Quotes from Alexander Strauch

Braggarts build themselves up, jealous people tear others down, but only loving people build others up.

Jesus taught that "the great and first commandment is to love God completely, totally, and unreservedly -- with all one's heart, with all one's soul, and with all one's mind (Matt. 22:37-38; Mark 12:28-34). The sum of all God's commandments and all religious service is love for God. It is the believer's first priority. It is the reason we were created. Nothing in life is more right, more fulfilling, and more rewarding than loving God our Creator and Savior.

Instructing people to obey Christ's commands is part of the Great Commission. It's not enough to teach the facts about Christ, we are to teach, exhort, and train disciples to obey and live according to the commands of Christ.

We must understand that the local church isn't a country club or a casual self-help group. It is God's holy temple, a congregation of redeemed saints and priests who are consecrated to God. It is God's lighthouse in a dark world. It is "the pillar and support of the truth.

Hudson Taylor, founder of the China Inland Mission (now called the Overseas Missionary Fellowship) believed that if money could motivate the merchants of England to cross life-threatening oceans and enter the interior of China at great personal risk of loss of life, could not the love of Christ motivate missionaries to do the same for the sake of the gospel?

When we would consider the love of God in Christ, we are as one approaching the ocean: he casts a glance on the surface, but the depths he cannot sound." — R. C. C.

Knowledge without love inflates the ego and deceives the mind.

If money could motivate the merchants of England to cross death-defying oceans and enter the interior of China at great personal risk of the loss of life, could not the love of Christ motivate the missionaries to do the same for the sake of the gospel?

The nature of Christian love is to do the will of God. Obeying the Father was a delight for Jesus because he loved his Father:

Since the local church is "the pillar and support of the truth" (1 Tim. 3:15b), its leaders must be rock-solid pillars of biblical doctrine or the house will crumble. Since the local church is also a small flock traveling over treacherous terrain that is infested with "savage wolves," only those shepherds who know the way and see the wolves can lead the flock to its safe destination. An elder, then, must be characterized by doctrinal integrity.

What is both surprising and depressing is the sheer prayerlessness that characterizes so much of the Western church. It is surprising, because it is out of step with the Bible that portrays what Christian living should be; it is depressing, because it frequently coexists with abounding Christian activity that somehow seems hollow, frivolous, and superficial.10

As Anthony Thiselton puts it, "The opposite of love is not correction but indifference.

Here is a Christian so committed to the well-being of other Christians, especially new Christians, that he is simply burning up inside to be with them, to help them, to nurture them, to feed them, to stabilize them, to establish an adequate foundation for them. Small wonder, then, that he devotes himself to praying for them when he finds he cannot visit them personally.4

Paul's prayer is the product of his passion for people. His unaffected fervency in prayer is not whipped-up emotionalism but the overflow of his love for brothers and sisters in Christ Jesus.

As we grow in disciplined, self-sacrificing love, so we will grow in intercessory prayer. Superficially fervent prayers devoid of such love are finally phony, hollow, shallow.5

In every congregation, spiritual problems and physical needs exist for which the only solution is believing, persistent prayer.

When pride comes, then comes dishonor, but with the humble is wisdom" (Prov. 11:2;

Authoritarianism is evil, anti-social, anti-human and ultimately anti-God (for self-deifying pride is at its heart), and I have nothing to say in its favor.11

This does not mean, however, that we must accept them passively, any more than we must accept death passively. The atonement of Christ gives us the warrant to fight against these penal effects of sin in whatever ways we can."17

the pagan Caecilius criticized the Christians because "hardly have they met when they love each other.... Indiscriminately they call each other brother and sister.

The work of feeding and tending sheep is hard work, arduous work, and love for the sheep alone will not do it; you must have a consuming love for the Great Shepherd, the Lord Jesus Christ.

Christianity, the humblest of all faiths, degenerated into the most power-hungry and hierarchical religion on the face of the earth. After the emperor Constantine elevated Christianity to the status of a state religion in A.D. 312, the once-persecuted faith became a fierce persecutor of all its opposition.

If Paul did not love the Corinthians, he would walk away from them and let them flounder in their own cesspool of sin. Instead, he is proactive. He confronts, warns, writes, visits, and even humbles himself before them (2 Cor. 2:5-10; 12:21).

Love covers all kinds of offenses, hurts, annoyances, disappointments, and sins that we all suffer because of others. Only love has the power to freely and repeatedly forgive, to truly seek to understand people's weaknesses and complexities, to put things into proper perspective, and to put a blanket over other people's faults.