Richard Stearns Quotes

The beautiful simplicity of our faith is that it distills down to the exact same bottom line for both the brilliant theologian and the five-year-old child: love God and love each other - period.

If we truly love God, we will express it by loving our neighbors, and when we truly love our neighbors, it expresses our love for God.

It’s not what you believe that counts; it’s what you believe enough to do.

The idea behind The Hole in Our Gospel is quite simple. It's basically the belief that being a Christian, or a follower of Jesus Christ, requires much more than just having a personal and transforming relationship with God. It also entails a public and transforming relationship with the world.

Can you imagine the impact on our own culture if American Christians began using their riches as if they belonged to God?

To be a disciple means forsaking everything to follow Jesus, unconditionally, putting our lives completely in His hands. When we say that we want to be His disciple, yet attach a list of conditions, Jesus refuses to accept our terms. His terms involve unconditional surrender.

I believe that this could very well be looked back on as the sin of our generation...I believe that our children and their children, 40 or 50 years from now, are going to ask me, what did you do while 40 million children became orphans in Africa?

We must move beyond an anemic view of our faith as something only personal and private, with no public dimension, and instead see it as the source of power that can change the world.

What has God given you? Moses had a stick, David had a slingshot, and Paul had a pen. Mother Teresa possessed a love for the poor; Billy Graham, a gift for preaching; and Joni Eareckson Tada, a disability. What did they have in common? A willingness to let God use whatever they had, even when it didn't seem very useful. If you will assess what you have to offer in terms of your time, your treasure, and your talents, you will have a better understanding of how you might uniquely serve.

What if we actually demonstrated God's love for the world instead of just talking about it?

What if there are children who will suffer somehow because I failed to obey God? What if my cowardice costs even one child somewhere in the world his or her life?

And when we go to church, read our Bibles, have our quiet times, and go to Christian conferences, we too can build some impressive spiritual muscles, but unless we use those spiritual muscles to change our lives, build the church, love our neighbors, and care for the sick and the poor, we...are just posers. Let us not take God's truth for granted.

The meaning, purpose, and significance of our lives are found only by aligning our lives with God's purposes, in lives committed to following Jesus Christ.

Don't fail to do something just because you can't do everything

God never asks us to give what we do not have . . . But he cannot use what we will not give.

If we are not personally engaged in God's great mission in the world, then we have missed the very thing he created us to do. We are like birds meant to fly but living in a cage; fish meant to swim but floundering on the beach. It makes sense when you think about it. If the Author of the universe created us to play a key role in his unfolding drama but we have failed to find our place in that story, then of course we would feel incomplete.

Love always requires tangible expression. It needs hands and feet.

Even a small match lit in a place of total darkness gives off a blinding light.

If I have learned anything about the purpose, meaning, and significance of life over the years, I have learned that, for a Christian, it is not found in any job, even a job like mine. It is not found in any human relationship, no matter how important. Nor is it found in any accomplishment, no matter how significant. Meaning, purpose, and significance are found only by aligning our lives with God's purposes in lives committed to following Jesus Christ.

If we are ever truly going to find purpose and meaning in our lives, we first have to rise above the trees to rediscover the forest - we have to understand what God is doing in the world and how we fit in.