Top 90 James MacDonald Quotes (2025 Update)
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51. “The day you stop loving your people, they’re not your people anymore.”

— James MacDonald

52. “Church was never intended to be a place where we serve God to the exclusion of meeting with Him.”

— James MacDonald

53. “The role of biblical counselors is facilitate the discovery of a greater God awareness through spiritual eyes that look at life through scriptural lenses.”

— James MacDonald

54. “Whether you realize it or not, your ongoing battle with unbelief drives all your sinful thoughts, emotions, desires, and actions.”

— James MacDonald

55. “Beware of begging God for things you don’t have to have.”

— James MacDonald

56. “To disrespect a person made in the image and likeness of God is a lot worse than desecrating a flag. We should be offended and repulsed in the same way when God’s image bearers are desecrated – abused, beaten, neglected, discriminated against, and not loved and taken care of as they should be.”

— James MacDonald

57. “In healthy churches, the pastors life, not just his words, sets the tone for the church.”

— James MacDonald

58. “If He wasn’t going to use that hard thing for your good, it wouldn’t have happened. He had to sign off on every single thing that touches your life.”

— James MacDonald

59. “The biblical counselor must always remember that the ROOT problem is deeper than skin; it is sin. The ultimate cure is not culture, but Christ.”

— James MacDonald

60. “Prayer is the easiest thing to assume in church and the hardest thing to maintain. Prayer is the first thing our flesh stops when times get easy, and true prayer is the last thing we resort to when times get tough.”

— James MacDonald

61. “Praying is what confirms our true belief that we cannot succeed without God, and its absence confirms the exact opposite.”

— James MacDonald

62. “Let God Himself be the main attraction at church again, and let us be tireless in our insistence that church is for God, about God, through God, and to the glory of His great Son.”

— James MacDonald

63. “I have been studying now for about 2 years, on a rather intensive basis, the UFO problem. I have interviewed several hundred witnesses in selected cases, and I am astonished at what I have found.”

— James MacDonald

64. “Complaining is an attitude choice that if left unchecked will wither my capacity to experience joy and genuine thankfulness.”

— James MacDonald

65. “You might not think it now, but if you’re one of God’s children, you’re going to figure it out by the end of your life God is good.”

— James MacDonald

66. “Yet those who wait for the LORD will gain new strength; they will mount up with wings like eagles, they will run and not get tired.”

— James MacDonald

67. “God owns the truth. The issue is our ability to derive truth apart from God’s sufficient Word.”

— James MacDonald

68. “The counselee should be aware that you are not God. Better yet, she should be aware that you are aware that you are not God.”

— James MacDonald

69. “I’ve learned to be careful of becoming a critic. Criticism really sours your heart.”

— James MacDonald

70. “The marquee scrolling across our minds trying to reinterpret life reads: “God-Against-Us.” This becomes the dominant lens through which our flesh interprets life. We no longer give our loving Father the benefit of the doubt. Instead, we view every event as conclusive proof that God is against us.”

— James MacDonald

71. “I want to be a part of the grand plan. Being on board with God’s objectives means I understand that this is not about me.”

— James MacDonald

72. “Any counseling that does not pursue spiritual formation through an intimate relationship with Jesus by faith as one of its chief goals is not worthy to be called BIBLICAL counseling.”

— James MacDonald

73. “This is God’s world, so everything, even if it intends to efface God, bears witness to God – understood and interpreted through biblical eyeglasses.”

— James MacDonald

74. “We must evaluate every person, place, product, perspective, position, or pleasure we have looked to in place of the promises of God, and turn away from those things accordingly.”

— James MacDonald

75. “When we ask people what they want in church instead of giving them what they were created to long for, we play in the very idolatry that church was created to dismantle.”

— James MacDonald

76. “God looked through eternity past and He saw you and He chose to reach out and redeem you by His own grace. It’s hard to imagine that kind of love.”

— James MacDonald

77. “If all you are doing is spending time with the struggling members of your church and you are not building proactively into your church’s culture, and you are being shortsighted and limiting the effectiveness of your ministry.”

— James MacDonald

78. “Competing loves are detected in the gap between saying and doing.”

— James MacDonald

79. “With God, we can be satisfied and fulfilled with very little, but without Him, all that we have will always be dry and deeply disappointing.”

— James MacDonald

80. “Let God Himself be the main attraction at church again...”

— James MacDonald

81. “Satan’s kryptonite is separation through slander. He slanders God to us and us to God.”

— James MacDonald

82. “Sin does not remain a contented servant; it seeks to seize and master its participants.”

— James MacDonald

83. “We must rip the foundations out from under all the bastions of human reasoning that say, “I don’t need God!” We must demolish every non-God story of life. We must pulverize every God-is-not-good life narrative.”

— James MacDonald

84. “Don’t get a bad attitude like they did back in the wilderness, or you’re going to be joining them.”

— James MacDonald

85. “Thankfulness is the attitude that perfectly displaces my sinful tendency to complain and thereby release joy and blessing into my life.”

— James MacDonald

86. “At the end of life, each of us must answer the question, Whose story captured my soul?”

— James MacDonald

87. “We all know the disappointments that come when we base anticipation on what we and other humans can deliver. God will never have a problem delivering!”

— James MacDonald

88. “The reason God responds to persistence is because prayer is changing the one who prays. As we pray, God is making us spiritually fit to receive what He is already willing to do. Prayer changes us into the people who can participate in the greater work of God without being spoiled by it through pride or becoming discouraged by the increased weight of greater fruitfulness.”

— James MacDonald

89. “So often, it’s others around us who can see where God wants to grow us even before we see it ourselves.”

— James MacDonald

90. “Satan mounts his mutiny against God through a deceitful stronghold: God is untrustworthy. In subtle and not-so-subtle ways, he places God’s heart on trial by whispering insidious lies: “God is holding back on you. He wants you to jump through hoops in order to earn His love. He’s stingy. He doesn’t have your best interest in mind. You’re better off trusting in yourself. Your resources and functional saviors work better then waiting and trusting in Him.”

— James MacDonald

91. “Repentance is shockingly beautiful when we see it not as “I sinned again, I need to repent,” but as “I sinned against my God again, but He is calling me back so He can lavish me with His love and forgiveness.”

— James MacDonald

92. “More of anything other than God will never fill that longing for fulfillment He has placed within you and me.”

— James MacDonald

93. “Whenever you are in a critical temper, it is impossible to enter into communion with God.”

— James MacDonald

94. “Only when we have done all we knew to do can we wait by faith for God to do what only He can do.”

— James MacDonald

95. “Too often, we think of sin as self-contained, point-in-time choices with no interconnection or momentum. But sin refuses to remain contained in the moment it is conceived.”

— James MacDonald

96. “Our view of human problems determines who is qualified to speak to them. If sin is the primary human problem, then those with the theological and practical expertise in dealing with sin – in its varied and complex forms – should lead the way in the field of people-helping. Unless we have an accurate and robust conception of sin, the church will concede much of its work to outside professional and will be ill-equipped to cooperate with them when needed.”

— James MacDonald

97. “Too many times we’re looking for ways to get around deep waters and dangerous fires, rather than through them. Has this ever been your experience?”

— James MacDonald

98. “When we shift from personal purity to personal happiness, we lose biblical hope because we are not focusing on God’s agenda, we are focusing on our own. God’s agenda is guaranteed on our agenda is not.”

— James MacDonald

99. “Do the things you used to do, and you’ll feel the feelings you used to feel.”

— James MacDonald