Daniel Akin Quotes

Have you ever met someone and felt . . . I don't know how to describe it, felt a chance at having something that eluded you? I don't know . . . Forget I said anything." I knew what he meant. He was describing that moment when you realize that you are lonely. For a time you can be alone and doing fine and never give a thought to living any other way and then you meet someone and suddenly you become lonely. It stabs at you, almost like a physical pain, and you feel both deprived and angry, deprived because you wish to be with that person and angry, because their absence brings you misery. It's a strange feeling, akin to desperation, a feeling that makes you wait by the phone even though you know that the call is an hour away. I was not going to lose my balance. Not yet.

In retrospect, I came to Nagasaki for the regenerative properties. The second atomic bomb blast so many years ago, which had swept up most of the city in a plutonium cloud, had made the city radioactively peace-loving. Reversing the usual cycle that turns victim into perpetrator, the people who stepped from the rubble filled their hearts with a fervent devotion to peace in all its forms. In my mind's eye I see them: wounded and dying, their lungs filled with ash and smoke. The ash sits there for some time, and when they exhale, miraculously, something akin to love comes out.

When we consecrate ourselves to God, we think we are making a great sacrifice, and doing lots for Him, when really we are only letting go of some little bitsy trinkets we have been grabbing, and when our hands are empty, He fills them full of His treasure. ~ Betty Stam

If your conception of God is radically false, then the more devout you are, the worse it will be for you. You are opening your soul to be molded by something base. You had much better be an atheist.”72

For a time you can be alone and doing fine and never give a thought to living any other way and then you meet someone and suddenly you become lonely. It stabs at you, almost like a physical pain, and you feel both deprived and angry, deprived because you wish to be with that person, and angry because their absence brings you misery. It’s a strange feeling, akin to desperation, a feeling that makes you wait by the phone even though you know that the call is an hour away.

Your life of indifference to the risen Christ and of halfhearted attention now and then to a few of his commandments will appear on that day as supremely blameworthy and infinitely foolish, and you will . . . weep that you did not change.”8

When we approach theology as facts to look at, it is easy to allow certain theological debates to replace Scripture as our primary theological subject matter. These debates—such as the categorization of God’s attributes, the nature of predestination, the age of the earth, and the continuation of certain spiritual gifts—are not unimportant issues, and sometimes the church must return to them for extended theological reflection. However, the church’s mission is derailed when theology becomes little more than a discipline helping people know what to believe about these particular issues. These debates are necessary to the task of theology, but they are not primary. The primary role of theology is to cultivate in us a love for and knowledge of

I knew what he meant. He was describing that moment when you realize that you are lonely. For a time you can be alone and doing fine and never give a thought to living any other way and then you meet someone and suddenly you become lonely. It stabs at you, almost like a physical pain, and you feel both deprived and angry, deprived because you wish to be with that person, and angry because their absence brings you misery. It’s a strange feeling, akin to desperation, a feeling that makes you wait by the phone even though you know that the call is an hour away.

I am this day seventy years old, a monument of Divine mercy and goodness, though on a review of my life I find much, very much, for which I ought to be humbled in the dust; my direct and positive sins are innumerable, my negligence in the Lord’s work has been great, I have not promoted his cause, nor sought his glory and honor as I ought, notwithstanding all this, I am spared till now, and am still retained in his Work, and I trust I am received into the divine favor through him. I wish to be more entirely dovoted to his service, more completely sanctified and more habitually exercising all the Christian graces, and bringing forth the fruits of righteousness to the praise and honor of that Savior who gave his life a sacrifice for sin.

gripped by the words of our Savior, he said: “I care not where or how I lived, or what hardships I went through, so that I could but gain souls for Christ. While I was asleep I dreamed of these things, and when I awoke the first thing I thought of was this great work. All my desire was for the conversion of the heathen, and all my hope was in God.

I care not where or how I lived, or what hardships I went through, so that I could but gain souls for Christ. While I was asleep I dreamed of these things, and when I awoke the first thing I thought of was this great work. All my desire was for the conversion of the heathen, and all my hope was in God.”11

our knowledge of God is not subjectively discerned. It is objectively informed and spiritually confirmed through God’s accommodating work of self-disclosure, or “revelation.

Sarah was Ethan's dear little sister." He made a clicking noise with his tongue. "Poor woman." There was something akin to anguish in his voice. "I will always regret her." Ellie grimaced in disgust "'Was'? Are you saying she's dead?" Terrence nodded, and in the dark, her eyes were finally beginning to adjust so she could better see him. The sadness in his features spoke volumes. So, he had one human bone in his body. He wasn't ALL divisive and wicked. Too bad that didn't matter a load of poo to Ellie.

Scripture, the Word of God, has always had an indispensable role in the formation of the people of God, regardless of covenantal context, for by it the character and works of God are revealed and explained, and through it people are called to a life of faith, devotion, and obedience.

It is an indication of how seriously Haeckel believed that the physical appearance of a person was a true measure of inward qualities when in 1899 he wrote to his friend, Frida von Uslar-Gleichen, with whom he was having a love affair: ‘Because from the moment when our two blond Germanic personalities confronted each other on the morning of June 17, and looked into each other’s true blue eyes, I knew that our souls were near akin.’ See Ernst Haeckel, The Love Letters of Ernst Haeckel (New York: Harper, 1930), p. 63.

Whereas the Soviets were content with the simplicity of sheer brute force strategy and tactics, and the Germans were depending on their technological superiority to make up for their deficiencies in production capacity, the Allies were building a systematic way of waging war, akin to a machine, one that would, if given sufficient time, integrate formations, units, and weapons types, land, air, and sea into an irresistible force. One that would still be subject to the mental and physical limitations of the flesh-and-blood creatures who had to operate and guide it, but that had been fundamentally designed from the beginning to fight battles in the way the Allies intended to fight them. As Rommel saw it, the Wehrmacht could not defeat that machine, therefore the Gemans must find a way to make it too expensive for the Allies to continue to operate it. That process, he believed, could begin in Tunisia.

Utility is akin to L-Directed Thinking; significance is akin to R-Directed Thinking. And, as with those two thinking styles, today utility has become widespread, inexpensive, and relatively easy to achieve—which has increased the value of significance.

Our relationship with Jesus and with all of our brothers and sisters will be so intense and so filled with love and affection that all earthly marital bliss will seem shallow and small in comparison.

Dancing isn't running, but it's usually more fun and such a universal, valued form of human psysical activity that we should consider it another gait akin to running.

Having type 2 diabetes raises a person’s risk of dying, in some cases to a small degree, in other cases substantially, but it is treatable using drugs, diet, and exercise. Although drugs help, they aren’t always necessary. Diet and exercise can sometimes allow the body to heal itself. In one dramatic test of this concept, ten overweight Australian aborigines with type 2 diabetes reversed their disease after just seven weeks of returning to an active hunting and gathering lifestyle.20 The mechanisms by which physical activity helps prevent and treat type 2 diabetes are well studied. Most basically, exercise (in conjunction with diet) can ameliorate every characteristic of metabolic syndrome including excess organ fat, high blood pressure, and high levels of blood sugar, fat, and cholesterol. In addition, exercise lowers inflammation and counteracts many of the damaging effects of stress. And most remarkably, exercise can reverse insulin resistance by restoring blocked insulin receptors and causing muscle cells to produce more of the transporter molecules that shuttle sugar out of the bloodstream.21 The effect is akin to unclogging a drain and flushing out the pipes. Altogether, by simultaneously improving the delivery, transport, and use of blood sugar, exercise can resuscitate a once resistant muscle cell to suck up as much as fiftyfold more molecules of blood sugar. No drug is so potent.

The diminution of the Spirit’s sovereignty may be seen in Arminius’s Letter on the Sin Against the Holy Ghost.

Christian proclamation might make the gospel audible, but Christians living together in local congregations make the gospel visible (see John 13:34–35). The church is the gospel made visible.

Because of our finitude and sinfulness, we readily admit the limitations of our knowledge of God. Although we cannot know him exhaustively, we can know him truly. We are his image bearers, created to receive divine revelation. We can know propositional truth about our God, and we can know personally and intimately the God who is the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Don’t look down on death, but welcome it. It too is one of the things required by nature. Like youth and old age. Like growth and maturity. Like a new set of teeth, a beard, the first gray hair. Like sex and pregnancy and childbirth. Like all the other physical changes at each stage of life, our dissolution is no different. So this is how a thoughtful person should await death: not with indifference, not with impatience, not with disdain, but simply viewing it as one of those things that happen to us. Now you anticipate the child’s emergence from its mother’s womb; that’s how you should await the hour when your soul will emerge from its compartment.

Conscience is God speaking within us, but, because of man’s apostasy from God, it often delivers false oracles,

remains a merely spiritual reality. But when we preach that Christ has become a particular man in a particular place issuing particular commands and dying on a particular cross exposing the particular sins of our particular lives, then the preaching ceases to be acceptable for many.

The lives of Christians together display visibly the gospel they proclaim audibly.

The church is the gospel made visible.

The term entheogen proposes a radical inversion of customary attitudes towards religion as faith or as something concerned with an ultimate reality or truth that is not a construct: ‘en-theo-gen’ is less ‘enthused by an experience of God within’ than something akin to 'empowering our ability to imagine or create the divine.

The technique was something akin to brainwashing, and slowly it began to work. Natalie packed away her old identity and life and became Leila. She did not know her family name; her legend, as they called it, would be given to her last, after a proper foundation had been poured and a frame constructed. In word and deed, she became more pious, more outwardly Islamic. In the evenings, when she ran along the dusty farm roads, she covered her arms and legs. And whenever her instructors were talking about Palestine or Islam, she wore her hijab. She experimented with several different ways of securing it but settled on a simple two-pin method that showed no hair. She thought she looked pretty in the hijab, but didn’t like the way it focused attention on her nose and mouth.

What we believe about Jesus—who he is and what he did—will shape greatly the rest of our theology

Almost everyone believes that prayer is important. But there is a difference between believing that prayer is important and believing it is essential. “Essential” means there are things that will not happen without prayer. (Newell, Expect Great Things, 225)

Our greatest threats to spiritual health and life are not opposition or even persecution from unbelieving, evil, and wicked men energized by Satan. Rather, it is when we allow into our community of faith spiritual Trojan horses that will sow seeds of destruction given the opportunity.

rituals have no real meaning unless they are expressions of our love for Jesus and others.

Independence Day for the Christian is not marked by a flag. No, our independence day is Easter, marked by a cross and an empty tomb.

Honest evaluation is essential for spiritual restoration. Spiritual compromise and complacency are “spiritual cataracts” that shut out the light of spiritual sight. Regularly, daily, we need to ask the Lord—in prayer and by the Word—“Show me my true spiritual condition. Reveal to me my spiritual blind spots and areas of sin where I no longer see. Help me, Lord, to see myself as You see me!

Our affairs rest in the hands not of men but of God! Hence, when the world is enkindling the flames of hatred and slaughter and when the earth is drenched with blood, may our tear-dimmed eye catch a vision of The Throne which rules the universe. In the midst of trial and tribulation may our gaze be riveted upon the One who is King of kings and Lord of lords.

In much contemporary theology today, the note of God’s grandeur, greatness, and glory that so fills the Bible is noticeably missing.

The God of the Bible is the God with whom we have to do in life and death, in time and eternity, the God to whom we must all give an account and whom no one can escape. Every human being, Calvin says, has negotium cum deo, “business with God.” (Ibid., 160)

Theological truth reminds us that we are not defined by all that we can do for Jesus, but by all that Jesus has done for us.

Any church that is not seriously involved in helping fulfill the Great Commission has forfeited its biblical right to exist” (Newell, Mission Quotes, 257).

Around 8 percent of American gamers between ages eight and eighteen seem to meet psychiatry’s diagnostic criteria for addiction; brain studies reveal changes in their neural reward system while they game that are akin to those found in alcoholics and drug abusers.