Top 50 Charles Grandison Finney Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Revival is a renewed conviction of sin and repentance, followed by an intense desire to live in obedience to God. It is giving up one’s will to God in deep humility.”

— Charles Grandison Finney

Featured in: Awakening Quotes, Discipleship Quotes

2. “A revival is nothing else than a new beginning of obedience to God.”

— Charles Grandison Finney

3. “If the presence of God is in the church, the church will draw the world in. If the presence of God is not in the church, the world will draw the church out.”

— Charles Grandison Finney

4. “Sin is the most expensive thing in the universe. Nothing else can cost so much.”

— Charles Grandison Finney

5. “Nothing tends more to cement the hearts of Christians than praying together. Never do they love one another so well as when they witness the outpouring of each other’s hearts in prayer.”

— Charles Grandison Finney

6. “Unless I had the spirit of prayer, I could do nothing.”

— Charles Grandison Finney

7. “Repentance is a change of willing, of feeling and of living, in respect to God.”

— Charles Grandison Finney

8. “Revival comes from heaven when heroic souls enter the conflict determined to win or die – or if need be, to win and die! The kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, and the violent take it by force.”

— Charles Grandison Finney

9. “A state of mind that sees God in everything is evidence of growth in grace and a thankful heart.”

— Charles Grandison Finney

10. “Effective prayer is prayer that attains what it seeks. It is prayer that moves God, effecting its end.”

— Charles Grandison Finney

11. “There is a fear of the Lord which is the beginning of wisdom, which is founded in love. There is also a slavish fear, which is a mere dread of evil, and is purely selfish.”

— Charles Grandison Finney

12. “Prevailing prayer is that which secures an answer. Saying prayers is not offering prevailing prayer. The prevalence of prayer does not depend so much on quantity as on quality.”

— Charles Grandison Finney

13. “It is the great business of every Christian to save souls.”

— Charles Grandison Finney

14. “Ministers often preach about the Gospel instead of preaching the Gospel. They often preach about sinners instead of preaching to them.”

— Charles Grandison Finney

15. “Every member must work or quit. No honorary members.”

— Charles Grandison Finney

16. “Every moment of your lives you are exerting a tremendous influence, that will tell on the immortal interests of souls around you. Are you asleep, while your conduct is exerting such an influence?”

— Charles Grandison Finney

17. “Great sermons lead the people to praise the preacher. Good preaching leads the people to praise the Savior.”

— Charles Grandison Finney

18. “The reason why wicked men and devils hate God is, because they see Him in relation to themselves. Their hearts rise up in rebellion, because they see Him opposed to their selfishness.”

— Charles Grandison Finney

19. “When there is no offense I make no defense.”

— Charles Grandison Finney

20. “I was like you once, long time ago. I believed in the dignity of man. Decency. Humanity. But I was lucky. I found out the truth early, boy. And what is the truth, Stark? It’s all very simple. There’s no such thing as the dignity of man. Man is a base, pathetic and vulgar animal.”

— Charles Grandison Finney

21. “Often, without being at all aware of it, men judge themselves, not by God’s rule, but by their own.”

— Charles Grandison Finney

22. “It was very common to find Christians, whenever they met in any place, instead of engaging in conversation, to fall on their knees in prayer.”

— Charles Grandison Finney

23. “There can be no revival when Mr. Amen and Mr. Wet-Eyes are not found in the audience.”

— Charles Grandison Finney

24. “No government is lawful or innocent that does not recognize the moral law as the only universal law, and God as the Supreme Lawgiver and Judge, to whom nations in their national capacity, as well as individuals, are amenable.”

— Charles Grandison Finney

25. “There can be no higher enjoyment found in this world that is found in pulling souls out of the fire and bringing them to Christ.”

— Charles Grandison Finney

26. “When sinners are careless and stupid, and sinking into hell unconcerned, it is time the church should bestir themselves. It is as much the duty of the church to awake, as it is for the firemen to awake when a fire breaks out in the night in a great city.”

— Charles Grandison Finney

27. “A revival may be expected when Christians have a spirit of prayer for a revival. That is, when they pray as if their hearts were set upon it. When Christians have the spirit of prayer for a revival. When they go about groaning out their hearts desire. When they have real travail of soul.”

— Charles Grandison Finney

28. “No man can possibly be benevolent or religious, to the full extent of his obligations, without concerning himself, to a greater or less extent, with the affairs of human government.”

— Charles Grandison Finney

29. “Some men will spin out a long prayer telling God who and what he is, or they pray out a whole system of divinity. Some people preach, others exhort the people, till everybody wishes they would stop, and God wishes so, too, most undoubtedly.”

— Charles Grandison Finney

30. “I laid great stress upon prayer as an indispensable condition of promoting the revival.”

— Charles Grandison Finney

31. “If you do not make it a matter of study, how you may successfully act in building up the kingdom of Christ, you are acting a very wicked and absurd part as a Christian.”

— Charles Grandison Finney

32. “The obligation of human beings to support and obey human governments, while they legislate upon the principles of the moral law, is an unalterable as the moral law itself.”

— Charles Grandison Finney

33. “When the church finds its members falling into gross and scandalous sins, then it is time for the church to awake and cry to God for a Revival of Religion.”

— Charles Grandison Finney

34. “It is a mournful fact that most men, and indeed all men of worldly character, have so much regard to public opinion that they dare not act according to the dictates of their consciences when acting thus would incur the popular frown.”

— Charles Grandison Finney

35. “Understand now what lying is. Any species of designed deception. If the deception is not designed it is not lying. But if you design to make an impression contrary to the naked truth, you lie.”

— Charles Grandison Finney

36. “How often God visited the Jewish Church with judgments because they would not repent and be revived at the call of His prophets! How often have we seen Churches, and even whole denominations, cursed with a curse, because they would not wake up and seek the Lord...”

— Charles Grandison Finney

37. “Unless the will is free, man has no freedom; and if he has no freedom he is not a moral agent, that is, he is incapable of moral action and also of moral character.”

— Charles Grandison Finney

38. “So if an elder or private member of the church finds his brethren cold towards him, there is but one way to remedy it. It is by being revived himself, and pouring out from his eyes and from his life the splendor of the image of Christ. This spirit will catch and spread in the church, and confidence will be renewed, and brotherly love prevail again.”

— Charles Grandison Finney

39. “The end for which Christ lives, and for which He has left His church in the world, is the salvation of sinners.”

— Charles Grandison Finney

40. “In nearly all cases, if the people complain of the length of our sermons it is because we fail to interest them personally in what we have to say.”

— Charles Grandison Finney

41. “I felt like rebuking them with all my heart and yet with a compassion which they could not mistake. I never knew that they accused me of severity, although I think I never spoke with more severity in my life.”

— Charles Grandison Finney

42. “There must be a waking up of energy, on the part of Christians, and an outpouring of God’s Spirit, or the world will laugh at the church.”

— Charles Grandison Finney

43. “When there is a spirit of controversy in the church or in the land, a revival is needful. The spirit of religion is not the spirit of controversy. There can be no prosperity in religion, where the spirit of controversy prevails.”

— Charles Grandison Finney

44. “The moral law of God is the only law of individuals and of nations, and nothing can be rightful government but such as is established and administered with a view to its support.”

— Charles Grandison Finney

45. “But now after receiving these baptisms of the Spirit I was quite willing to preach the Gospel. Nay, I found that I was unwilling to do anything else.”

— Charles Grandison Finney

46. “A revival of religion presupposes a declension.”

— Charles Grandison Finney

47. “Why will God’s creatures sin against his throne? Can there be such madness in beings gifted with reason’s light?”

— Charles Grandison Finney

48. “The will is, in a sense, enslaved by the carnal and worldly desires. Hence it is necessary to awaken men to a sense of guilt and danger, and thus produce an excitement of counter feeling and desire which will break the power of carnal and worldly desire and leave the will free to obey God.”

— Charles Grandison Finney

49. “Whenever sinners are not being saved and believers sanctified, there is a lack of Holy Spirit power. When will our theological professors and our ministers learn the all-important lesson so illustrated in the Acts of the Apostles and so verified by all the ages, that the chief factor in ministerial success is the Pentecostal experience, the baptism with the Holy Ghost, the being “filled with the Spirit?”

— Charles Grandison Finney

50. “By precept and example, on every proper occasion, by their lips, but mainly by their lives. Christians have no right to be silent with their lips; they should rebuke, exhort, and entreat with all long-suffering and doctrine. But their main influence as witnesses is by their example.”

— Charles Grandison Finney