Vance Havner Quotes

Christians, like snowflakes, are frail, but when they stick together they can stop traffic.

At the rate America is decaying morally, we shall have to change our national symbol from an eagle to a vulture.

The devil is not fighting religion. He´s too smart for that. He is producing a counterfeit Christianity, so much like the real one that good Christians are afraid to speak out against it.

Satan is not fighting churches; he is joining them. He does more harm by sowing tares than by pulling up wheat. He accomplishes more by imitation than by outright opposition.

It is not our business to make the message acceptable, but to make it available. We are not to see that they like it, but that they get it.

A preacher should have the mind of a scholar, the heart of a child, and the hide of a rhinoceros. His problem is how to toughen his hide without hardening his heart.

If you are a Christian, you are not a citizen of this world trying to get to heaven; you are a citizen of heaven making your way through this world.

Salt seasons, purifies, preserves. But somebody ought to remind us that salt also irritates. Real living Christianity rubs this world the wrong way.

The primary qualification for a missionary is not love for souls, as we so often hear, but love for Christ.

Salvation is a helmet, not a nightcap.

If they had a social gospel in the days of the prodigal son, somebody would have given him a bed and a sandwich and he never would have gone home.

The middle of the road is a poor place to walk. It is a poor place to drive. It is a poor place to live.

Our efficiency without God's sufficiency is only a deficiency.

We are not going to move this world by criticism of it nor conformity to it, but by the combustion within it of lives ignited by the Spirit of God.

When a man makes alliance with the Almighty, giants look like grasshoppers.

Don't ever come to church without coming as though it were the first time, as though it could be the best time, and as though it could be the last time.

He who waits on God loses no time.

One man with a genuine experience with God is worth more than a library full of arguments.

What we live is what we believe. Everything else is just so much religious talk.

The gospel is for lifeboats, not showboats, and a man must make up his mind which boat he is going to operate.

No man can be a Christian by knowingly and willfully taking Christ on the installment plan, as Savior now, and Lord later.

What our Lord said about cross-bearing and obedience is not in fine type. It is in bold print on the face of the contract.

The tragedy of today is that the situation is desperate but the saints are not.

The Word of God is either absolute or obsolete.

We need men of the cross, with the message of the cross, bearing the marks of the cross.

The thermometer of a church is its prayer meeting.

Sometimes your medicine bottle has on it, "shake well before using." That is what God has to do with some of His people. He has to shake them well before they are ever usable.

A revival is the church falling in love with Jesus Christ all over again.

If I had only one sermon to preach it would be on the Lordship of Christ. When we get right on that point we are right all down the line. God honors the exaltation of His Son.

We may never be martyrs but we can die to self, to sin, to the world, to our plans and ambitions. That is the significance of baptism; we died with Christ and rose to new life.

When the Lord's white sheep become dirty gray, all black sheep feel more comfortable.

Men love everything but righteousness and fear everything but God.

We need a dedicated minority who, like the apostles of old, are willing to be called the scum of the earth and a spectacle to the world for the scandal of the cross.

Real revival does not begin with joyous singing. It begins with conviction and repentance on the part of Christians.

God isn't a talent scout looking for someone who is "good enough" or "strong enough." He is looking for someone with a heart set on Him, and He will do the rest.

Taking it easy is often the prelude to backsliding. Comfort precedes collapse.

A wife who is 85 percent faithful to her husband is not faithful at all. There is no such thing as part-time loyalty to Jesus Christ.

Revival precedes evangelism. The church must first repent. This is the blind spot in our eye today.

People get so used to the dark that they think it is growing brighter.

If you stand on the Word, you do not stand with the world.

Too many are willing to sit at God’s table, but not work in his field.

Adam tried to hide behind the trees in the garden. There is only one tree that can hide us from Him and that is the tree of the cross.

I would just as soon listen to a gangster lecture on honesty as watch Hollywood portray the Bible.

The world does not hate its own. It does hate our Lord. It hates His followers. Where do you belong in this lineup?

Some preachers ought to put more fire into their sermons or more sermons into the fire.

If you see a Bible that is falling apart, it probably belongs to someone who isn't!

It is one thing to say Jesus is all you want; until He is all you have and you discover He is all you ever needed.

When I pastored a country church, a farmer didn't like the sermons I preached on hell. He said, Preach about the meek and lowly Jesus. I said, That's where I got my information about hell.

Our Lord approved neither idol worship or idle worship but ideal worship in Spirit and truth.

I'm tired of hearing sin called sickness and alcoholism a disease. It is the only disease I know of that we're spending hundreds of millions of dollars a year to spread.