Vance Havner Quotations

The vision must be followed by the venture. It is not enough to stare up the steps - we must step up the stairs.

Many people are in a rut and a rut is nothing but a grave - with both ends kicked out.

The devil will let a preacher prepare a sermon if it will keep him from preparing himself.

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.

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.

Too many church services start at eleven sharp and end at twelve dull.

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.

It is one of the ironies of the ministry that the very man who works in God's name is often hardest put to find time for God. The parents of Jesus lost Him at church, and they were not the last ones to lose Him there.

You haven't lost anything when you know were it is. Death can hide but not divide.

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.

People Some people are like wheelbarrows; useful only when pushed, and very easily upset. The time to stop talking is when the other person nods his head affirmatively but says nothing.

Progress is a farce because man's head and hand have created wonders that stun the imagination, but his heart does not keep step and his morals undo all that his mind has wrought.

God is on the lookout today for a man who will be quiet enough to get a message from Him, brave enough to preach it, and honest enough to live it.

The church is so subnormal that if it ever got back to the New Testament normal it would seem to people to be abnormal.

It is only the life that is lost for Him that is found in Him.

Humility is not thinking meanly of oneself, but rather it means not thinking of oneself at all.

Beware of being a religious poseur, trying to live up to a dramatized version of yourself.

Jesus Christ demands more complete allegiance than any dictator who ever lived. The difference is, He has a right to it.

Popularity has killed more prophets than persecution.

A deep and sober concern to please God is the rarest of rarities.

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

I have often been reminded of the wild duck that came down on migration into a barnyard and liked it so well that he stayed there. In the fall his erstwhile companions passed overhead and his first impulse was to rise and join them, but he had fed too well and could rise no higher than the eaves of the barn. The day came when his old fellow travelers could pass overhead without his even hearing their call. I have seen men and women who once mounted up with wings like eagles but are now content to live in the barnyard of this world.

What gives the Word of God authority is simply the fact that it is the word of God!

No life is great that does not point to Christ.

We need to take down our "Do not disturb" signs... snap out of our stupor and come out of our coma and awake from our apathy.

God has a place and purpose for you, somewhere for you to be and something for you to do. You never will be happy elsewhere, nor can you please God anywhere but there.

Before we can strengthen believers or win the lost, we must be converted from the self-life to the Christ-life. . . "Not I, but Christ."

Blessed is that Christian who can accept at the start by simple faith that which others reach only through years of questioning and reach it only then because they give up trying to analyze it and decide to accept it.

Another thing I liked about my Dad at church: he did his sleeping at home. He never used the church as an adult nursery.

There is a trend today that would put a new robe on the prodigal son while he is still feeding hogs. Some would put the ring on his finger while he still in the pigsty. Others would paint the pigsty and advocate bigger and better hog pens.

You have not really learned a commandment until you have obeyed it. The Church suffers today from Christians who know volumes more than they practice.

Every Christian is a priest, not offering a sacrifice for sins - since that has been done once and for all - but offering his person, praise and possessions.

We are the salt of the earth, mind you, not the sugar. Our ministry is to truly cleanse and not just to change the taste.

Any man who takes Jesus Christ seriously becomes the target of the devil. Most church members do not give Satan enough trouble to arouse his opposition

Some missionaries bound for Africa were laughed at by the boat captain. 'You'll only die over there,' he said. But a missionary replied, 'Captain, we died before we started.'

The devil's not fighting churches today, he's joining churches.

Plenty of church members are shaky about what they believe, while not many are shaken by what they believe.

There are no trivial assignments in the work of the Lord.

Too many Christians are stuffing themselves with gospel blessings while millions have never had a taste.

Simply wait upon Him. So doing, we shall be directed, supplied, protected, corrected, and rewarded.

There never has been a culture since this world began in which a New Testament Christian could feel at home.

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

I'm tied of hearing about temperance instead of abstinence, in order to please the cocktail crowd in church congregations.

We are suffering today from a species of Christianity as dry as dust, as cold as ice, as pale as a corpse, and as dead as King Tut. We are suffering not from a lack of correct heads but of consumed hearts.

You always enter God's hospital as a charity patient. You can't pay your way.

We can often do more by doing less. God is not particularly interested in quantity production. That is an American standard, not a Bible standard.

One cannot help the evil thoughts that come, but it is the thoughts we cultivate that make the difference between good or evil. We don't have to open the door to the devil and say, "Make yourself at home."

More Bibles are bought and fewer read than any other book.

People used to blush when they were ashamed. Now they are ashamed if they blush. Modesty has disappeared and a brazen generation with no fear of God before its eyes mocks at sin. We are so fond of being called tolerant and broadminded that we wink at sin when we ought to weep.

A picture of Christ was hung in the back of a pulpit. When the minister rose to speak one Sunday morning, a little boy asked his mother, 'Mother, who is that man who stands so we can't see Jesus?'

The devil is in constant conspiracy against a preacher who really prays, for it has been said that what a minister is in his prayer closet is what he is, no more, no less.

In other days people chose a church on the basis of their doctrinal convictions. Now, lacking doctrinal convictions, they choose for social reasons.

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.

The alternative to discipline is disaster

Civilization today reminds me of an ape with a blowtorch playing in a room full of dynamite. It looks like the monkeys are about to operate the zoo, and the inmates are taking over the asylum.

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.

Jesus is all we have; he is all we need and all we want. We are shipwrecked on God and stranded on omnipotence!

Men love everything but righteousness and fear everything but God.

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

If you are what you've always been, you are not a Christian. A Christian is a new creation.

If you lack knowledge, go to school. If you lack wisdom, get on your knees.

There are many who say they want to be victorious Christians, but few are willing to endure the discipline necessary to make one a good solider of Jesus Christ. There is a prize to possess, but before we possess it there is a price to be paid, and few will pay it.

When we are weakest and most despondent, Jesus is most considerate. When there is a break in our progress or we have a spell of depression, he sees the whole of our lives and in the light of that He is longsuffering with discordant details.

No nation can last long when it stops praying and takes up playing.

When Christ possesses the will He keeps it fixed. The trouble comes when we take matters out of His hand and try to handle them ourselves.

Christ is most concerned with the direction in which you habitually are going and not with a spasmodic eruption either good or bad.

The man who sets out to live the life worthwhile-to follow his vision and speak his heart-need not look for position, honors, prosperity.

Men seek fame and high places only to learn that they were happier in obscurity

I can conceive of no greater, more romantic and interesting adventure than to undertake to live like Jesus in this complicated day.

Most of the notable turn out to be the not-able. God's greatest truths still belong to babes.

Not everyone who has made peace with God has realized the peace of God.

God's deepest secrets often miss the wise and prudent and are revealed unto babes. We say, "Children, be like your parents." Jesus said, "Parents, be like your children."

We are fighting the greatest battle of all time with the most untrained army on earth. If strict discipline is necessary in art and athletics, how can we expect to be advanced Christians and stay in kindergarten?

We justify ourselves when we should judge ourselves. If we learned humility, it might spare us the humiliation.

The thermometer of a church is its prayer meeting.

Self, service, substance is the Divine order and nothing counts until we give ourselves.

Our Lord holds the keys to the doors of Christian service. You don't have to chase 'key men' around if you know the Keeper of the keys!

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

A soft and sheltered Christianity, afraid to be lean and lone, unwilling to face the storms and brave the heights, will end up fat and foul in the cages of conformity.

I would say to today's young minister, 'Be not afraid to give much time to solitary walks and meditation'.

It is a matter of whether one wants to get rich or be rich. We can be rich in Christ Jesus or perhaps get rich in Egypt, but we cannot do both.

Let it never be forgotten that, although we may do nothing about the Word we hear, the Word will do something to us. The same sun melts ice and hardens clay, and the Word of God humbles or hardens the human heart.

There is great need today for the New Testament prophet who speaks to edification, exhortation, and comfort, a strengthening, stirring and soothing ministry.

We are not bearing our crosses every time we have a headache; an aspirin tablet will take care of that. What is meant is the trouble we would not have if we were not Christians.

It is not our responsibility to make it acceptable; it is our duty to make it available.

The temple of truth has never suffered so much from woodpeckers on the outside as from termites within.

Today I am one day nearer Home than ever before.

If the fire of hell is not literal, it is worse than actual fire, and if the gates of the Celestial City are not actual gold, they are far finer.

Do not so contemplate eternity that you waste today.

Faith has no value of its own, it has value only as it connects us with Him. It is a trick of Satan to get us occupied with examining our faith instead of resting in the Faithful One.

The Word of God is either absolute or obsolete.

God's Word is its own best argument.

Somehow the idea has gotten around that it is unchristian to take a stand against heresy. Some of us need to read the New Testament again.

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

The early Christians condemned false doctrine in a way that sounds almost unchristian today.

Too many are not willing to give the Gospel a fair trial. They are too ignorant to speak wisely but not wise enough to speak ignorantly. A man is not a sinner because he is a skeptic; he is a skeptic because he is a sinner.

We need to be preaching a dynamic Gospel and living firecracker lives.

Make Jesus Christ your theme! I have seen preachers espouse causes and champion movements, and when the cause died and the movement collapsed, the preacher vanished too. But the man who glories in Christ never grows stale.

Revival is simply New Testament Christianity, the saints going back to normal.

What we love usually manages to get into our conversation. What is down in the well of the heart will come up in the bucket of the speech.