Craig T. Owens

I found Unfinished by Richard Stearns to be both confrontational and motivating. You can read my full book review by clicking here. These are some of the quotes I especially appreciated from this book. Unless otherwise marked, they are quotes from Stearns—

“God created you intentionally to play a very specific role in His unfolding story. God didn’t create any extras meant to stand on the sidelines and watch the story unfold; He created players meant to be on center stage. And you will feel fully complete only when you discover the role you were born to play.”

“You don’t have to go to the Congo or to Uzbekistan to change the world. You don’t have to be brilliant to change the world—or wealthy or a spiritual giant. But you do have to say yes to the invitation. You do have to be available and willing to be used, and you may have to pay the price that comes with following Jesus because changing the world and following Jesus isn’t easy, and it doesn’t come cheap.”

“Prosperity knits a man to the World. He feel that he is ‘finding his place in it,’ while really it is finding its place in him.” —C.S. Lewis

“Yet that is exactly how many Christians view the gospel of Christ. I do a deal with God, buy the fire insurance policy, put it in my drawer, and then I can go back to the party. Sure, it wouldn’t be a bad idea to go to church now and then to dip my feet into spiritual waters, and it wouldn’t hurt to pray from time to time, but, basically, with my salvation secured I can now get on with my life. This is what Dallas Willard refers to as the ‘gospel of sin-management.’”

“So we need to dispense with any notion that we can take this Jesus on our own terms, that we can simply add Him to the structure of our lives, fit Him into our plans, worship Him once a week for an hour or so, and offer Him a prayer when we find ourselves needing something. No, Jesus demands the total commitment of our lives in His service. We are called to enlist in His army and lay down every other priority in our lives at His feet. Our ambitions, our careers, our relationships, our possessions, even our families must be laid at His feet to do with as He wishes.”

“Authentic churches truly living together… offer a radically different and beguiling attractive alternative to every other model of human community.”

“God’s deepest desire is not that we would help the poor. God’s deepest desire is that we would love the poor; for if we love them, we will surely help them.”

“Love always requires tangible expression. It needs hands and feet. As followers of Christ we can too easily become overwhelmed by the complexity and depth of our Christian faith, and we can become confused by doctrine and theology. But the beautiful simplicity of our faith is that it distills down to the exact same bottom line for both the brilliant theologian and the five-year-old child: love God and love each other—period. Everything else derives from that.”

“Now, here is a really important thing to understand. If you lay down all of these things in the service of Christ and His kingdom, He won’t necessarily take them away from you. He doesn’t ask us all to quit our jobs, leave our homes, and have an estate sale to liquidate all our earthly possessions. No, He only asks that we turn all of those decisions over to Him. If you have built a business that can generate great wealth, He may leave you right there so that the business can be used to His glory and to accomplish His purposes. If you are an investment banker at Goldman Sachs, He may want you to stay put and become a kingdom builder right where you are stationed by letting your light shine in a place where a shining light may be desperately needed. If you love your community, He may use you to help transform it and reclaim it for His kingdom. He might even use your addiction as a powerful tool of His restorative power to transform human lives. But he does require that the certificates of title be signed over to Him. He becomes the owner, and we become the stewards, not of our possessions but of the Master’s possessions.”

“Think of it this way: If we all worked for Boeing, our general calling would be to engage in the building of airplanes. But our specific calling might be to assemble the landing gear, wire and install the instruments, assemble the wings, or design the roomy and comfortable coach seats. And which of those specific tasks we were called to would be determined by the boss’s best judgment, taking into consideration our unique skills and abilities. … The same is true in building the kingdom of God. We all have the same general assignment but our specific roles within it will be unique to us as individuals and will take into account our gifts and talents but also our experience, our assets, our physical location, and our connections and associations.”

“The chief purpose of the church is to bring glory to God by accomplishing the Great Commission pronounced by Jesus. Everything else—worship, preaching, teaching, discipling, congregational care, the sacraments, feeding the hungry, caring for the poor, and so on—while valuable for us and pleasing to God in and of themselves, are ultimately means to the end of faithfully completing the assignment given to the church by Jesus just before He left.”

“Jesus envisioned these communities of believers would transform the world in which we live, much as springtime melts the cold and snow of winter and releases the exuberance of new life bursting forth. We would be drawn to the cold places, the broken places, the ragged edges of our world. We would be drawn to the open sores upon our societies: poverty, disease, hunger, injustice, and exploitation, becoming a healing balm to those who feel marginalized, excluded, and discarded. … Our generosity would astound, our determination amaze, and our love be irresistible.”

“The most important thing to remember is this: to be ready at any moment to give up what you are for what you might become.” —W.E.B. DuBois