a man you can trust, you'll follow his leadership, you'll respect him, he's saved, he's godly. The last thing you want is some guy you don't trust, he's not wise, he doesn't do his homework, he's harsh, he's inconsiderate, he's immature, he's a boy, you're more his mother than you are his mate, Real danger...real danger...

Our identity is not in our joy, and our identity is not in our suffering. Our identity is in Christ, whether we have joy or are suffering.

You have been told that God is a loving, gracious, merciful, kind, compassionate, wonderful, and good sky fairy who runs a day care in the sky and has a bucket of suckers for everyone because we're all good people. That is a lie... God looks down and says 'I hate you, you are my enemy, and I will crush you,' and we say that is deserved, right and just, and then God says 'Because of Jesus I will love you and forgive you.' This is a miracle.

Everyone has something to teach you if you are humble enough to learn.

Tragically, we live in a day when offense to God doesn't matter nearly as much as offense to others.

While this may look loving, when we struggle with an idol of dependence, we’re in fact not loving people as much as we’re using them to fulfill our need to belong, be liked, and be desired. This explains why some friends and family members can be so demanding, smothering, and needy. It also explains why we’re so easily inflated by praise and deflated by criticism. It’s as if others have the ability to determine our identity for that day based on a word or even a glance

Study the Bible like a soldier on a mission, not a scholar on a sabbatical.

God loves you enough to receive you as you are. He loves you too much to keep you as you are.

Looking for a word from the Lord? Believe that he has already spoken, and read what he's already written.

The church was custom built by Jesus, and we are all works in progress. We do not expect people to get their sin in order before attending church any more than a hospital expects people to get healed before they show up.

Idols tend to be good things that you have turned into god things, which therefore become bad things

Faith is not just what we believe internally. It's how we behave externally.

If you really want to be a rebel, get a job, cut your grass, read your bible, and shut up. Because no one is doing that.

Don't cohabitate. Don't fornicate. Don't look at pornography. Don't create a standard of beauty. Have your spouse be your standard of beauty. This is one of the great devastating effects of pornography: you lust after people and compare your spouse to them. It's impossible to be satisfied in your marriage if you don't have a standard that is biblical; that standard is always your spouse.

You can't meet Jesus and not change. If you haven't changed, you haven't met the real Jesus.

So let me tell you this, when it comes to...trying to introduce other people to Jesus. Don't get mad at them: it's not because they're stupid. It's because they're blind. Yelling louder, arguing harder, pushing firmer won't make someone who is blind see. Pray for them, speak to them, care for them.

Truthless times need timeless truths.

The Bible is not a book of principles to live by but rather a Person to live for.

Anxiety is not to be managed it is a sin that needs to be repented of

My desire as a Christian pastor is to see churches raised up as communities of grace ruled by Jesus and led by his gloriously masculine men who work their jobs, eat their meat, drink their beer, romance their wives, study their Bible, and raise their kids in glory and joy

...Seattle has unleashed this weird phenomenon on the world called the coffee shop. And the coffee shop, thanks to Starbucks, is the place where socially isolated, lonely, needy people gather together to ignore one another.

One of the most astonishing things about Jesus is that as God he actually chose to come into our fallen, sick, twisted, unjust, evil, cruel, painful world and be with us to suffer like us and for us. Meanwhile, we spend most of our time trying to figure out how to avoid the pain and evil of this world while reading dumb books about the rapture just hoping to get out.

I know who made the environment and he's coming back and going to burn it all up. So yes, I drive an SUV.

Marriage includes a spouse, and often children. But the goal, center, and purpose of marriage is not self, spouse, or children. The ultimate goal of marriage and family is the glory of God. Only when marriage and family exist for God's glory - and not to serve as replacement idols - are we able to truly love and be loved. Remember, neither your child nor your husband (or wife) should be who you worship, but instead who you worship with.

Past: Jesus saved us from the penalty of sin. Present: He saves us from the power of sin. Future: He will save us from the presence of sin.

On the Sabbath day, we are remembering that my relationship with God did not begin with what I've done, it is not sustained by what I do, and it is not guaranteed to the end by my effort or work. I'm saved from beginning to end by Jesus' work.

This world needs more than good works. It needs good news. Good works come out of the good news.

No one can remain neutral regarding Jesus' resurrection. The claim is too staggering, the event too earthshaking, the implications too significant and the matter too serious. We must either receive it or reject it as truth for us. To remain indifferent or undecided is to reject it.

You know what I find amazing is within Christianity it is not uncommon to find [married] people who don't have sexual intimacy, don't have emotional intimacy, don't have spiritual intimacy, don't pray together, don't do their life together, don't put their schedules together, don't put their budgets together, but they don't get divorced. So they can pat themselves on the back and say, 'We're good Christians.' They're divorced in everything but the paperwork.

There is a pile of dead bodies behind the Mars Hill bus, and by God's grace, it'll be a mountain by the time we're done.

While it only takes one spouse to be friendly, it takes both spouses to be friends. When both spouses are unfriendly, the marriage is marked by conflict and coldness. When one spouse is friendly and the other is unfriendly, the marriage is marked by selfishness and sadness. But when both spouses each make a deep, heartfelt covenant with God to continually seek to become a better friend, increasing love and laughter mark the marriage.

Tribes must be our homes, not our prisons.

A wife who lets herself go and is not sexually available to her husband in the ways that the Song of Songs is so frank about is not responsible for her husband's sin, but she may not be helping him either.

Repentance keeps sin from condemning us because Jesus died and scorned the shame.

Every great cause was initiated by someone whose heart was broken.

Much of spirituality today is an effort to change God to suit us. But he's not going to become more like us, we need to become more like him.

Are you letting culture, not scripture, determine your sexuality, how you date, how you present yourself, how you engage in certain relationships with members of the opposite sex? We need to be very clear that the way we do life is different than the rest of the world.

Even a cursory reading of the book of Ecclesiastes shows that culture is a stationary bike that each generation climbs on in hopes of getting somewhere only to die and fall off so that the new young stud can take his turn peddling and, like a fool, make pronouncements about his progress. We would be wise to see postmodernity as simply the new guy on the old bike and not mistake cultural change for kingdom progress.

I cannot worship the hippie, diaper, halo Christ because I cannot worship a guy I can beat up.

Sometimes prayer moves the hand of God, and sometimes prayer changes the heart of the person who is praying.

If you're not a Christian, you're going to hell. It's not unloving to say that. it's unloving not to say that.

The problem with our churches today is that the lead pastor is some sissy boy who wears cardigan sweaters, has The Carpenters dialed in on his iPod, gets his hair cut at a salon instead of a barber shop, hasn’t been to an Ultimate Fighting match, works out on an elliptical machine instead of going to isolated regions of Russia like in Rocky IV in order to harvest lumber with his teeth, and generally swishes around like Jack from Three’s Company whenever Mr. Roper was around.

Being single is not easy. But neither is being married. They are just difficult in different ways as God uses everything in our life to make us more like Jesus, who happened to live a perfect life while single.

Forgiveness is both a decision and a process.

Everything may not be OK but if God is with you, you will be OK.

Some will tell you that there are multiple worldviews. The Bible says we have only 2: the Truth and the Lie.

Worship is living our life individually and corporately as continuous living sacrifices to the glory of a person or thing.

Any religious person who says he does not really need human friends because God is his Friend is calling God a liar because He's the One Who says we also need human friends.