Quotes by Mark Dever
Mark Dever (b. 1960) — Pastor, Autor und Gründer von 9Marks · Reformierter Baptist · USA
Mark Dever ist ein US-amerikanischer reformierter Baptistenpastor und Theologe, der seit 1994 die Capitol Hill Baptist Church in Washington, D.C. leitet. Er gründete die Organisation 9Marks und steht für ein calvinistisches Gemeindeverständnis, das auf fortlaufende Auslegungspredigt, Ältestenleitung sowie verbindliche Gemeindemitgliedschaft und formelle Gemeindezucht setzt. Für heutige Bibelleser liefert er einflussreiche Impulse zur Ekklesiologie, während sein striktes Zuchtmodell und seine frühere öffentliche Unterstützung für krisenbelastete Leiterschaftskollegen auch auf deutliche Kritik stoßen.
Era: Today
Recurring topics: Discipleship, Witness & Mission, Grace & Redemption, Church & Congregation, God, Jesus & the Holy Spirit, Guilt & Forgiveness, Faith & Trust, Service & Love of Neighbour
Quotes by Mark Dever
We do not fail in our evangelism if we faithfully tell the gospel to someone who is not subsequently converted; we fail only if we do not faithfully tell the gospel at all.
Mark Dever
Every other religion in the world is the religion of “do,” but …Christianity alone is the religion of “done.”
Mark Dever
Do you want to know that your [Christian] life is real? Commit yourself to a local group of saved sinners. Try to love them. Don’t just do it for three weeks. Don’t just do it for six months. Do it for years. And I think you’ll find out, and others will, too, whether or not you love God. The truth will show itself.
Mark Dever
So much of discipling is doing what you ordinarily do but bringing people along with you and having meaningful conversations like Jesus did.
Mark Dever
As John Stott has said, “To ‘evangelize’…does not mean to win converts…but simply to announce the good news, irrespective of the results.”
Mark Dever
Discipling others now is how I try to leave time-bombs of grace.
Mark Dever
Asked about his accomplishments as a Reformer, Martin Luther said, “I simply taught, preached, wrote God’s Word: otherwise I did nothing… The Word did it all.” The Word of God brings life.
Mark Dever
So many times I’ve seen men, particularly younger guys, act as if real leadership is shown in correcting others. That’s why young men’s sermons often scold. What they haven’t figured out is that you can often accomplish more by encouragement. There are times to scold. But 80 to 90 percent of what you hope to correct can be accomplished through encouragement. If you look back at your life and consider who influenced you the most, you will probably find that it’s the people who believed in you.
Mark Dever
Christians are supposed to be conspicuously holy, not for our own reputation but for God’s. We are to be the light of the world, so that when people see our good deeds they will glorify God (Matt. 5:16).
Mark Dever
Our continuing to pray for someone is a testimony of our faith not in them or in ourselves, but in God.
Mark Dever
If you are truly trusting in Christ, you can’t confess a sin for which God has not provided forgiveness in Jesus. Indeed, if you work at the discipline of confessing your sin, it should not lead to despair at all, but rather to rejoicing over the extent of God’s love to you in Christ.
Mark Dever
Have you ever heard of the life – truth – life pattern? Your life should attract people to listen to you; your teaching should then work for their transformation; their transformed lives should then illustrate what you taught, which in turn attracts people to listen to them.
Mark Dever
Churches don’t need programs so much as they need cultures of discipling, cultures where each member prioritizes the spiritual health of others.
Mark Dever
Embracing trials doesn’t mean that we are to pretend that they are not trials. It simply means that we are not to let our reactions to them be determined by how they first feel to us.
Mark Dever
By His death on the Cross, Christ has become the Lamb that was slain for us, our Redeemer, the One who has made peace between us and God, who has taken our guilt on Himself, who has conquered our most deadly enemy and has assuaged the well-deserved wrath of God.
Mark Dever
Trusting Christ will always show itself by following Him.
Mark Dever
[Jesus] didn’t die on behalf of or for the benefit of, but He literally died in their stead, or in their place. They deserved death, but because He died for them, now they will not die.
Mark Dever
Discipling means helping others follow Jesus. Discipling is a relationship in which we seek to do spiritual good for someone by initiating, teaching, correcting, modeling, loving, humbling ourselves, counseling, and influencing.
Mark Dever
[Evangelism] is telling the good news about Jesus, and doing it with honesty, urgency, and joy, using the Bible, living a life that backs it up, and praying, and doing it all for the glory of God.
Mark Dever
The family is supposed to be our training ground in this loving authority. It is a “ramping-up” place that God has given us to learn love, respect, honor, obedience, and trust, in order to prepare us for relating to others and ultimately to God Himself.
Mark Dever
According to the Bible, our repentance and faith are gifts of God to us; our conversion, our great change, occurs only by God’s grace.
Mark Dever
Getting wet is the easiest command Jesus gave us to follow. It only gets harder from there.
Mark Dever
But imagine this church: It is huge and is still numerically growing. People like it. The music is good. Whole extended families can be found within its membership. The people are welcoming. There are many exciting programs, and people are quickly enlisted into their support. And yet, the church, in trying to look like the world in order to win the world, has done a better job than it may have intended. It does not display the distinctively holy characteristics taught in the New Testament. Imagine such an apparently vigorous church being truly spiritually sick, with no remaining immune system to check and guard against wrong teaching or wrong living. Imagine Christians, knee-deep in recovery groups and sermons on brokenness and grace, being comforted in their sin but never confronted. Imagine those people, made in the image of God, being lost to sin because no one corrects them. Can you imagine such a church? Apart from the size, have I not described many of our American churches?
Mark Dever
How many churches today are full of people who have been psychologically pressured but never truly converted?
Mark Dever
I think many times we don’t evangelize because we undertake everything in our own power. We attempt to leave God out of it. We forget that it is His will and pleasure for His gospel to be known. He wants sinners saved. Simply put, we don’t pray for opportunities to share the gospel, so how surprised should we be when they don’t come? If you’re not evangelizing because you think you lack opportunities, pray and be amazed as God answers your prayers.
Mark Dever
If [God] were not wrathful against sin, we would question whether He is personally good. What would it mean for Him to say that He is committed to oppose evil if He refused to judge it?
Mark Dever
In our evangelism we must be partners with the Holy Spirit, presenting the Gospel but relying on the Holy Spirit of God to do the true convicting and convincing and converting.
Mark Dever
Pastors teaching the Word is the core of a church’s discipling ministry. It provides the food and water that feeds all the other discipling relationships within the church.
Mark Dever
The call to evangelism is a call to turn our lives outward from focusing on ourselves and our needs to focusing on God and on others made in His image who are still at enmity with Him, alienated from Him, and in need of salvation from sin and guilt.
Mark Dever
The disciples were transformed. Something happened to Peter. Just a few days earlier his hopes had been dashed and he had denied Jesus in front of a few people he had never met. Yet just a few days later, he was fearlessly preaching about Jesus and explaining Jesus’ death to the very people who killed Him. From dashed hopes to death-defying faith – not just in Peter, but in all the disciples.
Mark Dever
The fundamental response to God’s radical love for us is for us to radically love Him.
Mark Dever
What is repentance? It is turning from the sins you love to the holy God you’re called to love. It is admitting that you’re not God. It is beginning to value Jesus more than your immediate pleasure. It is giving up those things the Bible calls sin and leaving them to follow Jesus.
Mark Dever
Discipling is deliberately doing spiritual good to someone so that he or she will be more like Christ. Discipleship is the term I use to describe our own following Christ. Discipling is the subset of that, which is helping someone else follow Christ.
Mark Dever
It is true that the Lord’s Supper is only for sinners. But within that group, it is only for repentant sinners.
Mark Dever
You and aren’t called to use our extensive powers to convict and change the sinner while God stands back as a gentleman, quietly waiting for the spiritual corpse, His declared spiritual enemy, to invite God into his heart. Rather, we should resolve to preach the gospel like gentlemen, persuading while knowing we can’t regenerate anyone, and then stand back while God uses all His extensive powers to convict and change the sinner. Then we’ll see clearly who it is that can really call the dead to life, and although He’ll use us in the doing of it, it’s not you and I who are actually doing it.
Mark Dever
When the Bible says that we are redeemed, it is saying we have been bought out of slavery, so we as Christians have been bought and brought out of slavery to sin. Christ’s death was the price paid for our freedom from sin. Christ’s death is how God has redeemed us from our slavery to sin.
Mark Dever
According to the Bible, good motives for evangelism are a desire to be obedient, a love for the lost, and a love for God.
Mark Dever
God’s answer for your guilt is not to explain it away by circumstances that have victimized you, but to call you to own your sins fully and to entrust them all to Jesus Christ by faith. Jesus Christ is our substitute. He has taken our penalty.
Mark Dever
In order to see God’s church grow, we should use the means God has given to us… Preaching the Gospel is the normal way God grows His church. Added to this there is also prayer. Again and again in the book of Acts we find the early Christians in prayer. And as we beseech God for conversion and for maturity, we find God granting our prayers. The more we pray the more we acknowledge that God is the reason for any growth that comes. We acknowledge, in humility, that any growth that comes does not ultimately come from us.
Mark Dever
The Christian call to evangelism is a call not simply to persuade people to make decisions but rather to proclaim to them the Good News of salvation in Christ, to call them to repentance, and to give God the glory for regeneration and conversion. We don’t fail in our evangelism if we faithfully present the Gospel and yet the person is not converted; we fail only if we don’t faithfully present the Gospel at all.
Mark Dever
80 quotes in total — browse the collection.
Sources: wikipedia.org, 9marks.org, baptistnews.com, evangelicaldarkweb.org
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