Quotes about Relationships

Theology without love is simply very bad theology.

How often do you see people as obstacles to ministry rather than the objects of it?

You can't keep the second Great Commandment unless you are first keeping the first. Only in bowing before God and submitting to his desires can we really turn to one another in peace and love. Any agenda for change that forgets this vertical causality will prove temporary and cosmetic.

We complain so much not because we have horizontal problems but because we have a vertical problem.

And not only does he live inside of you, he rules all the situations, locations, and relationships that are out of your control. He is not only your indwelling Savior, he is your reigning King. He does in you what you could not do for yourself and he does outside of you what you have no power or authority to do. And he does all of this with your redemptive good in mind. Since this is true, why would you give way to fear?

They were convinced that they had made the mistake of marrying a messed-up person; they were convinced that the other had made them do things they would not otherwise have done; and they were convinced that they had no power to make the other change, although they had tried.

Sin makes us glory thieves... At the bottom of a broken marriage, a shattered family, or a forsaken friendship you will always find stolen glory. We crave glory that does not belong to us, and we step on one another to get it. Rather than glorifying God by using the things he has given us to love other people, we use people to get the glory we love. Sin causes us to steal the story and rewrite it with ourselves as the lead, and with our lives at center stage.

The world of envy no more mixes with the world of grace than oil does with water.

You could argue that the chief reason God put parents in children's lives is so that they would know him.

Autonomous Christianity never works, because our spiritual life was designed by God to be a community project.

there's no such things as a purely horizontal complaint. If I am complaining about the insensitivity of my physician, the lack of attention I am getting from my pastor, and the fact that my friends lack sympathy and understanding, I'm not just complaining about those people but also about the God who ordained all of them to be in my life.

Love calls you to be silent when you want to speak, and to speak when you would like to be silent.