The Quotable Susan

On Grace:

“I do not nullify the grace of God; for if righteousness comes through the Law, then Christ died in vain.” Galatians 2:21

 

“Eschatology is not graduate level work for Christians. Graduate level work for Christians is grace. When it comes to extending it to others: do we really get it or not?”

-Susan Siami

“If you are not preaching grace so profoundly that you are accused of preaching cheap grace, then you are not preaching it profoundly enough.”

-Susan Siami

“Grace is not cheap; it’s free.  –To us it is offered freely but it is not cheap. It cost Christ everything.”

-John Michael

 

“When we come to God, we are coming to the throne of grace, not the throne of merit.”

-Mark Janke

“Suffering may call for mercy but sin does not call for grace. This proves that grace is free.”

-Mark Janke

“Run John run! The law commands, but gives us neither feet nor hands.

Far greater news the gospel brings. It bids us fly and gives us wings.”

-John Bunyan

 

The Quotable Susan

On the Christian Life and the Church:

   

“And that’s one of the things you notice about Jesus in the Gospels, that He is always going around saying, ‘You have heard it said such and such, but I tell you some other thing.’ If you happened to be a person who thought you knew everything about God, Jesus would have been completely annoying.” -Donald Miller from his book “Searching for God Knows What”

 

“As a Christian, I feel that I am not capable of modeling good behavior or a good Christian walk to others on a consistent basis. Frankly, the only thing I find myself doing consistently is sinning. So, really the only thing I can model for others is brokenness and God’s abundant grace in forgiving me again and again.”  -Susan Siami

 

“What do we see in Jesus’ disciples? We see doubt; we see back-talking, we see them having their own plans, not Jesus’, and we see Jesus loving them the whole time” -Jack Miller World Harvest Missions video on “Grace Parenting”

 

“Most of the descriptions of the victorious life do not match the reality of my own. Hyperbole, bloated rhetoric, and grandiose testimonies create the impression that once Jesus is acknowledged as Lord, the Christian life becomes a picnic on a green lawn; marriage blossoms into connubial bliss, physical health flourishes, acne disappears, sinking careers suddenly soar… The New Testament depicts another picture of the victorious life: Jesus on Calvary. The Biblical image of the victorious life reads more like the victorious limp.” -Brennan Manning from his book, “The Ragamuffin Gospel”

The Quotable Susan

Quotes on Prayer:

“I say it reverently, if God were stupid enough or weak enough to answer every prayer we made, I think we should have to stop praying or become much more wise than we are now. We should be about as safe on our knees as at the controls of one of our great bomber planes –loaded.”

 -Susan Anderson from her book “So This Is Africa”

“There are some prayers that have not been granted, and I cannot understand why.  As my human eye sees, there are a number of persons who would be very much happier and better off in every way if the Lord could only see eye to eye with me and answer my prayers concerning them.  So far He has not, and that’s all I know about it.  But I do not plan to give up trying to learn to pray.”

-Susan Anderson from her book, “So This Is Africa”

“Ask with a focused mind and an engaged will.  Seek with the objective of attaining.  Knock with urgent sincerity.

 -Susan Small (a friend)

 

“Whenever, I find myself suddenly awake in the middle of the night with someone on my mind, I pray for them, because I think to myself, ‘Either God does wake His children up in the middle of the night to pray for someone or He doesn’t. But if He does, then this is what it would look like.’”

-Susan Siami

 

“People who ski, I suppose, are people who happen to like skiing, who have time for skiing… Recently, I found that I often treat prayer as though it were a sport like skiing - something you do if you like it, something you do in your spare time…. But prayer isn’t a sport. It’s work.  Prayer is not a game…Prayer is the opposite of leisure. It’s something to be engaged in, not indulged in. It’s a job you give priority to. It’s performing when you have energy left for nothing else.”

 -Elizabeth Elliott as quoted by Chip Ingram in his book, “The Invisible War”

 

 

The Quotable Susan

Quotes from my friend Susan and other equally famous people.

On Prayer:

 

 

“Prayer moves the arm that moves the universe…Prayer is the greatest privilege man can have.”

  -Edward Owings Guerrant as quoted in the book, “Soldiers of the cross” by Kent D .Dollar

“I breathe; I pray. It’s just part of what I do each day to exist.”

 -Susan Siami  (friend)

“We have taken a wartime walkie – talkie and tried to turn it into a civilian intercom to call the servants for another cushion in the den.”

  -John Piper from his book “Desiring God”

“I don’t talk to my son any more. I talk to God about my son. I used to talk to my son but I was getting nowhere. Now I talk to God about my son and I get better results.”

 -Susan Siami  (friend)

 

“I realize that my goal in life is to wake up one morning with everything going so well that I have nothing to pray about. But that is not God’s goal for my life."

  -Susan Siami (friend)

 

“When I lay my questions before God I get no answer. But a rather special sort of ‘no answer’ It is not the locked door. It is more like a silent, certainly not uncompassionate gaze, as though He shook His head not in refusal but waiving the question.  Like ‘Peace, child; you don’t understand."

  -C. S. Lewis from his book “A Grief Observed”

“Courage is just fear that has said its prayers.”

-Adrian Rogers