Quotes by Tom Wells
Tom Wells (1933–2019) — Pastor, Evangelist und Buchautor · Reformierte Baptisten · USA
Tom Wells (1933–2019) war ein US-amerikanischer Pastor, Evangelist und Buchautor der reformierten Baptisten, der fast drei Jahrzehnte lang eine Gemeinde in Ohio leitete. Bekanntheit erlangte er durch seine theozentrische Missionslehre sowie als einflussreicher Mitgestalter der sogenannten Neubund-Theologie. Heutigen Bibellesern begegnet sein Werk in Form seelsorgerlicher und bibelzentrierter Auslegungen über Gottes Wesen, Gnade und das geistliche Leben.
Era: Today
Recurring topics: God, Jesus & the Holy Spirit, Faith & Trust, Wisdom & Understanding, Witness & Mission, Growth & Character, Grace & Redemption, Discipleship, Guidance & God's Will
Quotes by Tom Wells
Youth is the time when all seems to be within the grasp of the careful student. I have left that time behind. “I don’t know” is on my lips more often now. But so also is “God knows!” – not as a thoughtless expression in conversation, but as the conviction of my heart.
Tom Wells
[God] is not at a loss when He moves to bring us back to Himself. He can woo or whip. He can draw or drive. He can work rapidly or slowly, as He pleases. In other words, He is free to be God! And in His own way, at His own pace, He brings us back.
Tom Wells
He has told us to pray, “Thy will be done on earth, as it is in heaven” (Matthew 6:10). And if we have ever prayed that prayer and meant it – even once – we have ourselves shut the door on thousands of things for which we might foolishly ask.
Tom Wells
Growth in holiness will lead a man to see more and more of his own sinfulness.
Tom Wells
If God rules only in those places or events where no sin is involved, God does not rule on this earth. If sin can thwart God, His sovereignty is a name and not a fact.
Tom Wells
Sin cannot dethrone God. That is what sin aims to do, but it misses its mark. Sin brings guilt to a man, but it does not bring him one ounce of sovereignty. God rules even when men imagine they are defying Him.
Tom Wells
If I trust in Christ, I believe in the wisdom of His commands as well as in the sincerity of His promises. God does not command me to believe in this or that promise of Christ. No, He tells me I must believe in the Lord Jesus Himself.
Tom Wells
Men can see the greatest miracles and miss the glory of God. What generation was ever favored with miracles as Jesus’ generations was? Yet that generation crucified the Son of God!
Tom Wells
There are no magic formulas for revival. We cannot command it. We may await it with longing, and we are bound to express our longing in prayer.
Tom Wells
Profession and possession [of faith] are not the same thing.
Tom Wells
Worship is a response to greatness. A man does not become a worshipper merely by saying, “Now I shall become a worshipper.” That is impossible. That cannot be done. A man becomes a worshipper when he sees something great that calls forth his admiration or his worship. That is the only way worshippers are made. Worship answers to greatness.
Tom Wells
Our songs are not the cause of our loss of the sense of God’s greatness, though songs are surprisingly influential. No, our songs reflect this loss. Singing God-centered hymns is desirable, but more than that is needed. We sing what we feel, what we believe. When once we rediscover the greatness of God, we will sing it. Our song will echo our conviction.
Tom Wells
You know why men test gold, why they put it in the fire. They know that if it is gold, fire will not hurt it. Men do not seek to destroy gold with fire. They do not seek to harm it in any way. Instead, they try to prove beyond all doubt that it is gold. And that is what God is doing when He applies the yardstick of His Word to His people. He seeks to show them, and the world, that they are true Christians.
Tom Wells
But what if we look to God for our success? And what if God has “a great multitude, which no man could number” in His eye and on His heart? Why then, we ought to take courage. Who knows what God may do? The missionary is not alone. He is accompanied by the God who has determined to have a people for Himself. And God has made up His mind to take them from “all nations, and kindreds, and tongues” (Revelation 7:9). Here is the missionary’s hope. It is not in himself. It is in God.
Tom Wells
We must always judge our experience by the Word of God. We must never make God’s Word conform to our experience.
Tom Wells
The Bible plainly teaches that God works in His people to keep them from habitually walking apart from Him. In a believer, a carnal or fleshly walk can only be temporary and partial. There is no such thing as a characteristically carnal Christian. That would be a contradiction in terms.
Tom Wells
You must not think that the Lord must work harder to use people in little known places. You must not say, “Well, yes, I guess God could figure out a way to use even me where I am.” “Aim at My glory,” the Lord says, “and I am using you. Aim to please Me, and you are My minister, right where you are, in whatever you are doing!”
Tom Wells
What, then, is fruit? In the New Testament we find that fruit is all the things that we may reasonably expect to follow upon our knowing Christ. The good works and godly attitudes that spring form our salvation are our fruit. And the Spirit who fills us is their author. Paul gives us a partial list in Galatians 5:22-23.
Tom Wells
There is a direct line that runs from our doctrine to our actions, from what is in our minds to what is in our words and ways… The heart spills over into life. Thoughts of God, and of all else, erupt into acts. The filling of the heart with wise thoughts of God becomes the most important, the most practical, business in the world.
Tom Wells
Let us look at the world of fallen spirits, at Satan and his hosts. Surely here, if anywhere, are purposes veiled from the eye of God. Here are plans wrapped in thick folds of darkness, away from the sight of the Almighty. But no! God sees it all. The blackest counsels of hell shine as noonday before the understanding of God.
Tom Wells
[The Bible’s] emphasis is on God, and what God is doing. It is not first of all on man and what he ought to do. A false emphasis perverts the truth. In theory we may believe that the Bible is about God while, because of our emphasis, we deny it in practice.
Tom Wells
What shall we say, then, about the command: “Be filled with the Spirit” (Ephesians 5:18)? Doesn’t this imply that Christians are not filled? It looks like it. The verse, however, could as well be translated, “Keep on being filled with the Spirit.” And I believe that is the right way. It brings out the force of the verb tense Paul used. But that translation implies that believers are filled with the Spirit. It says this: you are filled, stay filled. Or, more exactly keep being filled.
Tom Wells
We must not treat that knowledge simply as a source of delight. We must do something more. We must follow in the train of those who, knowing God, have proclaimed Him. Here is our task. Here is an additional delight. This knowledge, like all knowledge, is enjoyed best when it is shared. And this knowledge of God, like no other knowledge, will bring life and health to a sin-sick world. It is the glory of the Christian to tell out the glory of God. God made us for this. Let us arise and do it with all our might!
Tom Wells
God does not merely save from hell, God saves from sin as well. We may put this another way. An obedient walk is not a cause of salvation, it is an effect of God’s working in the soul. The cause of our salvation is God’s mercy, God’s grace. One result of our salvation – or, one part of our salvation – is our beginning to walk as God wants us to walk. We do not take our steps perfectly. We fail in some instances and in some circumstances. Far too many! But, if we are truly believers, our lives are characteristically right.
Tom Wells
The mere inclination to call God “Father”, apart from a sense of my own deep sinfulness, is not the work of the Spirit of God. Note this carefully. It is extremely important. Nothing is easier than to teach men to address God as “Father”. But the Spirit’s work is different in this way: the Spirit teaches men to call God “Father”, who would otherwise fear to do so because of what they know of their own sin.
Tom Wells
One might think that shame would now drive us to our task (of missions). Do the commands of our Lord mean so little to us? Are we indifferent to Him? Or, if not shame, pity on those who have not heard. Are we unconcerned at the cries of the heathen? Can we weep at television drama and sit dry-eyed before the needs of the lost? Such questions shame us, yet I know that shame will not move us as we ought to be moved. We will need a larger motive than our own humiliation to finish the task. Even the spiritual poverty of the pagan will not do it. We must have a grander vision…a new vision of God. And that vision is majestic, glorious.
Tom Wells
The Christian is a God-explorer. The Christian vision is the vision of God. The missionary vision is the vision of God also. It is not something different from the Christian vision. It is the same vision being shared rather than merely enjoyed. It is the same vision being shared with men who have no natural taste for it, in the hope that God will create that taste so that they too will become “God-admirers.” Sharing the vision of God- that is the work of missions.
Tom Wells
This God, who is King, is worthy to be known and to be proclaimed for who He is. The missionary who proclaims this God cannot fail. If his message extols the sovereign God, it will be significant even supposing it is never the means of winning one soul. The message will not be lost. It cannot be lost. It will remain as something precious. Before men and angels – yes, and before the demons of hell – it will be praise to God! “For we are unto God a sweet savour of Christ, in them that are saved, and in them that perish” (2 Corinthians 2:15).
Tom Wells
To see the world’s rebels turned into friends of God is, after all, a God-centered goal. It looks beyond benefit to men. For in coming to Christ their hearts will be changed. They will be made new men throughout. As friends they will do what they would not do as foes. They will lay down their arms and raise their songs of praise: they will worship their Creator. They will adore Him whom they once despised. They will praise the Lord!
Tom Wells
What, then, is a “carnal’ Christian”? Is it biblical to divide believers into “spiritual men” and “carnal men”? There is, I think, a better way. It would be better to say that each believer is both spiritual and carnal. Even that, however, is not quite what the New Testament teaches. It is best to emphasize what the Bible emphasizes: Christians are habitually, or characteristically, spiritual men and women. If a man is not characteristically spiritual he is not a Christian at all. No amount of profession will make up for his ungodliness. But it is true of genuine believers, in a sense, that we are carnal. It is true, I mean, that we still sometimes sin. We are in constant need of God’s mercy. We are always candidates for God’s grace.
Tom Wells
Christ will reward His people with varying duties and responsibilities when He returns. Will these differences be significant? Yes and no! In themselves, yes; one reward will be quite different from another. But compared with the fate of the lost – compared with the hell that would have been ours, if Christ had not redeemed us – they will be relatively small. Our common experience of salvation will tower over all the differences left between us!
Tom Wells
32 quotes in total — browse the collection.
Sources: banneroftruth.org, sharperiron.org, wikipedia.org, heritagebooks.org
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