Best 17 quotes of Ronnie Mcbrayer on MyQuotes

Ronnie Mcbrayer

  • By Anonym
    Ronnie Mcbrayer

    Because we follow Christ and are citizens in the kingdom of God, the rationale “that’s just the way it is,” is not near enough motivation or excuse to keep going with the flow.

  • By Anonym
    Ronnie Mcbrayer

    Being a “Christian” – a word used only three times in the New Testament – is not Jesus’ goal for his people. But the making of a community of revolutionary followers or “disciples” – a word used nearly three hundred times in the New Testament – seems to be exactly the goal. The church must return to these roots. The church must become a way of life, an alternative lifestyle, a counter-community of Christ-followers. Church must once again become a people who are on “The Way” formed by the words and way of Jesus.

  • By Anonym
    Ronnie Mcbrayer

    Being a “friend of sinners” is an accusation that Christians should wear as a badge of honor, for nothing could honor Jesus more, and nothing is more revealing of who God actually is.

  • By Anonym
    Ronnie Mcbrayer

    By telling stories, Jesus isn’t somehow putting sugar in a spoon to make the medicine go down a bit easier. These stories are the medicine. These stories are an extension and explanation of Jesus’ revolutionary ministry. These stories show us that things are not as they appear. Our tidy, well-packaged ideas about spirituality, faith, and reality shatter when confronted by Christ and the God he represents.

  • By Anonym
    Ronnie Mcbrayer

    In serving others, the church will save itself from becoming nothing more than a spiritualized 501c3 not-for-profit, self-centered corporation, organized for the benefit of donor tax exemption. Serving others will remind us of our identity and call us out from this self-absorbed, selfish world to be the people of God on a journey following his Son, Jesus.

  • By Anonym
    Ronnie Mcbrayer

    I often feel the pressure, from my peers and others, to come out and “take a stand” on a moral or social issue. Typically, I refuse to do so, or at least I refuse to do so in a way that will please my critics. On so many of the hard and divisive issues of our times, I don’t close my eyes. I do stand for something: I stand for love. For if Jesus came, not to condemn the world, but to redeem it, how can we who bear the Name respond any differently? Yes, what I believe about all these moral and social issues matters, without a doubt. But these beliefs mean nothing, if my first and consuming conviction is not love for those who are different and believe differently than me. We have a choice: We can choose to show how “right” we are, or we can choose to love. Sometimes, it is impossible to do both at the same time.

  • By Anonym
    Ronnie Mcbrayer

    Jesus never described the gospel as an exchange of this current world for a remote spiritual retreat far away. Never. Rather, his gospel was: “God’s kingdom is here! It has arrived! It is now! Heaven has come to earth!” So when Jesus invited his disciples – then as well as now – to “Follow me,” he was inviting them to get in on the world-redeeming, evil-conquering, status-reversing, life-transforming movement of God that had invaded planet Earth.

  • By Anonym
    Ronnie Mcbrayer

    Many of us vote under the assumption that if only the right man/woman/party/ideology could get seated in the White House, the Court House, or the School House then the Kingdom of God would come. That is an illusion. We do not look for the church to assist in or endorse the building of a made-in-America utopia which is only a Babylon with red, white, and blue curtains. We look for a city whose builder and maker is God. To him, and only him, we must pledge our primary allegiance.

  • By Anonym
    Ronnie Mcbrayer

    One of the tragedies of current Christianity in America is that we have so few compelling illustrations of this life that Jesus lived and the type of radical community he came to create. Leading pastors and preachers are little more than family-friendly celebrities or game show hosts with all the razzle-dazzle and mass media presence that accompanies the position.

  • By Anonym
    Ronnie Mcbrayer

    The Beatitudes are no spiritual “to do list” to be attempted by eager, rule-keeping disciples. It is a spiritual “done” list of the qualities God brings to bear in the people who follow Jesus.

  • By Anonym
    Ronnie Mcbrayer

    The good news, as Jesus proclaims it, is not just an evacuation plan to rescue people from earth or the sufferings of the afterlife, transporting them to heaven. Rather, it is a revolutionary strategy to redeem the sufferings of earth by putting the rule and reign of heaven inside of people.

  • By Anonym
    Ronnie Mcbrayer

    The objective, according to Jesus, was not to get people inside of heaven, but to get heaven inside of people. An understanding of the gospel that concerns itself only with getting my own soul into heaven – damn this world, it’s all going to burn anyway – falls miserably short of the revolutionary message of Jesus. Jesus did not come to live in your heart like an imaginary friend. He came to bring you into the kingdom that you might be a part of God’s communal ministry of justice, grace, and mercy.

  • By Anonym
    Ronnie Mcbrayer

    The status quo will be insurrected by hope and transformation, as slowly and steadily the "God Movement" invades this world with certain salvation. This is not high-minded idealism or a feigned quest for utopia. It is a hopeful, defiant trust that God’s will indeed will be done and God’s kingdom will come, on earth as it is in heaven.

  • By Anonym
    Ronnie Mcbrayer

    To not follow Jesus is to be unmoved. To be unmoved is to risk the greatest danger of all: To misunderstand and misrepresent God.

  • By Anonym
    Ronnie Mcbrayer

    To take Christ into our well-ordered, well-kept lives is in many ways to ask for trouble, for he will not leave well enough alone.

  • By Anonym
    Ronnie Mcbrayer

    Violence promises us something we all deeply desire, something we genuinely want; violence promises us peace. Violence promises us, that in the end, when the last battle is fought, the last bomb is dropped, and the last enemy is slain, we will have what we always dreamed of – safety, a world without suffering, death or bloodshed; a world at rest. Yet, these are the very things Christ offers with the Kingdom of God. A world where the lamb will lay down with the lion, where swords are beaten into plowshares, where mercy and justice flow down like the waters, where every tear will be wiped away from our eyes, and where there will be no more death or sorrow or crying or pain. Christ and violence seem to offer the same final result, the two being competitors for our allegiance.

  • By Anonym
    Ronnie Mcbrayer

    You will not find Jesus in heaven, reclining on a cloud. He isn’t in church on Sunday morning, sitting in the pews. He isn’t locked away in the Vatican or held hostage by a denominational seminary. Rather, Jesus is sitting in the Emergency Room, an uninsured, undocumented immigrant needing healing. He is behind bars, so far from his parole date he can’t think that far into the future. He is homeless, evicted from his apartment, waiting in line at the shelter for a bed and a cup of soup. He is the poor child living in government housing with lice in his hair, the stripes of abuse on his body and a growl in his stomach. He is an old forgotten woman in a roach infested apartment who no one thinks of anymore. He is a refugee in Sudan, living in squalor. He is the abused and molested child who falsely feels responsible for the evil that is perpetrated against her. He is the young woman who hates herself for the decisions she has made, decisions that have imperiled her life, but did the best she could, torn between impossible choices. Jesus is anyone without power, ability or the means to help themselves, and he beckons us to come to him; not on a do-gooding crusade, but in solidarity and embrace.