Max Lucado Thinking Quotations

I'd like to think I'm going upriver in talking about world-view topics rather than particular political or controversial topics.

All of my sermons become books. I've been accused of having no unpublished thought. I encourage pastors to do that. I think there are so many great sermons that never really get circulation.

I believe you select a president who best represents what you think are the values that God wants us to have.

It's one thing to be discouraged. It's another thing to have despair. Despair is when you think there's just no end to this [suffering]. There's no solution for this. Despair is when you think that your suffering has no purpose, and your suffering has no end.

My thinking is that miracles exist to reveal God, but miracles don't exist for God to do me any favors.

One of the secrets in life is that we really lead a better life when we're living for others than we do when we're living for ourselves, and I think that's the way for our creator intended for it to be, is that if we can live for other people, we really leave this world in a different way.

Kind of the bottom line for me, I don't think people come to the church where I preach to hear my view on politics.

The apostle Paul never seemed to exhaust the topic of grace - what makes us think we can? He just kept coming at it and coming at it from another angle. That's the thing about grace. It's like springtime. You can't put it in a single sentence definition, and you can't exhaust it.

About four days a week, I do pretty good at having a morning prayer time. But even at that, it's a rambling sort of thing. What I have learned to do better is to try to keep my mind turned toward God and ear inclined toward God throughout the day, and I think I'm doing better at that ,but I've got a long way to go.

Be kind to yourself. God thinks you're worth his kindness. And he's a good judge of character.

I would love to have a more earnest prayer life! In my life, prayer is the single most difficult discipline. I love God and there's something in me that would rather do things for God than talk to God. I'm not by nature a mystical, devotional person. I like to do things. And so it's a challenge for me to have a faithful prayer life, but I know God loves me and He's not mad at me. He just wishes I would slow down and turn things over to Him. And that's what I think you achieve through prayer.

Your challenge is not your challenge. Your challenge is the way you think about your challenge. Your problem is not your problem; it is the way you look at it. You can’t always control your circumstances, but you can control the way you process them.

I think that a church should be setting the pace for social justice.

I think what happens is that we're so busy as pastors that we never get around to trying to turn that material into a book. It's a shame because there is so much good material out there that needs to be published.

God's love has a width, length, height, and depth, but we will never reach the end of it. Our capacity to experience God's love will be exhausted long before God's capacity to give it is strained. The picture of having Christ dwell inside us by faith presents us with compelling and comforting possibilities. What Christ does in us and through us will always be 'exceedingly abundantly above all we ask or think.'

I think it's noteworthy that the Almighty didn't act high and mighty. The Holy One wasn't holier-than-thou. The One who knew it all wasn't a know-it-all. The One who made the stars didn't keep his head in them. The One who owns all the stuff of earth never strutted it.

Not everybody can create a foundation that's worth a billion dollars, but all of us can figure out those things we do. I really think God loves us too much to give us an assignment we don't enjoy doing.

Where we might think of sin as slip-ups or missteps, God views sin as a godless attitude that leads to godless action.

Every time we equip the church with a verse, chapter or a story from the Bible, we're really placing another weapon in the hands of the Holy Spirit that He uses to challenge and strengthen the church. I think that's very important.

I think we pray, we make a clear-headed decision, and then we quit being so mean to each other. We've got to stop that.

Well, I think the main message is there is more to your story. There is more than what happens between the crib and the grave, and that is what I am really trying to speak to, this idea that all of life is this life and that there is nothing more than what we see and experience right here on this earth.

Maybe you've had the experience where somebody's asked you a question and you give an answer, then later in the day you think, "Oh, I wish I'd said that!" I tend to journal these things and put the answers in sermons.

If we think that this life is all there is to life, then there is no interpretation of our problems, our pain, not even of our privileges. But everything changes when we open up to the possibility that God's story is really our story too.

I think the hardest one had to do with suffering. It had to do with all of our church members and friends passing through difficult times. Sometimes it's the global climate: tsunamis, earthquakes, radiation. I think these kinds of questions are absolutely the most difficult, yet we need to be ready to respond to them because we have to be able as pastors to walk people through these valleys, these tough times in their lives.

I think there is, not in the sense that I enjoy it, but that it's an important question. It's the question, "Does the presence of pain mean God doesn't care? Does God not love me anymore?" I think that's a very common connection we tend to make.

I think the current book [for Christian apologetics] is by Lee Strobel, its called A Case for Christ.

Be careful what you think, because your thoughts run your life.

HEAVEN knows the difference between SUNDAY morning and WEDNESDAY afternoon. God longs to speak as CLEARLY in the workplace as He does in the sanctuary. He longs to be WORSHIPED when we sit at the dinner table and not just when we come to His communion table. You may go days without THINKING of Him, but there's never a moment when He's not thinking of YOU.

I have some friends whose sermons are extremely practical - so practical that I can put them right to use. I'm trying to learn how to do that better; but I don't think my approach or style really has changed in these 30 years. Whether that's good or bad I don't know, but I don't think it has.

I think I could do better in my approach to application. I think I could do better in preaching practical sermons.

You may go days without thinking of God, but there's never a moment when He's not thinking of you.

So immediately I'm trying to think: What are some of these times when we feel we're losing our hold on Christ, and what's the fear we're trying to address? I try to get into that quickly.

I don't think God is a gender. He presents himself as a father but he comes to us with the tenderness of a mother. In some of the parables, he is the housewife who cleans the house looking for the lost coin.

What causes us to think of prayer as the last option rather than the first? I can think of two reasons: feelings of independence and feelings of insignificance.

I think to trust in the sovereignty of God does not excuse my personal responsibility. Just the opposite - it equips me to be personally responsible.

I think you could say every pastor is writing this book [ Max on Life]; for many it just never gets published.

The mind that is full of God is empty of anxiety. Are you troubled, restless, sleepless? Then think of God more!

I'm right now wrapping up the sermon series on grace. I'd like to figure out what this next series will be in January. To do that, I'm going to come up with four or five really good ideas - at least that I think are really good ideas - and if I don't sense God really highlighting one of those, I will go to the elders of our church and my co-pastors.

I think we have such a crown jewel in the forgiveness of God, and it changes people's lives.

We see a hearse; we think sorrow. We see a grave; we think despair. We hear of a death; we think of a loss. Not so in heaven. When heaven sees a breathless body, it sees the vacated cocoon & the liberated butterfly.