Inspiring Pastor Quotes: A Powerful Collection to Uplift Your Spirit

"The sermon which does not lead to Christ, or of which Jesus Christ is not the top and the bottom, is a sort of sermon that will make the devils in hell laugh, but make the angels of God weep."

- Charles Spurgeon

"The preaching of Christ is the whip that flogs the devil. The preaching of Christ is the thunderbolt, the sound of which makes all hell shake."

- Charles Spurgeon

"The shortest distance between a problem and a solution is the distance between your knees and the floor."

- Charles Stanley

"Faith does not eliminate questions. But faith knows where to take them."

- Elisabeth Elliot

"In our prayers, we talk to God, in our Bible study, God talks to us, and we had better let God do most of the talking."

- D.L. Moody

"Preach the gospel to yourself every day."

- Jerry Bridges

"Jesus’ mission is not to make converts, and it never has been. His mission is to make disciples."

- Jim Putnam

"It is the duty of every Christian to be Christ to his neighbor."

- Martin Luther

"Any church that is not seriously involved in helping fulfill the Great Commission has forfeited its biblical right to exist."

- Oswald J. Smith

"Catch on fire with enthusiasm and people will come for miles to watch you burn."

- John Wesley

"God uses men who are weak and feeble enough to lean on him."

- Hudson Taylor

"When I cannot read, when I cannot think, when I cannot even pray, I can trust."

- Hudson Taylor

"It is no use walking anywhere to preach unless our walking is our preaching."

- Francis of Assisi

"Faith never knows where it is being led, but it loves and knows the One who is leading."

- Oswald Chambers

"Faith is to believe what you do not see; the reward of this faith is to see what you believe."

- Saint Augustine

"The world needs Christians who don’t tolerate the complacency of their own lives."

- Francis Chan

"Christ’s death is the Christian’s life. Christ’s cross is the Christian’s title to heaven."

- J.C. Ryle

"Dear Jesus…how foolish of me to have called for human help when You are here."

- Corrie ten Boom

"Maturity in the Christian life is measured by only one test: how much closer to His character have we become?"

- Elyse Fitzpatrick

"We have to pray with our eyes on God, not on the difficulties."

- Oswald Chambers

"Prayer is not overcoming God’s reluctance, but laying hold of His willingness."

- Martin Luther

"What is the chief end of preaching? I like to think it is this: It is to give men and women a sense of God and His presence."

- Martin Lloyd-Jones

"God has ordained that our preaching become deeper and more winsome as we are broken, humbled, and made low and desperately dependent on grace by the trials of our lives."

- John Piper

"The task of the preacher is to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable."

- Vance Havner

"To be effective the preacher’s message must be alive; it must alarm, arouse, challenge; it must be God’s present voice to a particular people."

- A.W. Tozer

"The preacher must be a serious man; he must never give the impression that preaching is something light or superficial or trivial."

- Martin Lloyd-Jones

"A sermon is not made with an eye upon the sermon, but with both eyes upon the people and all the heart upon God."

- John Owen

"Lord, help me to preach today as if it were the last sermon I would ever preach."

- Jack Hyles

"A preacher must be both soldier and shepherd. He must nourish, defend, and teach he must have teeth in his mouth, and be able to bite and fight."

- Martin Luther

"The life-giving preacher is a man of God, whose heart is ever athirst for God, whose soul is ever following hard after God, whose eye is single to God, and in whom by the power of God’s Spirit the flesh and the world have been crucified, and his ministry is like the generous flood of a life-giving river."

- E.M. Bounds

"The authority by which the Christian leader leads is not power but love, not force but example, not coercion but reasoned persuasion. Leaders have power, but power is safe only in the hands of those who humble themselves to serve."

- John Stott

"The first order of things to be changed is me, the leader. After I consider how hard it is to change myself, then I will understand the challenge of trying to change others. This is the ultimate test of leadership."

- John Maxwell

"The most intriguing people you will encounter in this life are the people who had insights about you, that you didn't know about yourself."

- Shannon L. Alder

"If you were born with the ability to change someone’s perspective or emotions, never waste that gift. It is one of the most powerful gifts God can give—the ability to influence."

- Shannon L. Alder

"There comes a time in your life when you can no longer put off choosing. You have to choose one path or the other. You can live safe and be protected by people just like you, or you can stand up and be a leader for what is right. Always, remember this: People never remember the crowd; they remember the one person that had the courage to say and do what no one would do."

- Shannon L. Alder

"You can lose your MONEY. You can lose your FRIENDS. You can lose your JOB and you can lose your MARRIAGE...and still recover...as long as there is HOPE. Never lose HOPE."

- John Paul Warren

"I have learned that the harder you fall…the higher you bounce!"

- John Paul Warren

"I must admit, that I have learned more from my negative experiences than I have ever learned from my positive one."

- John Paul Warren

"Fear is to begin with the end in mind. There is no end. Life is eternal. Live life knowing that the end was your past, and the future is only full of beautiful beginnings through an eternity built around God’s love."

- Shannon L. Alder

"Your circumstances do NOT define you. Expect a GRAND finale."

- John Paul Warren

"Faith UP! Your purpose is GREATER than all your PROBLEMS."

- John Paul Warren

"Coming to the END of MYSELF and all SELF effort...seems to be the very point that God steps in and shows HIMSELF to be more than ENOUGH."

- John Paul Warren

"We must admit that simply knowing the contents of the Bible is not a sure route to spiritual growth. There is an aweful assumption in evangelical churches that if we can just get the Word of God into people's heads, then the Spirit of God will apply it to their hearts. That assumption is aweful, not because the Spirit never does what the assumption supposes, but because it excused pastors and leaders from the responsibility to tangle with people's lives. Many remain safely hidden behind pulpits, hopelessly out of touch with the struggles of their congregations, proclaiming the Scriptures with a pompous accuracy that touches no one. Pulpits should provide bridges, not barriers, to life-changing relationships."

- Larry Crabb

"Life seems to be fashioned and formed best out of the obstacles that seem unbearable."

- John Paul Warren

"I have not learned a single lesson, been inspired or impacted by another person’s life void of negative experiences."

- John Paul Warren

"The secret to strong leaders is that strong leaders are strong because they have been tempered by the negative. They have discovered the secret of combining the negative and the positive to PRODUCED their very own POWER plant!"

- John Paul Warren

"The real architect of a life is the hard and almost impossible circumstances one faces."

- John Paul Warren

"Faith is deliberate confidence in the character of God whose ways you may not understand at the time."

- Oswald Chambers

"A true love of God must begin with a delight in his holiness."

- Jonathan Edwards

"You can see God from anywhere if your mind is set to love and obey Him."

- A.W. Tozer

"Yesterday is gone. Tomorrow has not yet come. We have only today. Let us begin."

- Mother Teresa

"One act of obedience is better than one hundred sermons."

- Dietrich Bonhoeffer

"You can only learn what obedience is by obeying."

- Dietrich Bonhoeffer

"It is not the strength of your faith but the object of your faith that actually saves you."

- Timothy Keller

"To one who has faith, no explanation is necessary. To one without faith, no explanation is possible."

- Thomas Aquinas

"We never know how God will answer our prayers, but we can expect that He will get us involved in His plan for the answer."

- Corrie ten Boom

"Your faith will not fail while God sustains it; you are not strong enough to fall away while God is resolved to hold you."

- J.I. Packer

"A man who is intimate with God is not intimidated by man."

- Leonard Ravenhill

"Faith makes all things possible. Love makes them easy."

- D.L. Moody

"The life of faith is not a life of mounting up with wings, but a life of walking and not fainting."

- Oswald Chambers

"A popular evangelist reaches your emotions. A true prophet reaches your conscience."

- Leonard Ravenhill

"Being a pastor means you're a truth teller. That means you're truth teller when it comes to the Bible. That means you protect your people from deception that comes from the world. That's part of being a shepherd."

- John MacArthur

"Give me one hundred preachers who fear nothing but sin and desire nothing but God, and I care not whether they be clergymen or laymen, they alone will shake the gates of Hell and set up the kingdom of Heaven upon Earth."

- John Wesley

"The most important thing a pastor does is stand in a pulpit every Sunday and say, 'Let us worship God.' If that ceases to be the primary thing I do in terms of my energy, my imagination, and the way I structure my life, then I no longer function as a pastor."

- Eugene H. Peterson

"If, then, you are looking for the way by which you should go, take Christ, because he himself is the way."

- Thomas Aquinas

"Faith goes up the stairs that love has built and looks out the windows which hope has opened."

- Charles Spurgeon

"We are not here to be overcome, but to rise unvanquished after every knockout blow, and laugh the laugh of faith, not fear."

- Amy Carmichael

"God requires to be represented by a fiery Church…two things are intolerable to Him – insincerity and lukewarmness."

- E.M. Bounds

"The Bible is shallow enough for a child not to drown, yet deep enough for an elephant to swim."

- St. Augustine

"Our love grows soft if it is not strengthened by truth, and our truth grows hard if it is not softened by love."

- John Stott

"If Jesus Christ be God and died for me, then no sacrifice can be too great for me to make for Him."

- Phillips Brooks

"We were promised sufferings. They were part of the program. We were even told, ‘Blessed are they that mourn.’"

- C.T. Studd

"You need not to know much about Heaven – it is where Christ is, and that is Heaven enough for us."

- C.S. Lewis

"God cannot give us a happiness and peace apart from Himself, because it is not there. There is no such thing."

- C.S. Lewis

"Nothing so clearly discovers a spiritual man as his treatment of an erring brother."

- St. Augustine

"You thought you were being made into a decent little cottage but He is building a palace. He intends to come and live in it Himself."

- C.S. Lewis

"God calls us to go against the grain when the grain is going against God. Be IN the world, not OF the world."

- Tony Evans

"Prayer is a strong wall and fortress of the church; it is a goodly Christian weapon."

- Martin Luther

"Prayer is not so much an act as it is an attitude – an attitude of dependency, dependency upon God."

- A.W. Pink

"A man ought to live so that everybody knows he is a Christian… and most of all, his family ought to know."

- D.L. Moody

"He became what we are that He might make us what He is."

- St. Athanasius

"A minister, without boldness, is like a smooth file, a knife without an edge, a sentinel that is afraid to let off his gun. If men will be bold in sin, ministers must be bold to reprove."

- William Gurnall

"If a man cannot be a Christian in the place where he is, he cannot be a Christian anywhere."

- Henry Ward Beecher

"I believe God takes the things in our lives - family, background, education - and uses them as part of his calling. It might not be to become a pastor. But I don't think God wastes anything."

- Eugene H. Peterson

"Those who aren’t following Jesus aren’t his followers… Followers follow, and those who don’t follow aren’t followers."

- Scott McKnight

"To add value to others, one must first value others."

- John Maxwell

"The lukewarm do not embrace the cross; they merely drag it along."

- St. Teresa of Avila

"I am fallen, flawed and imperfect. Yet drenched in the grace and mercy that is found in Jesus Christ, there is strength."

- Adam Young

"The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult and left untried."

- G.K. Chesterton

"The bottom line in the Christian life is obedience and most people don’t even like the word."

- Charles Stanley

"When may a revival be expected? When the wickedness of the wicked grieves and distresses the Christian."

- Billy Sunday

"After grief for sin there should be joy for forgiveness."

- A.W. Pink

"Character may be manifested in the great moments, but it is made in the small ones."

- Phillips Brooks

"We spend our years with sighing; it is a valley of tears; but death is the funeral of all our sorrows."

- Thomas Watson

"The right manner of growth is to grow less in one’s own eyes."

- Thomas Watson

"Take a saint, and put him into any condition, and he knows how to rejoice in the Lord."

- Walter Cradock

"For a small reward, a man will hurry away on a long journey; while for eternal life, many will hardly take a single step."

- Thomas a' Kempis

"The tragedy of life…is not that men do not know God; the tragedy is that knowing Him they still insist on going their own way."

- William Barclay

"For God to explain a trial would be to destroy its purpose, calling forth simple faith and implicit obedience."

- Alfred Edersheim

"Christians should be like a flower store: the odor of sanctity should betray them wherever they are."

- Henry Ward Beecher

"Christians ought not to slander God by looking as if they were at an everlasting funeral."

- Henry Ward Beecher

"Many Christians dread the thought of leaving this world. Why? Because so many have stored up their treasures on earth, not in heaven."

- Randy Alcorn

"I find the doing of the will of God leaves me no time for disputing about His plans."

- George MacDonald

"A group is as healthy as its 'social contract' is clear; a congregation as faithful as its covenant is mutually understood; a pastor as effective as the pastor's and people's commitment to trust and integrity is honored, guarded, and fulfilled."

- David Augsburger

"When a pastor steals or over-borrows someone else's work, that pastor is not only playing a role like an actor but isn't a true messenger from the Lord."

- John MacArthur

"The relentless study of the Word of God is how God sanctifies and protects the pastor. When you're just opening your iPad and reading somebody else's sermon, you've never been exposed to the sanctifying work of the Word."

- John MacArthur

"I preached as never sure to preach again, and as a dying man to dying men."

- Richard Baxter

"The backslider likes the preaching that wouldn’t hit the side of a house, while the real disciple is delighted when the truth brings him to his knees."

- Billy Sunday

"Becoming a great preacher, like becoming a great artist, requires a life commitment."

- Calvin Miller

"It is a poor sermon that gives no offense; that neither makes the hearer displeased with himself nor with the preacher."

- George Whitefield

"We don't forget that we are Christians. We forget that we are human, and that one oversight alone can debilitate the potential of our future."

- Wayne Cordeiro

"Life of any real value or substance is not formed during good times merely enjoyed."

- John Paul Warren

"I cannot preach on hell unless I preach with tears."

- Dwight L. Moody

"A leader is a person you will follow to a place you would not go by yourself."

- Joel Osteen

"Average leaders raise the bar on themselves; good leaders raise the bar for others; great leaders inspire others to raise their own bar."

- Orrin Woodward

"The man who will present Christ to others must be occupied with Christ for Himself."

- C.H. Mackintosh

"The Christian life is not slightly better, but completely different."

- Clarence Sexton

"Someday, when in the presence of our Savior, we will thank Him for every burden, every trial, and every heartache."

- J. Vernon McGee

"Christ went more willingly to the cross than we do to the throne of grace."

- Thomas Watson

"All the cunning of the devil is exercised in trying to tear us away from the Word."

- Martin Luther

"Leadership is an action, not a position."

- Donald McGannon

"Forgive me for being so ordinary while claiming to know so extraordinary a God."

- Jim Elliot

"The first responsibility of a leader is to define reality. The last is to say thank you. In between, the leader is a servant."

- Max DePree

"My own definition of leadership is this: The capacity and the will to rally men and women to a common purpose and the character which inspires confidence."

- General Montgomery

"People often get upset when you teach them what is in the Bible rather than what they presume is in the Bible."

- N.T. Wright

"The challenge of leadership is to be strong, but not rude; be kind, but not weak; be bold, but not bully; be thoughtful, but not lazy; be humble, but not timid; be proud, but not arrogant; have humor, but without folly."

- Jim Rohn

"It is sweet to be nothing and less than nothing that Christ may be all in all."

- David Brainerd

"Lord, stamp eternity on my eyeballs."

- Jonathan Edwards

"People who fit don’t seek. The seekers are those that don’t fit."

- Shannon L. Alder

"Let the world know what you live for...not what you fall for!"

- John Paul Warren

"Living life ONCE is enough...if you live life RIGHT."

- John Paul Warren

"People have an idea that the preacher is an actor on a stage and they are the critics, blaming or praising him. What they don’t know is that they are the actors on the stage; he (the preacher) is merely the prompter standing in the wings, reminding them of their lost lines."

- Søren Kierkegaard

"Preaching is teaching with a tear in the eye."

- Jack Hyles

"If the Holy Spirit guides us, He will do it according to the Scriptures and never contrary to them."

- George Müller

"Our problems sometimes show the degree of our relationship with God."

- Dr. Paul Gitwaza

"There has never been a meaningful life built on easy street."

- John Paul Warren

"A preacher should have the mind of a scholar, the heart of a child, and the hide of a rhinoceros. His problem is how to toughen his hide without hardening his heart."

- Curtis C. Thomas

"Impossible situations TEST you and PROVE Him"

- John Paul Warren

"A leader takes people where they want to go. A great leader takes people where they don’t necessarily want to go, but ought to be."

- Rosalynn Carter

"A leader is one who knows the way, goes the way, and shows the way."

- John C. Maxwell

"God ultimately raises up leaders for one primary reason: His glory. He shows His power in our weakness. He demonstrates His wisdom in our folly. We are all like a turtle on a fence post. If you walk by a fence post and see a turtle on top of it, then you know someone came by and put it there. In the same way, God gives leadership according to His good pleasure."

- Matt Chandler

"It takes more than a busy church, a friendly church, or even an evangelical church to impact a community for Christ. It must be a church ablaze, led by leaders who are ablaze for God."

- Wesley Duewel

"I think the responsibility of leadership in the church is not to do slick meetings and not to figure out how to get 5,000 people through a facility in a weekend. It is to produce a people like Jesus. Let’s be a people who are actually producing something on the ground that could totally annihilate the enemy in our city. That’s our job!"

- Graham Cooke

"We have got to make disciples. Fun nights and pizza nights are not going to sustain us."

- Francis Chan

"We talk of the Second Coming; half the world has never heard of the first."

- Oswald J. Smith

"If you’re walking with Jesus, in the Spirit, you need not fear going too far. No believer has gone as far as God wants him to go."

- A.A. Allen

"Revival is when God gets so sick and tired of being misrepresented that He shows Himself."

- Leonard Ravenhill

"Too often, our concept of pastors and church leaders reinforces rather than obliterates the sad state of family life in our current context."

- Russell D. Moore

"It is better to make a thousand failures than to be too cowardly to ever undertake anything."

- Clovis G. Chappell

"We must all have the spirit of martyrdom, though we may not all die martyrs."

- George Whitefield

"A true dreamer is one who knows how to navigate in the dark”.”"

- John Paul Warren

"In a team setting, leadership is shared by a community of people, which counters the tendency for pastors to form congregations in their own images."

- Adam S. McHugh

"No man will make a great leader who wants to do it all himself, or to get all the credit for doing it."

- Andrew Carnegie

"What one generation tolerates, the next generation will embrace."

- John Wesley

"The man who does not know the nature of the Law, cannot know the nature of sin."

- John Bunyan

"One of the tests of leadership is the ability to recognize a problem before it becomes an emergency."

- Arnold Glasow

"Leaders don’t create followers, they create more leaders."

- Tom Peters

"What you do has far greater impact than what you say."

- Stephen Covey

"Whatever you are, be a good one."

- Abraham Lincoln

"If there be any feeding of Christ, any drop of heavenly dew, or any spark of God's good Spirit within you, stir it up; be careful to build and edify, first yourselves, and then your flocks in this most holy faith. I say, first yourselves; for he who will set the hearts of other men on fire with the love of Christ, must himself burn with love. It is want of faith in ourselves, my brethren, which makes us retchless (careless) in building others. We forsake the Lord's inheritance, and feed it not. What is the reason of this? Our own desires are settled where they should not be. We ourselves are like those women who have a longing to eat coals, and lime, and filth: we are fed, some with honour, some with ease, some with wealth: the gospel waxeth loathsome and unpleasant in our taste: how should we then have a care to feed others with that which we cannot fancy ourselves? If faith wax cold and slender in the heart of the prophet, it will soon perish from the ears of the people. (Sermon on part of St Jude's Epistle, p. 552)"

- Richard Hooker

"Leaders in OVER their heads is the mere result of getting ahead of their intended SEASON."

- John Paul Warren

"We desperately need seers who can see through the mist- Christian leaders with prophetic vision. Unless they come soon it will be too late for this generation. And if they do come we will no doubt crucify a few of them in the name of our worldly orthodoxy."

- A.W. Tozer

"The most difficult lie I have ever contended with is this: life is a story about me."

- Donald Miller

"My parents had us in church every Sunday, every Wednesday. It was more of a tradition at that point; I didn't have a personal relationship with the Lord until I went to the altar call one Sunday, and the youth pastor told us to make a decision for ourselves."

- Stephen Curry

"We are all faced with a series of great opportunities brilliantly disguised as impossible situations."

- Chuck Swindoll

"Many a preacher misses the mark because, though he knows books, he does not know men."

- James Stalker

"To judge a person’s heart is only to expose what’s in your own."

- Frank Viola

"Never when in authority rebuke any one in anger, but only when anger has passed away; and so shall the rebuke bring forth good fruit."

- Teresa of Avila

"You cannot antagonize and influence at the same time."

- John Knox

"Anyone can hold the helm when the sea is calm."

- Publilius Syrus

"The greatest proof that the Bible is inspired is that it has stood so much bad preaching."

- A.T. Robertson

"All originality and no plagiarism makes for dull preaching."

- Charles Spurgeon

"All the events of your past have formed a lens, or paradigm, through which you see the world. And since no one's past is exactly like anyone else's, no two people see alike."

- Sean Covey

"It is the business of a virtuous clergy to censure vice in every appearance of it."

- Patrick Henry

"My son had a tumour on his neck. We went for surgery but it failed because the tumour was difficult to remove. Later, we went to New York for his surgery. I was scared as his first operation had failed. I went to church and met a pastor. He told me to go ahead, God would take care of everything. And the surgery was successful."

- Johnny Lever

"I'm able to be a pastor now because of the strength and my mentality and integrity that was built in Philadelphia, by going through the hardship and going through the good times and that made me a man. When I went there I was just a kid and I didn't understand things."

- Randall Cunningham

"I am not only a State Senator but I am a pastor, a minister, and the President of an organization comprised of more than 150 Pentecostal ministers throughout the City and State of New York. I am the one who preaches the Word of God every Sunday."

- Ruben Diaz Sr.

"I get asked, 'What do you miss most about being a pastor?' I think it's the intimacy, the incredible gift of intimacy. You go through death with somebody, with their families, and there's an intimacy that comes through that that is just incomparable."

- Eugene H. Peterson

"I spent the summers of 1984 and 1985 as an associate pastor at Dolores Mission Church, the poorest parish in the Los Angeles archdiocese. In 1986, I became pastor of the church."

- Greg Boyle

"Being a pastor's kid comes with a lot of pressure and scrutiny. A lot of my dad's sermons were about respect. It was a beautiful way to be taught about love and two people being equal."

- Nick Jonas

"Only once did God choose a completely sinless preacher."

- Alexander Whyte

"God is my best friend. I talk to God every day. And no one can tell me how to talk to God - not no imam, not no priest, not no rabbi, no pastor."

- Eve

"I've never stabbed, hurt, killed, stolen, anything, but I went to jail for a year. What is that? My pastor said to me the fact that I'm not living under a bridge as a crazy woman, talking to myself, is amazing."

- Foxy Brown

"I come from a religious family - my father is a pastor, my uncle, my sister and her husband are a pastor team."

- Tom Ellis

"I'm not a pastor. I'm not a man of the cloth, but I have my own calling."

- Jonathan Majors

"Pastor is a driver who doesn't respect other drivers."

- Sergio Perez