Quotes by David Powlison
David Powlison (1949–2019) — Seelsorger, Theologe, Dozent und Autor der biblischen Seelsorgebewegung (CCEF) · evangelikal-reformiert · USA
David Powlison (1949–2019) war ein US-amerikanischer evangelikal-reformierter Seelsorger, Theologe und langjähriger Leiter der Christian Counseling & Educational Foundation (CCEF). Er prägte die Weiterentwicklung der biblischen Seelsorgebewegung hin zu einem gnadenorientierten Ansatz, stieß mit seiner Abgrenzung von säkularer Psychotherapie und Psychiatrie jedoch auch auf fachliche Kritik. Für Bibelleser veranschaulicht sein Werk, wie theologische Aussagen der Schrift auf persönliche Lebenskrisen, seelische Nöte und zwischenmenschliche Konflikte bezogen werden können.
Era: Today
Recurring topics: Growth & Character, Temptation & Struggle, Meaning & Identity, Wisdom & Understanding, Grace & Redemption, Fear & Anxiety, Guilt & Forgiveness, Humility & Pride
Quotes by David Powlison
All the things we worry about are what we want but could lose. That’s why we worry. The best thing you could ever want you will never lose, and you can always give it away.
David Powlison
God does not accept me just as I am; He loves me despite how I am. He loves me just as Jesus is; He loves me enough to devote my life to renewing me in the image of Jesus.
David Powlison
In the hands of a loving God, sorrow and suffering become the doorways into the greatest and most indestructible joys.
David Powlison
Scripture never separates motive and behavior. The mirror of Scripture exposes both. The lamp of Scripture guides both. The grace and power of Jesus Christ change both root and fruit.
David Powlison
What happens when you are obsessed with getting people to like you? You become flirtatious or artificial, a coward or a deceiver, a chameleon or a recluse.
David Powlison
Change is moving in the right direction. It's not about speed, distance, or perfection, but the direction.
David Powlison
Pop theologies baptize the longings of sinful hearts: health and wealth, significance and security, self-esteem, power to get what you want. But the Holy Spirit is in the business of changing what you want.
David Powlison
The evil in our desires often lies not in what we want but in the fact that we want it too much. Natural affections (for any good thing) become inordinate, ruling cravings. We are meant to be ruled by godly passions and desires. Natural desires for good things are meant to exist subordinate to our desire to please the Giver of gifts. Grasping that the evil lies in the ruling status of the desire, not the object, is frequently a turning point in self-understanding, in seeing the need for Christ’s mercies, and in changing.
David Powlison
Take unilateral initiative, and don’t quit. Love your enemies. Unreciprocated love expresses the image of your Father.
David Powlison
Don’t ever degenerate into giving advice unconnected to the good news of Jesus crucified, alive, present, at work and returning.
David Powlison
Anxieties feel endless and infinite – but they’re finite and specific.
David Powlison
If you just get the big things straightened out, you will have what you need in the little things. What everyone in the world is obsessed with, God makes a distant second. He’ll give you what you need to live on if you need Him in order to live.
David Powlison
Covetous greed will make you angry and manipulative… Complacent, satisfied greed makes you care less about what really matters; because it lulls you to sleep… Anxious greed [will make you worry].
David Powlison
No one can understand a person who isn't willing to hold two opposites together. You can't understand yourself without holding the creation and fall together.
David Powlison
Wisdom is always living wisdom, conditioned by the times in which people live. Christian truth is eternal truth, but it is never timeless truth. It is always timely truth, addressed to specific people facing specific problems. It is not an assemblage of disembodied propositions, abstract principles, nameless and placeless verities. Almost every page of Scripture contains the names of specific people, places, and circumstances. That’s for a reason. Jesus Christ, who is the same yesterday, today, and forever, is forever meeting us, whoever we are right where we are.
David Powlison
[God’s love] is at God’s initiative and choice; it isn’t given out on the basis of my performance. God’s gospel love is not wages that I earn with a model life; it is a gift. It is a gift that I cannot earn; more than that, it is a gift that I do not even deserve. God loves weak, ungodly, sinful enemies. The gift is the opposite of what I deserve. God ought to kill me on the spot. Instead, He sent His Son to die in my place.
David Powlison
The mind of man is a “factory of idols.” We are infested with lusts. Listen closely to any person given to complaining, and you will observe the creativity of our cravings.
David Powlison
Here game plan when you start to worry and obsess: 1. Name the pressures. You always worry about something. What things tend to hook you?… Anxieties feel endless and infinite – but they’re finite and specific. 2. Identify how you express anxiety. How does anxiety show up in your life? 3. Ask yourself, Why am I anxious? Worry always has its inner logic… What do I want, need, crave, expect, demand, and lust after? Or what do I fear either losing or never getting? Identify the specific lust of the flesh. Anxious people “eagerly seek” the gifts more than the Giver. They bank treasure in the wrong place. What is preoccupying me, so that I pursue it with all my heart? 4. Which promise of Jesus [from the Bible] speaks to you most? Grab one promise and work with it. 5. Go to your Father. Talk to Him. Your Father cares about the things you worry about. Your Father knows what you need. Cast your cares upon Him, because He cares for you. 6. Give. Do and say something constructive. Care for someone else. Give to meet human need. In the darkest hole, when life is toughest, there’s always some way to give yourself away.
David Powlison
If you receive blanket acceptance, you need no repentance. You just accept it. It fills you without humbling you. It relaxes you without upsetting you about yourself – or thrilling you about Christ. It lets you relax without reckoning with the anguish of Jesus on the cross. It is easy and undemanding. It does not insist on, or work at, changing you. It deceives you about both God and yourself. We can do better. God does not accept me just as I am; He loves me despite how I am. He loves me just as Jesus is; He loves me enough to devote my life to renewing me in the image of Jesus.
David Powlison
Worriers act as if they might be able to control the uncontrollable. Central to worry is the illusion that we can control things… The illusion of control lurks inside your anxiety. Anxiety and control are two sides of one coin. When we can’t control something, we worry about it.
David Powlison
So how can you tell when a pleasure crosses the line from innocent to guilty? 1. The pleasure is plain wrong. 2. The pleasure captivates and captures you. 3. The pleasure is hidden. 4. The pleasure steals you away from the good. 5. The pleasure doesn’t deliver.
David Powlison
Jesus is the pioneer [when suffering]. His passion began with sorrow, betrayal, and abandonment: “Father, let this cup pass from me.” The silence of a lamb before its shearers. “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” “I am thirsty.” This sufferer loved His enemies, as we are called to do. “Today you will be with Me in paradise.” “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.” “Woman, behold your son…Behold your mother.” It wrapped up in commitment and hope: “It is finished.” “Into your hands I commit my spirit.”
David Powlison
The Christian life is a great paradox. Those who die to self, find self. Those who die to their cravings will receive many times as much in this age, and, in the age to come, eternal life (Luke 18:29). They will find new passions worth living for and dying for. If I crave happiness, I will receive misery. If I crave to be loved, I will receive rejection. If I crave significance, I will receive futility. If I crave control, I will receive chaos. If I crave reputation, I will receive humiliation. But if I long for God and His wisdom and mercy, I will receive God and wisdom and mercy. Along the way, sooner or later, I will also receive happiness, love, meaning, order, and glory.
David Powlison
God acts first to strengthen sufferers internally. If you “suffer in a Godward direction,” He gives you hope. It is in the context of suffering that God strengthens hearts in many ways: 1. The love of God pours out directly into the hearts of afflicted persons who rely on Him in hope (Rom. 5:3-5). 2. God becomes directly known – “seen” – in ways previously unimaginable (Job 42:5). 3. Our foolishness is revealed, so that we might receive growing wisdom directly from God (James 1:2-5). 4. We are remade into the image of Jesus, and established in the love of God (Rom. 8:29, in the context of 8:18-39). 5. We learn to trust and obey Jesus, who walked the path of unjust suffering ahead of us and now walks it with us (Heb. 4:14-5:9; 12:1-11). 6. Our self-centered cravings are revealed and our faith is purified and simplified (1 Peter 1:3-15).
David Powlison
Have you noticed that even people who feel lousy about themselves are judgmental toward others? When you feel inferior to others, you don’t respect them or treat them with mercy. Instead, you envy, hate, grumble, and criticize. Even self-belittling tendencies – “low self-esteem,” self-pity, self-hatred, timidity, fears of failure and rejection – fundamentally express pride failing, pride intimidated, and pride despairing. Such pride, even when much battered, still finds someone else to look down on.
David Powlison
Opinions and beliefs are meant to be evaluated in the light of truth. What did happen? What do you think and believe? How do you judge people or your situation? Finally, is what you think true and righteous, or false and sinful? Instead of posing these sorts of questions, “I feel that…” ducks conscious evaluation of my ideas and judgments. What I feel just is. True-for-me replaces truth. The Bible has devastating things to say about leaning on your own understanding, about being wise in your own eyes, about the way that seems right to a man, and about people who delight in airing their opinions (see Prov. 3:5; 3:7; 14:12; 18:2).
David Powlison
Sexual immorality might occur for many different reasons: erotic pleasure, financial advantage, revenge on a spouse or parent, fear of saying no to an authority, pursuit of approval, enjoyment of power over another’s sexual response, the quest for social status or career advancement, pity for someone and playing the savior, fear of losing a potential marriage partner, escape from boredom, peer pressure, and so forth.
David Powlison
We are meant to long supremely for the Lord Himself, for the Giver, not His gifts. The absence of blessings – rejection, vanity, reviling, illness, poverty – often is the crucible in which we learn to love God for who He is. In our idolatry we make gifts out to be supreme goods, and make the Giver into the errand boy of our desires.
David Powlison
Our desires are not a given, but a fundamental choice. Desires are most often unruly, disorderly, inordinate affections for XYZ, a good thing that I insanely need. Sometimes they are natural affections for xyz, made sane and orderly by subordination to passionate love for God that claims my heart, soul, mind and might. Our desires are often idolatrous cravings to get good gifts (overthrowing or ignoring the Giver). Sometimes they are intense desires for the Giver Himself as supremely more important than whatever good gifts we might gain or lose from His hand.
David Powlison
Felt need are frequently taken as self-evident necessities to be acquired, not as deceptive slave-masters. Our culture of need reinforces the flesh’s instincts and habits. In most cases, a person’s felt needs are slang for idolatrous demands for love, understanding, a sense of being in control, affirmation, and achievement.
David Powlison
The ambiguous words “I feel” are commonly used in four distinct ways. The phrase speaks of experience, emotions, thoughts, or desires. Serious problems arise because the word is typically loaded with authority: “If I feel it, then it’s inherently true, right, and valid.” Clear biblical thinking pierces the fog of ambiguity and authority that wraps itself around “feelings.” As minds and hearts are renewed by the Spirit’s life-giving truth, everything about us is touched.
David Powlison
Your ability to really love your enemies…to do good even to the ungrateful or wicked absolutely requires the intervention of the Godhead. It required that Christ suffer and die because of your natural enmity to God. It requires the Holy Spirit’s power to give you a wholly new life. It requires the Father’s patient hand to prune and grow you in a way of life that is otherwise impossible – even inconceivable. It requires nothing less than radical repentance, living faith, and renewal of your whole heart that you might begin to learn how to really love. Such faith working through love is the product of a good news worth living and dying for.
David Powlison
The Bible teaches us that our “feel likes” are frequently desires of the flesh. Most of our “felt needs” are idolatrous desires. They are meant to be killed by the Spirit, not indulged. Such is the way of life, freedom, wisdom, and joy in Christ.
David Powlison
This use of feeling is also fuzzy and problematic. It loads implicit authority into our impulses, desires, intentions, choices, expectations, and fears. Far from being givens to obey, these are meant to be examined biblically. The words “I feel like” often obscure our responsibility for our desires. People act as if their “feel likes” were authoritative impulses! Deceptive desires determine choices.
David Powlison
Let us be ruthless to root out theoretical structures that view people as psychological or socio-pyschological abstractions: the phenomena observed are not “ego defense mechanisms” but are pride’s offensive, defensive, and deceptive strategies. And let us also reject the therapeutic assumptions that are consequent to the theory: they are poor and deceptive substitutes for the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
David Powlison
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Sources: wikipedia.org, ccef.org, wordpress.com, desiringgod.org
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