Tony Evans Quotes

Far too often, we have limited the definition of the Church. While not in all cases, in many cases, 'Church' has become an informational, inspirational weekly gathering rather than the group of people that God has ordained from Heaven to operate on his behalf on Earth in order to bring Heaven's viewpoint into history.

- Tony Evans

The exclusion of God automatically means the inclusion of evil.

- Tony Evans

God has a team. It's made up of African-American, Anglo, Hispanic, Asian, Middle Eastern, and a variety of other people and cultures. He never wants you to make your distinction, your history, or your background so precious to you that it messes up His team.

- Tony Evans

God operates the world by covenants. Those covenants have specific jurisdictions and responsibilities, not to be infringed upon by another covenant.

- Tony Evans

God created the races. He created different backgrounds and cultures. But He created them all to operate under His authority.

- Tony Evans

God has a kingdom. It's made up of citizens: some black, some white, some red, yellow, Spanish backgrounds. His intention was never that the individual uniqueness would cause them to lose sight of the flag flying over them - the flag of the cross.

- Tony Evans

Football is oneness in action. When played well, it is unity on display. Players come from different races and different backgrounds. However, when they get on the field, they harmonize their differences toward a common goal.

- Tony Evans

People from different backgrounds may not have natural affinity, but when the Word of God is treated right and the Holy Spirit is allowed to engage, it can bring together things, people, backgrounds, histories, races, colors, and cultures and hold them together in a way that natural affinity may not be able to do.

- Tony Evans

Im afraid that when it comes to the Christian life, and especially the issue of assurance, too many of us adopt the Barney Fife approach. That is, we let the enemy bully us into believing that were only safe as long as were wearing our Christian 'uniform.'

- Tony Evans

As God is continually being marginalized and dismissed in the culture, you will continue to see evil proliferate.

- Tony Evans

I've talked to men who feel like they're overly sexual and, therefore, are attracted to any female who walks down the street. I will not excuse his activity with every female just because he feels driven in that direction.

- Tony Evans

Ladies, you do not have to submit yourself to any man abusing you.

- Tony Evans

When I heard Martin Luther King's speech, 'I Have a Dream,' I reflected on the fact that much of the success of that movement was driven by the unity of the church.

- Tony Evans

Churches need to be intentional about reaching the next generation by creating templates for young people to see that there is a stepping stone for leadership in this church.

- Tony Evans

It is in following Christ as our captain that we can win in our personal lives, families, churches, and communities.

- Tony Evans

If the church adopts a school, and the school has kids, and the kids have parents, well, then you've reconnected the hub of a community, because you've brought together its three most fundamental institutions - church, schools, and family.

- Tony Evans

Black lives matter, as a subset of all lives matter. So any injustices to a particular group must be addressed specific to that group but under the banner that all life is created in the image of God.

- Tony Evans

We've got to move from membership to discipleship to being full-time Christians, not part-time saints. That means operating comprehensively on the value system of Heaven as we move about in history.

- Tony Evans

Getting to know God by His names is more than simply learning a new word or discovering a new title He goes by. Learning to know God by His names opens up the door to knowing His character more fully and experiencing His power more deeply.

- Tony Evans

Comebacks don't seem likely when your back is up against the wall and your hope is depleted. But if you will stay the course, you will discover God's power to reverse the irreversible in your life.

- Tony Evans

Christians historically have believed wrong on issues. Take slavery: they believed wrong on that issue for generations, and it had, just, repercussions that were staggeringly negative for our culture and my community. So it is possible to be Christian and to believe wrongly and practice wrongly.

- Tony Evans

Racism is not first and foremost a skin problem. It is a sin problem. See, when you believe that racism is a skin problem, you can take three hundred years of slavery, court decisions, marches, and the federal government involvement and still not get it fixed right.

- Tony Evans

We don't apologize for who we are. We do what we do as Christians. Our faith isn't hidden. There should never be a separation between God and good works.

- Tony Evans

I have always and will always stand on behalf of justice and do not condone oppression in any form.

- Tony Evans

God has established what man is supposed to do, and he expects man to do it his way and not a way independently of him. And when you do things independently of him, you have consequences you don't want to bear.

- Tony Evans

The Bible is pregnant with politics. You cannot read the Bible from Genesis through Revelation and go through too many chapters that are not involving politics.

- Tony Evans

In the urban community, the church doesn't just take people to Heaven; it feeds, clothes, and houses them. It teaches them how to read and gets them jobs. The church should be doing all that. What the government should be doing is freeing up the church and supporting the church, as long as it is providing social services.

- Tony Evans

Prayer is the God-given communication link between Heaven and Earth, time and eternity, the finite and the infinite.

- Tony Evans

What God wants is for us to live by His rules, resulting in the receiving of His blessing and power. When we as Christians, celebrating our differences, join together as the house of God representing the kingdom of God for the glory of God, we get the response of God to our presence in history.

- Tony Evans

I must confess that it is a lot easier for me as a pastor to preach about prayer than to spend that same amount of time engaged in it.

- Tony Evans

Anything you can do that connects believers with one another engages the church to go the next level, which keeps the pastor from being burnt out, which therefore keeps him in the ministry.

- Tony Evans

When you repent and operate on God's standards, now you have restoration and reconciliation.

- Tony Evans

America was never officially a Christian nation, since neither Jesus Christ nor the Bible are mentioned in the Constitution or the Declaration of Independence. But there's no denying the influence Christianity has had on our country.

- Tony Evans

The history of our country has been driven by a Judeo-Christian worldview, and so that has dominated the landscape. So it's important that we recognize the lordship of Jesus Christ without apology in our emphasis on prayer.

- Tony Evans

Biblical justice is the equitable application of God's moral law in society.

- Tony Evans

We're going to have to become very aggressive in addressing justice issues that have to do with fairness and doing that which is equitable and honoring to God.

- Tony Evans

As Christians, we often tend to get our Bible doctrine confused and start mixing truths that were never meant to be mixed.

- Tony Evans

A name is so important in biblical settings that Scripture frequently mentions God Himself changing someone's name to reflect a new reality. Abram, which means 'exalted father,' was changed to Abraham, meaning 'father of a multitude.'

- Tony Evans

These young people need to see that there's something bigger out there than what they're looking at everyday or seeing in the news or on social media. They need men and women to come into their lives who will give them a bigger vision of the world, of life, of opportunity, of what they can become rather than what they think they are limited to you.

- Tony Evans

Prayer is God's backstage pass into a personal audience with Him.

- Tony Evans

Religious programs, activities have often blurred and sidelined the centrality of the cross - causing religion to be empty of its core.

- Tony Evans

We need to have a unified understanding of our national heritage without losing our personal distinctives. The closer that national heritage is to the rule of God, the more ordered our relationships will become in society.

- Tony Evans

When fathers come home after a tough day at work, they should come home to serve, like my father did, teaching lessons around the dinner table and leading the family in worship and prayer.

- Tony Evans

Human nature being what it is, if you told me you were going to give me one dollar with no strings attached, I probably wouldn't question the gift too much. But if you told me you wanted to give me one hundred dollars with no obligation, I'd have to think about it for a minute before accepting.

- Tony Evans

The more people marginalize the true God of the Bible, the more chaotic things become.

- Tony Evans

Righteousness has to do with the vertical standard that God gives us to please Him. Justice has to do with the horizontal expression of that righteous standard in the lives of others.

- Tony Evans

I condemn racism on all levels, whether personal or systemic.

- Tony Evans

To carry our cross is to have such a commitment and identify with Jesus Christ and what He accomplished that I am willing to suffer the repercussions to that identification.

- Tony Evans

The saga of a nation is the saga of its families written large. And whoever owns the family owns the future.

- Tony Evans

We can never get around to being one nation under God if we can't even get around to being one Church under God.

- Tony Evans

Many people want 'God bless America,' but they don't want 'One nation under God.' The problem is you can't have one without the other.

- Tony Evans

Government can run and fund programs, but it can't love, it can't show compassion, and it can't embrace. Our faith is designed to have social implications, not just heavenly ones. The spiritual and the social must be connected.

- Tony Evans

Ministry burnout is a real problem because it's never-ending.

- Tony Evans

Every four years, the eyes of America become riveted on the national election returns. But God's first concern during any political season is not the same as our first concern - it is not about what is happening, or going to happen, in the White House. God's first concern is what is happening, or not happening, in His house.

- Tony Evans

If you or the devil or anyone else could remove you from Christ's hand, then that entity would be greater than Christ, and the eternal life He gave you would not be eternal at all. That's an impossible equation.

- Tony Evans

I was the oldest of four children, and the atmosphere was volatile for all of us. My father and mother were in constant conflict, making divorce seem like the only possible outcome.

- Tony Evans

Gone must be the days of only pointing fingers at others to fix what they may never fix. Our nation's ills are not merely the result of corruption or racism, although these are evil. Our troubles can also be traced directly to ineffective Christians.

- Tony Evans

In Scripture, a name often connotes purpose, authority, makeup, and character. In fact, a person's name is frequently seen as an equivalent of that person.

- Tony Evans

The problem is that God is being dismissed from the culture, and that vacuum is allowing, or is the basis for, the deterioration of society. That is because Christians have not kept Him in the center of the culture.

- Tony Evans

The church is the only mechanism for mass mobilization. That's why the civil rights movement came out of the church.

- Tony Evans

Racial distinctions should not be rejected; they should be embraced.

- Tony Evans

You may have an older audience in front of you holding the Bible and a younger audience holding an iPhone. You don't want to lose either audience.

- Tony Evans

Occasional setbacks are probably unavoidable - part of the struggle of living in a fallen world. Other setbacks are due to our own sin and failures, or circumstances outside our control.

- Tony Evans

Peace, unity, love, and nonviolence should be our rallying cry and the catalyst for change in our nation.

- Tony Evans

Whenever you define family as anything other than a man and a woman married together, you have just introduced an ethical nightmare.

- Tony Evans

Government is not a human institution. It is a divine institution that humans are to run on His behalf. When they create their own rules, then they become against the creator and what He intended for government to do.

- Tony Evans

The separation of church and state is a suburban, not an urban, issue.

- Tony Evans

Separation of church and state should never mean separation of God and right.

- Tony Evans

We should love people, care about people regardless of where they come from.

- Tony Evans

The truth is an objective standard by which reality is measured; it's God's point of view on any subject.

- Tony Evans

If people are taught wrong, raised wrong, or haven't taken the Bible seriously enough, then they can go into academic error, emotional error, psychological error.

- Tony Evans

We need a right view of the cross. It is both a historical event that can take us to Heaven and a current event that can bring Heaven to bear on Earth.

- Tony Evans

There are two answers to every question - God's answer and everybody else's - and everybody else is wrong when they disagree with him.

- Tony Evans

Whenever you exclude God and the value system that He represents out of the equation of a life, of a family, or a culture, you create a spiritual vacuum. Nature abhors a vacuum. It must be filled with something.

- Tony Evans

The Church and only the Church has been given the keys to the kingdom, so we have unique access to God that nobody else has.

- Tony Evans

The goal was not only to teach people the Bible and minister to people personally and spiritually, but also to build a church to be community focused.

- Tony Evans

If God created the family, He should be the ultimate definer of what it is, and that should be our point of reference.

- Tony Evans

The cross is to be our point of reference for every area of our lives all the time.

- Tony Evans

Whenever my dad wasn't working, he'd take me along to pass out biblical tracts on street corners or in visits to the local prison.

- Tony Evans

The Church has failed to be a positive influence for good in our nation and our world.

- Tony Evans

I could have ended up a casualty of a broken family, like so many of the kids around me in inner city Baltimore. But my life was forever changed the year I turned 10. That was the year my dad turned to Jesus.

- Tony Evans

Slavery was ungodly, unrighteous, and unbiblical.

- Tony Evans

Our God is a great coach, and he's got a great playbook.

- Tony Evans

Technology has changed how people communicate, how people relate, the speed at which this takes place. To ignore that, in the name of preaching the Word, is to forget that we're to preach the Word to people.

- Tony Evans

You can't blame things for being dark if the light bulbs aren't working. So we're complaining about the darkness when the bulbs aren't working, and the Bible says that we are the light of the world.

- Tony Evans

Until we take seriously God's definition of the church and stop just 'having church,' we will not see transformation in our society.

- Tony Evans

And when you redefine the family other than what the Creator intended when he established it, then you look at the devolution of civilization.

- Tony Evans

We need to learn the names of God because when we know His character and His capacity, we will find rest and discover peace and power in His covenantal care of us.

- Tony Evans

If there is one thing you can count on in your life, it's that your path will not always be easy.

- Tony Evans

When I looked very closely to the Bible and to Jesus, this Christ who came, I discovered something awesome. I discovered that when He's first, then He places me in a second position that's above the class that I was given by other men.

- Tony Evans

God is not asking you to be anything other than what he's made you, as long as you submit to how he has made you, to how you relate to other people who he has made different than you.

- Tony Evans

If you're not married, and your boyfriend is putting his hands on you, you know he ain't the one, because you know that will continue.

- Tony Evans

I used to be one of those students who needed to see something bigger, and God brought people into my life who gave me a bigger vision than the circumstances that surrounded me.

- Tony Evans

Although all serious Christians recognize the importance that the Bible places on prayer, most fall short when it comes to doing it.

- Tony Evans

The issue of race is not an issue of choice. It's an issue of birth.

- Tony Evans

When families break down, you have a lot of repercussion from that, from poverty to crime to lack of discipline.

- Tony Evans

In order to impact our society, we need to first model unity in the church.

- Tony Evans

When I was younger, I had a terrible problem with stuttering.

- Tony Evans