Kyle Idleman Quotes

There is no life without death.

Following Jesus isn’t something you can do at night where no one notices. It’s a twenty-four-hour-a-day commitment that will interfere with your life. That’s not the small print—that’s a guarantee.

Following Jesus will cost you something. Following Jesus always costs something.

The biggest threat to the church today is fans who call themselves Christians but aren’t actually interested in following Christ. They want to be close enough to Jesus to get all the benefits, but not so close that it requires anything from them.

These religious types were the fans that Jesus seems to have the most trouble with. Fans who will walk into a restaurant and bow their heads to pray before a meal just in case someone is watching. Fans who won’t go to R-rated movies at the theater, but have a number of them saved on their DVR at home. Fans who may feed the hungry and help the needy, and then they make sure they work it into every conversation for the next two weeks. Fans who make sure people see them put in their offering at church, but they haven’t considered reaching out to their neighbor who lost a job and can’t pay the bills. Fans who like seeing other people fail because in their minds it makes them look better. Fans whose primary concern in raising their children is what other people think. Fans who are reading this and assuming I’m describing someone else. Fans who have worn the mask for so long they have fooled even themselves.

Fans mistake knowledge OF Jesus for intimacy WITH Jesus.

Jesus doesn’t expect followers to be perfect, but he does call them to be authentic.

Fans don’t mind him doing a little touch-up work, but Jesus wants complete renovation. Fans come to Jesus thinking tune-up, but Jesus is thinking overhaul. Fans think a little makeup is fine, but Jesus is thinking makeover. Fans think a little decorating is required, but Jesus wants a complete remodel. Fans want Jesus to inspire them, but Jesus wants to interfere with their lives.

We love others best when we love God most.

So in case someone left it out or forgot to mention it when they explained what it meant to be a Christian, let me be clear: There is no forgiveness without repentance. There is no salvation without surrender. There is no life without death. There is no believing without committing.

Here’s the point: idolatry is the tree from which our sins and struggles grow.

What you win them with is what you win them to.

The biggest threat to the church today is fans who call themselves Christians but aren’t actually interested in following Christ.

The truth is that most of us go to great lengths to disguise our weaknesses.

In teaching people what it means to be a Christian, we spend much of our time and effort bringing them to a point of belief without clearly calling them to follow. We have taken “believe” and we have written that in capital letters with bold print: BELIEVE. But everything that has to do with following has been put in small print: follow.

Jesus doesn't hold back with Nicodemus. Following Jesus would require a commitment that would cost Nicodemus a great deal....In fact, it's true throughout all of Scripture....Following Jesus isn't something you can do at night where no one notices. It's a twenty-four-hour-a-day commitment that will interfere with your life. That's not the small-print--that's a guarantee.

Close your eyes, and with Jesus, journey back through your day. As you do, confess sin as you see it...

Bill Bright, founder of Campus Crusade for Christ and author of the Four Spiritual Laws chose three words for his tombstone: "slave for Jesus".

the grace of God doesn’t simply invite us to follow … it teaches us to follow.

The battlefield of the gods is your heart. Your heart is shaped by your thoughts.

It's much easier to talk about following Jesus when you are making general statements rather than specific commitments.

God will not waste your pain.

Without seeing the depths of sin, we’ll never understand the heights of God’s love and grace.

We were made for God, and until he is our greatest pleasure, all the other pleasures of this life will lead to emptiness.

The opposite of theism is not atheism, it’s idolatry.

God has given us the use of his resources for a short time here on earth, and we have much to be grateful for. Go through your day sometime just recognizing that everything is God’s. Get out of God’s bed and walk into God’s bathroom, and turn on God’s shower, and then put on God’s clothes. Eat God’s cereal* and drink God’s coffee. Get in God’s car and head to work. When we start to see all of our resources as God’s it helps us develop an attitude of gratitude that leads to a heart of worship.

God is jealous for your heart, not because he is petty or insecure, but because he loves you. The reason why God has such a huge problem with idolatry is that his love for you is all-consuming. He loves you too much to share you.

Try taking five minutes for meditation. Close your eyes and in your mind picture Jesus. Watch Him turn, look at you and hear Him...

When we learn to truly follow Jesus, we find that obedience to God comes from the inside out. Submission to what God wants for our lives flows naturally out of that relationship.

There is a tendency to treat our relationship with Jesus like the diet we keep meaning to start. I’m going to start eating right, as soon as I finish off this chicken chimichanga. Tomorrow for sure. We treat our relationship with Jesus like the workout program we keep meaning to start. We go to bed telling ourselves, “Tomorrow I’m going to wake up early and exercise.” But the following night we find ourselves getting into bed promising, “Tomorrow for sure.

God loves to fill empty things—whether

I’ve come to realize that if me gets his way, I’ll miss out on the real life I’m meant to live. The life in which I love others and make a difference in the world.

Woe to you fans, if you would be as zealous about caring for the sick as you are about a ‘Christmas tree’ being called a ‘holiday tree,’ health insurance wouldn’t be a problem.

There’s nothing life can throw at us that God can’t use to draw us nearer to him.

If you’re most interested in what other people think, then their applause or attention is your reward.

Here’s one to think about: the less you see your own brokenness, the more broken you are.

Obsession is an idolatry word.

Worship is powerful. It has huge consequences, whether you praise the God of heaven or the god of appetite.

Our hearts are restless until they find rest in thee.

When Jesus defines the relationship he wants with us he makes it clear that being a fan who believes without making any real commitment to follow isn’t an option.

Instead of identifying myself as a follower because I know about Jesus, I understand that I am a follower because I know Jesus.

Many have made a decision to believe in Jesus without making a commitment to follow Jesus.

God often uses desperate moments to wake us up. Only when things start to fall apart do we finally open our eyes.

Just as a father hates cancer, because of what it does to his child, so God hates divorce, because of what it does to His children.

The Bible says in Psalms to “Be still.” God says, “Be still and know that I am God” (Ps. 46:10). I like this definition of stillness: silence on the outside and surrender on the inside.

Where Is Your Sanctuary? Where do you go when you’re hurting? Let’s say it’s been a terrible day at the office. You come home and go — where? To the refrigerator for comfort food like ice cream? To the phone to vent with your most trusted friend? Do you seek escape in novels or movies or video games or pornography? Where do you look for emotional rescue? The Bible tells us that God is our refuge and strength, our help in times of trouble — so much so that we will not fear though the mountains fall into the heart of the sea (Ps. 46:1 – 2). That strikes me as a good place to run. But it’s so easy to forget, so easy for us to run in other directions. Where we go says a lot about who we are. The “high ground” we seek reveals the geography of our values.

What good is it, my brothers, if a man claims to have faith but has no deeds? Can such faith save him? Suppose a brother or sister is without clothes and daily food. If one of you says to him, “Go, I wish you well; keep warm and well fed,” but does nothing about his physical needs, what good is it? (James 2:14–16).

My concern is that many of our churches in America have gone from being sanctuaries to becoming stadiums. And every week all the fans come to the stadium where they cheer for Jesus but have no interest in truly following him. The biggest threat to the church today is fans who call themselves Christians but aren’t actually interested in following Christ.

In fact, it's true throughout all of Scripture....Following Jesus isn't something you can do at night where no one notices. It's a twenty-four-hour-a-day commitment that will interfere with your life. That's not the small-print--that's a guarantee.

Sometimes, I hear people talk about the different men and women of the Old Testament, and there is a hint of jealousy. They may say it, or just insinuate it, but here's what they communicate...'What would it have been like to hear God's voice and see him move in such powerful ways? I wish it was the same for us as it was for those whose stories we read about in scripture. When I get to heaven I can't wait to ask David, Elijah, or Moses what it was like.' But I think it will be just the opposite in heaven. Before we can ask David what it was like to slay a giant, to win the battles, he'll say, Tell me what it was like on earth to have the Holy Spirit inside of you, giving you strength when you are weak. We might say to Elijah, What was it like to call down fire from heaven before the prophets of Baal and to raise that boy from the dead? And I think Elijah might say, yeah, he actually ended up dying again. You tell me what it's like to have God living inside of you. What was it like to live life on earth with the Holy Spirit giving you joy when you're depressed or giving you the power to overcome that sin in your life? We might say to Moses, What was it like to follow the cloud by day and the fire by night? What was it like to meet with God on that Mountain? And Moses might say, I had to climb that mountain to meet with God. You tell me what it was like to have him dwell in you everyday. What was it like to have the Holy Spirit giving you directions when you didn't know what to do or where to go?

Brokenness is not trending on Twitter. It’s not written on anyone’s résumé, and it’s no business strategy at all. It is, however, the one hope Jesus holds out for us, the inside-out, upside-down way that is somehow the only path that ultimately is right side up. Embrace the paradox: brokenness is the way to wholeness.

God withholds his blessing in the very areas in which we lift up false gods.

To Satan’s befuddlement, Job experienced God in a way he never had before. “My ears had heard of you,” he said, “but now my eyes have seen you” (42:5).

Jesus is saying that God’s kingdom begins in you when you come to the end of yourself and realize you have nothing to offer.

He begins to introduce us to the great kingdom paradox: at the end of me, I find real life in him.

By his grace, and by nothing you can offer, he chooses you.

You’re blessed when you feel you’ve lost what is most dear to you. Only then can you be embraced by the One most dear to you.

What is it that is competing for your allegiance to Christ? You may have both hands on the plow, but what is it you keep looking back at?

A belief, no matter how sincere, if not reflected in reality isn’t a belief; it’s a delusion.

We expect God to be an angry father who demands justice, but through Jesus, He gives us love and grace when we don't deserve it.

Can anything good come from Duke?

Idols are defeated not by being removed but by being replaced.

The Lord God has often lost out when competing with the gods of entertainment for our time and attention.

Creatures are not born with desires unless satisfaction for those desires exists.

The object of your worship will determine your future and define your life. It’s the one choice that all other choices are motivated by.

Be still, and know that I am God” (Ps. 46:10). I like this definition of stillness: silence on the outside and surrender on the inside.

If you worship false gods, the ripples bring a little of hell to earth.

The god of sex specializes in taking you further than you ever intended to go.

faithful followers of Christ aren’t on earth to assign blame; we’re here to free the trapped, bandage the wounded, help the hurting, and celebrate homecomings.

For the eyes of the LORD range throughout the earth to strengthen those whose hearts are fully committed to him. 2 Chronicles 16:9

If self could help, then we would all have been fixed a long time ago.

Life has a way of waking everybody up at some point. Everybody has that sudden, painful longing for yesterday, when they didn’t know how good they had it, just before the world fell in.

How do you forgive? You choose to release it, you pray for your enemy, and, I think probably most importantly, you recognize that God is standing with you—and he will have the final word.

Tune in to God’s voice today. Prayerfully open your Bible and read. Choose a book and set a time to read every day this week. Spend five minutes less on Facebook and five minutes more in God’s Word.

When disaster comes, we can’t see anything bigger than what we’ve lost. But the truth is, God more than fills that space. We begin to see that he’s not just filling that space, but spaces we didn’t even know we had.

Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it” (Prov. 4:23). Your heart defines and determines who you are, how you think, and what you do. Because everything flows from it, your heart is the frontline for the gods at war.

It works like this. In surprising ways, suffering makes room in our spirit for us to know and experience the blessing of God’s peace and presence. Without suffering, we simply can’t know his comfort. In mourning, we experience the blessing of God’s presence.

Jesus said no, this is our Father: loving, compassionate, caring, beyond our social expectations, willing to search and wait and celebrate and heal the broken. Jesus turned religion on its head, breaking down its exclusive, legalistic barriers and replacing them with welcoming relationship.

There is a tendency for us to minimize the Word of the Lord. Maybe because of its familiarity. “Familiarity breeds contempt,” the saying goes. But it may be more accurate to say that “familiarity breeds indifference.” The more we hear some warnings, the less seriously we take them—like the tornado warnings in grade school we didn’t take seriously. The people of Nineveh heard God’s warning. God got their attention, and they were honest with themselves about themselves. One of the reasons we minimize our own sin and rebellion is that we don’t take God’s Word seriously. Maybe a strong pinch is needed to get us to sit up and pay attention.

Proverbs tells us, “Pride only leads to arguments” (13:10 NCV). The proud are magnetically attracted to conflict. And when the proud get into a squabble, it can become epic, because the hardest thing in the world would be for them to apologize. That requires humility. Some words and phrases just won’t come out of the prideful mouth. “I was wrong. Please forgive me,” for example. It’s agonizing because it feels like defeat, and proud people are obsessive about being undefeated in arguments, class discussions, political conversations, and family disputes. And proud people love to make their point on the Internet. The few, the proud (unfortunately the proud are not few) will wait out the worst disagreements without apologizing. They can hold out for decades, kind of hoping it all blows over. “I was wrong” or “that was my fault” are out of the question. On the very, very rare occasion one of the proud apologizes, he’ll qualify it: “I’m sorry—but …” Qualified apologies never seem to work.

Idolatry isn’t just one of many sins; rather it’s the one great sin that all others come from. So if you start scratching at whatever struggle you’re dealing with, eventually you’ll find that underneath it is a false god. Until that god is dethroned, and the Lord God takes his rightful place, you will not have victory. Idolatry isn’t an issue; it is the issue. All roads lead to the dusty, overlooked concept of false gods. Deal with life on the glossy outer layers, and you might never see it; scratch a little beneath the surface, and you begin to see that it’s always there, under some other coat of paint. There are a hundred million different symptoms, but the issue is always idolatry.

And I want you to know, before we go any further, that Jesus came to free you from religion. To those who have been hauling around a long list of rules. To those who are pretending to be more than they really are. To those who are weighed down with the fear and guilt of religion. To all the fans who are worn out on religion, Jesus invites you to follow him.

In your loneliness, there is an opportunity to discover his presence. In your fear, there is an opportunity to discover his peace. In your weakness, there is an opportunity to discover his strength. In your pain, there is an opportunity to discover his purpose. In your shame, there is an opportunity to discover his grace. In your darkness, there is an opportunity to discover his light.

Men, when will you put down the remote control, choose God, and stand up for your family? Put down the cell phone, pick up a sword, and fight for your marriage. Put down the PlayStation controller, put down the 9 iron, put down the iPad, and fight for something. It may even be time to put down this book. Maybe you’ve heard enough; stop reading, watching, talking, and playing—it’s time for action.

That’s why we need a friend whom we’ve given permission to tell us like it is—no matter what. Even if we refuse to listen at first, we all need a friend who will tell us when we’re neglecting our family for work. A friend who will say something when our spending gets out of control. A friend who will challenge us to do more than just come to church a few weekends a month. A friend who will question a new relationship we’re beginning.

We are “those people.” The truth is … we are the others. Most of us are one paycheck, one divorce, one drug-addicted kid, one mental health diagnosis, one serious illness, one sexual assault, one drinking binge, one night of unprotected sex, or one affair away from being “those people”—the ones we don’t trust, the ones we pity, the ones we don’t let our children play with, the ones bad things happen to, the ones we don’t want living next door.3

It may seem that there are many followers of Jesus, but if they were honestly to define the relationship they have with him I am not sure it would be accurate to describe them as followers. It seems to me that there is a more suitable word to describe them. They are not followers of Jesus. They are fans of Jesus. Here is the most basic definition of fan in the dictionary: “An enthusiastic admirer” It’s the guy who goes to the football game with no shirt and a painted chest. He sits in the stands and cheers for his team. He’s got a signed jersey hanging on his wall at home and multiple bumper stickers on the back of his car. But he’s never in the game. He never breaks a sweat or takes a hard hit in the open field. He knows all about the players and can rattle off their latest stats, but he doesn’t know the players. He yells and cheers, but nothing is really required of him. There is no sacrifice he has to make. And the truth is, as excited as he seems, if the team he’s cheering for starts to let him down and has a few off seasons, his passion will wane pretty quickly. After several losing seasons you can expect him to jump off the fan wagon and begin cheering for some other team. He is an enthusiastic admirer.

God declines to sit atop an organizational flowchart. He is the organization. He is not interested in being president of the board. He is the board. And life doesn’t work until everyone else sitting around the table in the boardroom of your heart is fired. He is God, and there are no other applicants for that position. There are no partial gods, no honorary gods, no interim gods, no assistants to the regional gods. God is saying this not because he is insecure but because it’s the way of truth in this universe, which is his creation. Only one God owns and operates it. Only one God designed it, and only one God knows how it works. He is the only God who can help us, direct us, satisfy us, save us.

Being filled with the power of the Spirit begins with an honest acknowledgment of our own weakness.

Here’s what we find in our suffering. There is a deep void that used to be filled with whatever we lost. That could be stuff or even relationships—none of which are bad things. But when it’s gone, it leaves an aching cavity, and God is there to fill it up with himself.

God cannot and will not give us a sense of lasting pleasure apart from him, because it violates his purpose and our design. Psalm 34:8 reads, “Taste and see that the LORD is good.

If the biggest sinner you know isn’t you, than you don’t know yourself very well.” - Jean Larroux

It’s not too late, and it never has been. And there’s never been a better time, a more perfect time, than the present moment. That’s always the one in which he wants to meet you. The life you have is not the life you must accept. You need only to ask for help. The more helpless you are, the better—the more open you will be to the help that only he can offer. He meets you right there at the end of yourself.

The life you see me living is not “mine,” but it is lived by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. I am not going to go back on that. (Gal. 2:19–21)

Connection is difficult to measure, so I’ll usually default to production.

What we complain about reveals what really matters to us. Whining shows what has power over us. Whining, in many ways, is the opposite of worshiping the Lord. Worship is when we glorify God for who he is and acknowledge what he has done for us, but whining is ignoring who God is and forgetting what he has done for us.

So here’s what I suggest. If you’re willing to pay a price, then this must be pretty important to you. It must be a fairly big deal if you’re willing to go through all of this.

Idolatry is the tree from which our sins and struggles grow. Idolatry is always the issue. It’s the trunk of the tree, and all other problems are just branches.

Whatever it is that wakes you — or for that matter keeps you up — has the potential to be an idol.

What you are searching for and chasing after reveals which god is winning the war in your heart. If you think of your life as the battleground of the gods, your heart is Bunker Hill. It’s where the gods gather and wage war. Whatever god wins the day claims the throne of your heart.