Home > Author > Skye Jethani
61 " Like the Zealots, we can be tempted to use the world’s ways—coercion, power, and fear—to “take back the land” for God. Instead, Jesus calls us to put such things aside and discover the power of God available through meekness. "
― Skye Jethani , What If Jesus Was Serious?: A Visual Guide to the Teachings of Jesus We Love to Ignore
62 " If we want the culture to take Jesus more seriously, maybe we should try it first. "
63 " When determining how to respond to others, rather than asking W.W.J.D.? The Golden Rule instructs us to ask W.W.I.W.—“What would I want?” Rather than setting the bar inaccessibly high by saying we should act like Jesus, the Golden Rule puts obedience within our reach by making our own conscience the standard. In any given circumstance we are to treat others the way we want to be treated. "
64 " The Unabridged Webster’s International Dictionary says it comes from the Latin root habilis. The definition is “to invest again with dignity.” Do you consider that part of your job, Harvey, to give a man back the dignity he once had? Your only interest is in how he behaves. You told me that once a long time ago and I’ll never forget it. “You’ll conform to our ideas of how you should behave.” And you haven’t retreated from that stand one inch in thirty-five years. You want your prisoners to dance out the gates like puppets on a string with rubber-stamp values impressed by you. With your sense of conformity. Your sense of behavior. Even your sense of morality. That’s why you’re a failure, Harvey. Because you rob prisoners of the most important thing in their lives—their individuality.15 "
― Skye Jethani , With: Reimagining the Way You Relate to God
65 " In common upward prayer, we lift our desires, concerns, needs, and confessions to God. Downward prayer, which is much less common but shouldn’t be, means calling upon the resources available to us in the heavens. If that idea sounds strange to you, it may be because we teach about Jesus’ death and resurrection but often ignore His ascension. "
― Skye Jethani , What if Jesus Was Serious ... About Prayer?: A Visual Guide to the Spiritual Practice Most of Us Get Wrong
66 " It isn’t enough to pray in desperation. We must also pray in faith—and very often the faith of a child is more than enough. "
67 " Horrors like slavery, sex-trafficking, abortion, euthanasia, and genocide are only possible when people are seen as commodities—measured by their usefulness and not by their inherent worth. "
68 " Rather than removing our fears and pains, consumerism tries to distract us from them. Commodified goods and experiences are used to keep us amused—anesthetizing us from the unpleasant realities of our existence. "
69 " What both sides of the culture war forget is that when we label another person or group as the “enemy” because they oppose our vision of the future, we also reduce their value. We diminish, at least in our eyes, some of their God-given worth by viewing them as objects to be removed rather than people to be loved. Whenever we diminish the value of people created in God’s image, we cannot be moving closer to shalom; "
― Skye Jethani , Futureville: Discover Your Purpose for Today by Reimagining Tomorrow
70 " Very often, what gets Christians into trouble is not holding to God’s commands, but stridently holding to the assumptions we’ve inferred from God’s commands. "
71 " As Fyodor Dostoevsky said in The Brothers Karamazov, “Love in action is a harsh and dreadful thing compared with love in dreams. "
72 " It is entirely possible to walk the paths of Exodus or Exile without God, but you cannot walk their paths without a devil. "
― Skye Jethani , The Voting Booth: A new vision for Christian engagement in a post-Christian culture
73 " Rather than a vehicle for knowing God and fostering our communion with him, we search the Scriptures for applicable principles that we may employ to control our world and life. This is not Christianity; this is Christian deism. "
74 " LIFE WITH GOD is different because its goal is not to use God, its goal is God. "
75 " Remember, God’s original intent for us was a mission. He called humanity to rule over the earth, to fill and subdue it, and to extend his creative order and beauty far beyond the confines of the garden of Eden. This work was to be accomplished in perpetual communion with God, and it was to be motivated not by a fear of insignificance, but by the assurance of God’s love for us. "
76 " This is the first failure of LIFE FOR GOD—it puts God’s mission ahead of God himself. "
77 " He understood that his calling (to be a messenger to the Gentiles) was not the same as his treasure (to be united with Christ). His communion with Christ rooted and preceded his work for him. "
78 " Making God’s mission into an idol is a common and serious fault of the LIFE FOR GOD posture because it perpetuates the rebellion of Eden; it is a more subtle way of dethroning God and replacing him with something we can control. "
79 " After the rebellion and the breaking of our union with God, humanity retained a sense of mission, a desire to achieve and subdue the earth. But when this work is pursued without God and not empowered by his presence and love, what was intended to be good and life giving becomes twisted and destructive. "
80 " Missionalism starts slowly and gains a foothold in the leader’s attitude. Before long the mission controls almost everything: time, relationships, health, spiritual depth, ethics, and convictions. In advanced stages, missionalism means doing whatever it takes to solve the problem. In its worst iteration, the end always justifies the means. The family goes; health is sacrificed; integrity is jeopardized; Godconnection is limited. "