Quotes by David Mathis

For the glory of God, the good of others, and the satisfaction of our souls, the aim of the Christian life is our coming to share in…Christlikeness or godliness—which is ‘holiness’ rightly understood.

Prayer doesn’t begin with our needs, but with his bounty.

It shouldn’t surprise us…to find that prayer is not finally about getting things from God, but getting God.

He is holy, and so we worship (adoration). He is merciful, and so we repent (confession). He is gracious, and so we express appreciation (thanksgiving). He is loving and caring, and so we petition him for ourselves, our family, our friends, and our world (supplication).

This is the heart of prayer—not getting things from God, but getting God.

…Prayer to God is not only the place for divulging our heart, but also developing our desires.

The great purpose of prayer is not getting things from God but getting God.

God designed the church to be a community of lifelong learners under the earthly guidance of leaders who are teachers at heart. The Christian faith is not a finite course of study for the front-end of adulthood. Our mind-set shouldn’t be to first do our learning and then spend the rest of our lives drawing from that original deposit of knowledge. Rather, ongoing health in the Christian life is inextricably linked to ongoing learning.

We don’t just learn facts, but we learn a Face. We’re not just learners of principles, but of a Person. We are lifelong learners in relationship with Jesus as we hear his voice in his word and have his ear in prayer, and share in community with his body, all through the power of his Spirit.

It is grace to be forgiven of sinful acts, and grace to be supplied the heart for righteous ones.

The grace of God cannot be quarantined to individuals.

…Take every word as spoken to yourself, with this essential anchor in place: Seek to understand first how God’s words fell on the original hearers, and how they relate to Jesus’ person and work, and then bring them home to yourself.

The Bible is gloriously for us, but it is not mainly about us.

In our sin, we’d rather trust in ourselves than another, amass our own righteousness than receive another’s, speak our own mind rather than listen to someone else.

Nothing shows our hearts like sacrifice. When we are willing not only to give from our excess, but to embrace some personal loss or disadvantage for the sake of showing generosity toward others, we say loudly and clearly…that we have a greater love than ourselves and our comforts.

It is the grace of God that frees a soul from selfishness and empowers not just generosity, but sacrifice. And such sacrifice God will not overlook. In faith our giving to meet others’ needs becomes an occasion for more divine grace to flood our souls.

Good disciplemaking requires both intentionality and relationality. It means being strategic and being social. Most of us are bent one way or the other. We’re naturally relational, but lacking in intentionality. Or we find it easy to be intentional, but not relational. We typically tip (or sometimes lean) one way or the other as we begin the disciplemaking process. But tipping and leaning won’t cover the full picture of what life-on-life disciplemaking requires. It’s not just friend-to-friend, and it’s not just teacher-to-student. It’s both. There is the sharing of ordinary life (relationship) and seeking to initiate and make the most of teachable moments (intentionality). There are the long walks through Galilee and the sermons on the mount. Disciplemaking is both organic and engineered, relational and intentional, with shared context and shared content, quality and quantity time.

One of the effects of the gospel going deeper into our souls is that it frees our fingers to loosen their grasp on our goods.

For the Christian, the issue is not just that we give, but how. ‘God loves a cheerful giver’ (2 Cor. 9:7). And giving gladly rests on the great why of Christian generosity: that Christ himself—our Savior, Lord, and greatest treasure—demonstrated the ultimate in generosity in coming to buy us back. ‘Though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that you by his poverty might become rich’ (2 Cor. 8:9). If Jesus is in us, then increasingly such an open-handed tendency will be in us as well.

It is true that for many aged saints, gray hair and a good head go hand in hand. But for others, far too many others, length of life only entrenches stubbornness, irritability, and careless ways of thinking and living. Life experience may increase inevitably with age, but without some long-term pattern of receptivity and intentionality, multiplied experiences will only create more confusion than clarity.