Quotes about Gift

The gospel costs nothing. We cannot buy it or earn it. It can only be received as a free gift, compliments of God's grace. So it costs nothing, but it demands everything. And that is where most of us get stuck — spiritual no-man's-land. We're too Christian to enjoy sin and too sinful to enjoy Christ. We've got just enough Jesus to be informed, but not enough to be transformed.

But grace and effort are not opposites. Grace and earning are opposites.

Sabbath-keeping requires two orientations. One is Godward. The other is timeward. To keep Sabbath well—as both a day and an attitude—we have to think clearly about God and freshly about time. We likely, at some level, need to change our minds about both. Unless we trust God's sovereignty, we won't dare risk Sabbath. And unless we receive time as abundance and gift, not as ration and burden, we'll never develop a capacity to savor Sabbath.

God uses not so much gifts for evangelism (though there is a biblical gift of evangelism) but the faithfulness of thousands and millions of Christians who would never say evangelism is their gift. Your conclusion that you are not gifted for a particular task does not absolve you of responsibility to obey. You may conclude that evangelism is not your gift, but it is still your duty. Not

Life is a gift of nature but beautiful living is the gift of wisdom.

I feel like what's come out of me is the gift God has given me just to encourage people, to help them know that there's a better life.

Even when life challenges us, it's a gift beyond all measure.

humility is beyond our reach. if it were a product of reaching, we would instinctively be proud of reaching it. it is a gift.

Grace is not simply leniency when we have sinned. Grace is the enabling gift of God not to sin. Grace is power, not just pardon.

Every breath we take is a gift of grace. Every heartbeat, undeserved. Life and death are finally in the hands of God:

He may be doing it for you in this Advent season—graciously and tenderly frustrating you with life that is not centered on Christ and filling you with longings and desires that can't find their satisfaction in what this world offers, but only in the God-man. What a Christmas gift that might be! Let all your frustrations with this world throw you onto the Word of God. It will become sweet—like walking into paradise.

Say to the next generation again and again: God is truthful; God keeps his word; God does not lie; God can be trusted! That's one blessing of Advent. Receive it as a wonderful Christmas gift, and give it to as many people as you can.