Francis Chan

“Because when you’re wildly in love with someone, it changes everything.”

“It's much less demanding to think about God's will for your future than it is to ask Him what He wants you to do in the next ten minutes.”

“In the craziness of our world, it takes tremendous effort to find a quiet place. It takes time to quiet your mind and your heart before the Lord.”

“Christ said it is better for us that the Spirit came, and I want to live like I know that is true. I don't want to keep crawling when I have the ability to fly.”

“All my life I've heard people say, 'God loves you.' It's probably the most insane statement you could make to say that the eternal Creator of this universe is in love with me. There is a response that ought to take place in believers, a crazy reaction to that love. Do you really understand what God has done for you? If so, why is response so lukewarm?”

“...part of your responsibility in the body of Christ is to help set the pace for the church by listening and obeying and living Christ.”

“She cannot imagine spending her life more comfortable when so many people are desperate and dying throughout our world.”

“...there can never be intimacy if [someone] is always trying to pay God back or work hard enough to be worthy.”

“The Bible teaches that true joy is formed in the midst of the difficult seasons of life.”

“God doesn't want religious duty. He doesn't want a distracted, half-hearted, 'Fine, I'll read a chapter...now are You happy?' attitude. God wants His word to be a delight to us, so much that we meditate on it day and night.”

“I find myself acting differently with God. Often, when I pray, I will phrase my sentences in a way that makes me sound better. I will try to soften my sins, or touch up my true feelings before laying them before God. How foolish it is for me to be completely honest with my wife about my shortcomings, but try to fool God! God wants us to be open with Him. He definitely doesn't want us to 'season our wretchedness' as we would raw meat. He knows what we are, that we are disgusting, that all we are doing is trying to make ourselves feel better. God desires a true intimacy with each of us, and that comes only when we trust Him enough to be truly transparent and vulnerable. People who are obsessed are raw with God; they do not attempt to mask the ugliness of their sins or their failures. Obsessed people don't put it on for God; He is their safe place, where they can be at peace.”

“Non-churchgoers tend to see Christians as takers rather than givers. When Christians sacrifice and give wildly to the poor, that is truly a light that glimmers. The Bible teaches that the church is to be that light, that sign of hope, in an increasingly dark and hopeless world.”

“Tears comes to my eyes when I think about some of God's people I have had the privilege to meet in the past few years. These are people with families, with dreams, people who are made in God's image as much as you and I are. And these people are suffering. Many of them are sick, some even dying, as they live out their lives in dwellings that we would not consider good enough for our household pets. I am not exaggerating. Much of their daily hardship and suffering could be relieved with access to food, clean water, clothing, adequate shelter, or basic medical attention. I believe that God wants His people, His church, to meet these needs. The Scriptures are filled with commands and references about caring for the poor and for those who cannot help themselves. The crazy part about God's heart is that He doesn't just ask us to give; He desires that we love those in need as much as we love ourselves. That is the core of the second greatest command, to 'love your neighbor as yourself' (Matthew 22:39). He is asking that you love as you would want to be loved if it were your child who was blind from drinking contaminated water; to love the way you would want to be loved if you were the homeless woman sitting outside the cafe; to love as though it were your family living in the shack slapped together from cardboard and scrap metal...”

“...I question whether many American churchgoers are really in love with God because they are so hesitant to do anything for Him.”

“A person who is obsessed with Jesus knows that the sin of pride is always a battle. Obsessed people know that you can never be 'humble enough,' and so they seek to make themselves less known and Christ more known [Matthew 5:16].”

“It's pride, plain and simple, that keeps me from giving God all the glory and keeping some of it for myself. It is a battle we all fight in some form or another, some of us daily or even hourly.”

“It hit me that the students were talking about me, not God. I was standing before a holy God and robbing Him of the glory that was rightfully His.”

“Sometimes I feel like when I make decisions that are remotely biblical, people who call themselves Christians are the first to criticize and say I'm crazy.”

“We are consumed by safety. Obsessed with it, actually. Now, I'm not saying it is wrong to pray for God's protection, but I am questioning how we've made safety our highest priority. We've elevated safety to the neglect of whatever God's best is.”

“The idea of holding back certainly didn't come from Scripture.”

“Life is comfortable when you separate yourself from people who are different from you. That epitomizes what my life was like: characterized by comfort. But God doesn't call us to be comfortable. He calls us to trust Him so completely that we are unafraid to put ourselves in situations where we will be in trouble if He doesn't come through.”

“God would have to come through for them because they had nothing else to fall back on. This place of trust isn't a comfortable place to be; in fact, it flies in the face of everything we've been taught about proper planning. We like finding refuge in what we already have rather than in what we hope God will provide. But when Christ says to count the cost of following Him, it means we must surrender everything. It means being willing to go without an extra tunic or a place to sleep at night, and sometimes without knowing where we are going.”

“The temptation to level off [your giving] increases with each passing year. Pride tells you that you've sacrificed more than others. Fear tells you it's time to worry about the future. Friends say you've given enough, that it's someone else's turn now. But Jesus says to keep on, and you will see more of God.”

“We are loaded down with too many good things, more than we could ever need, while others are desperate for a small loaf. The good things we cling to are more than money; we hoard our resources, our gifts, our time, our families, out friends....how ludicrous it is to hold on to the abundance God has given us and merely repeat the words 'thank you'.”

“Giving that is not motivated by love is worth nothing.”

“True love requires sacrifice.”

“Are you ready and willing to make yourself nothing? To take the very nature of a servant? To be obedient unto death?.... [H]ow are those intentions manifested in your life?”

“Do you want to see God more than you desire security?”

“[I]t's impossible to please God in any other way that wholehearted surrender...”

“If you merely pretend that you enjoy God or love Him, He knows. You can't fool Him; don't even try. Instead, tell Him how you feel. Tell Him that He isn't the most important thing in this life to you, and that you're sorry for that. Tell Him that you've been lukewarm, that you've chosen ___________ over Him time and time again. Tell Him that you want Him to change you, that you long to genuinely enjoy Him. Tell Him how you want to experience true satisfaction and pleasure and joy in your relationship with Him. Tell Him you want to love Him more than anything on this earth. Tell Him you want to treasure the kingdom of heaven so much that you'd willingly sell everything in order to get it. Tell Him what you like about Him, what you appreciate, and what brings you joy. 'Jesus, I need to give myself up. I am not strong enough to love You and walk with You on my own. I can't do it, and I need You. I need You deeply and desperately. I believe You are worth it, that You are better than anything else I could have in this life or the next. I want You. And when I don't, I want to want You. Be all in me. Take all of me. Have Your way with me'.”

“In reality, not one of us will ever be worthy. It is useless to attempt earning it; you'll never feel ready. It is unknown and uncomfortable. But there really is a God who forgives everything and loves endlessly.”

“When we work for Christ out of obligation, it feels like work. But when we truly love Christ, our work is a manifestation of that love, and it feels like love.”

“When I look at my relationship with God as a chore, a sacrifice, then I am getting the glory- not God. I keep saying, 'Look what I have sacrificed for God...' or 'Listen to what I do for for God. It's hard, exhausting really...'.”

“The fact is, I need God to help me love God. And if I need His help to love Him, a perfect being, I definitely need His help to love other, fault-filled humans.”

“When loving Him becomes obligation, one of the many things we have to do, we end up focusing even more on ourselves.”

“There is so often a great disparity between how we feel about faith and how we are meant to feel. Why do so few people genuinely find joy and pleasure in their relationship with God? Why do most people feel they have to either pay God back for all He's done (buy His love) or somehow keep making up for all their inadequacies and failures (prove their love)?”

“Do you understand what this passage is saying? When we love, we're free! We don't have to worry about a burdensome load of commands, because when we are loving, we can't sin.”

“....the actions driven by fear and guilt are not an antidote to lukewarm, selfish, comfortable living. I hope you realize that the answer is love.”

“[We say things like] 'Well, I'm not sure You are worth it....You see, I really like my car, or my little sin habit, or my money, and I'm really not sure I want to give them up, even if it means I get You'.”

“God is not someone who can be tacked on to our lives.”

“What scares me most are people who are lukewarm and just don't care.”

“How many of us would really leave our families, our jobs, our education, our friends, our connections, our familiar surroundings, and our homes if Jesus asked us to? If He just showed up and said, 'Follow Me'? No explanation. No directions. You could follow Him straight up a hill to be crucified. Maybe He would lead you to another country, and you would never see your family again. Or perhaps you would stay put, but He would ask you to spend your time helping people who will never love you back and never show gratitude for what you gave up. Consider this carefully- have you ever done so? Or was your decision to follow Christ flippant, based solely on feelings and emotion, made without counting the cost?”

“James 2:17- 'Faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead.' The lives of many people who call themselves 'Christians' in America lack manifestations of a vital and active faith. And this, to be perfectly honest, frightens me. It keeps me up at night. It causes me to pray desperately and fervently for my congregation, for the groups of people I speak to, and for the church as a whole.”

“If life is a river, then pursuing Christ requires swimming upstream. When we stop swimming, or actively following Him, we automatically begin to be swept downstream.”

“[W]e are here to love. Not much else matters.”

“It struck me that many Christians flash around their 'no trans fat' label, trying to convince everyone they are healthy and good. Yet they have no substantive or healthful elements to their faith. It's like the Laodiceans, who thought they had everything until Christ told them they were poor and wretched.”

“Which is more messed up- that we have so much compared to everyone else, or that we don't think we're rich? That on any given day, we might flippantly call ourselves 'broke' or 'poor?' We are neither of those things. We are rich. Filthy rich.”

“To call someone a Christian simply because he does some Christian-y things is giving false comfort to the unsaved.”

“In the midst of our failed attempts at loving Jesus, His grace covers us.”

“I wonder, then, why the last thing Jesus told us was to go into the world, making disciples of all nations, teaching them to obey all that He commanded? You'll notice that he didn't add, 'But, hey, if that's too much to ask, tell them to just become Christians- you know, the people who get to go to heaven without having to commit to anything'.”