Top 70 Tony Reinke Quotes (2024 Update)

1. “John Newton’s final recorded words: “My memory is nearly gone, but I remember two things: that I am a great sinner and that Christ is a great Savior.”

— Tony Reinke

2. “True freedom from the bondage of technology comes not mainly from throwing away the smartphone, but from filling the void with the glories of Jesus that you are trying to fill with the pleasures of the device.”

— Tony Reinke

3. “If you follow Christ, the world will unfollow you.”

— Tony Reinke

4. “If we neglect Scripture in order to read only other books, we not only cut ourselves from the divine umbilical cord that feeds our souls, we also cut ourselves from the truth that makes it possible for us to benefit from the truth, goodness, and beauty in the books that we read.”

— Tony Reinke

Featured in: Reading Quotes

5. “Reading is a discipline, and all disciplines require self-discipline, and self-discipline is the one thing our sinful flesh will resist.”

— Tony Reinke

6. “The more distracted we are digitally, the more displaced we become spiritually.”

— Tony Reinke

7. “In the Christian life, new affections for Christ clash with habitual sin patterns. To put it more strongly, new affections for God eject old habits of sin. Or to say it in the negative, failure to find satisfaction in Christ leaves in the soul a vacuum filled by self, idols, and false securities.”

— Tony Reinke

8. “Our owning of personal weakness is one of the results of the active presence of grace. And our weakness is how we broadcast the grace of God to others.”

— Tony Reinke

9. “My heart is like a country but half subdued, where all things are in an unsettled state, and mutinies and insurrections are daily happening. I hope I hate the rebels that disturb the King’s peace. I am glad when I can point them out, lay hold of them, and bring them to him for justice. But they have many lurking-holes, and sometimes they come disguised like friends, so that I do not know them, till their works discover them.10.”

— Tony Reinke

10. “As a result, we suffer from Neomania – an addition to anything new within the last five minutes.”

— Tony Reinke

11. “Regardless of how many books we read, we cling to the old rugged cross. When books overwhelm us, and our intellectual limitations discourage us, we recall the gospel. In the good news of Jesus Christ, overwhelmed readers find peace, and joy, and the courage to keep reading.”

— Tony Reinke

12. “Simplicity of intention, implies that we have but one leading aim, to which it is our deliberate and unreserved desire that every thing else in which we are concerned may be subordinate and subservient – in a word, that we are devoted to the Lord, and have by grace been enabled to choose him, and to yield ourselves to him, so as to place our happiness in his favor, and to make his glory and will the ultimate scope of all our actions.”

— Tony Reinke

13. “Literature helps to humanize us. It expands our range of experiences. It fosters awareness of ourselves and the world. It enlarges our compassion for people. It awakens our imaginations. It expresses our feelings and insights about God, nature, and life. It enlivens our sense of beauty. And it is a constructive form of entertainment.”

— Tony Reinke

14. “In the healthy Christian life, there are no double standards, no dual aims. The private life and the public life are equally oriented to the glory of God. This is manifested as true Christian authenticity in the world.”

— Tony Reinke

15. “Sin is not merely wrong doing; sin is essentially wrong adoring. Sin is the fastening of our hearts on any good, treasure, or security in life that replaces the good, treasure, and security of God.”

— Tony Reinke

16. “To not feel the sting of sin is a form of sickness, a deadness, a leprosy of the soul.54 But to feel the sting of sin is a mark of health, a sign of life, and a necessary experience if we are to appreciate the sin-conquering work of Christ.”

— Tony Reinke

17. “The more we take refuge in distraction, the more habituated we become to mere stimulation and the more desensitized to delight. We lose our capacity to stop and ponder something deeply, to admire something beautiful for its own sake, to lose ourselves in the passion for a game, a story, or a person.”

— Tony Reinke

18. “The only way out of spiritual immaturity is to walk by faith when the affections are dry and the presence of God appears to have been withdrawn.”

— Tony Reinke

19. “The Christian lives “a strange mysterious life” that seems to swing daily from darkness into light, from peace into strife. Time and time again, our Friend breaks into this strange and mysterious riddle of life and empowers us for a sweet and stable life in the storm.”

— Tony Reinke

20. “Keeping Christ in view at all times is, by far, the hardest – and the most essential – part of our calling as Christians.”

— Tony Reinke

21. “A life of gospel simplicity is a life focused on Christ and his all-sufficiency, a life in which we are aware of our sin and lostness, and confident of what Christ has done on our behalf.”

— Tony Reinke

22. “Legalism is a wicked lie that puts a mirror in front of our faces and makes us think we are looking at Christ when we are actually adoring the ghost of our own self-righteousness.”

— Tony Reinke

23. “I wish you health, peace, and prosperity; but, above all, that your souls may prosper; that you may still prefer the light of God’s countenance to your chief joy; that you may still delight yourselves in the Lord; be daily hungering and thirsting after him, and daily receiving from his fullness, even grace for grace; that you may rejoice in his all-sufficiency.36.”

— Tony Reinke

24. “Don’t allow unfinished books to pile up in a mountain of guilt. Show patience with a book, but cut the ties when necessary and move on.”

— Tony Reinke

25. “What is most decisive is God’s Joy Project is not that we fully grasp it, but that our sovereign God fully grasps us.”

— Tony Reinke

26. “The job of the sin-sick Christian is to repent and turn from sin and press into Christ for continued healing.”

— Tony Reinke

27. “In a world so easily satisfied with images, it’s too easy to waste our lives watching mindless television and squandering our free time away with entertainment. We have a higher calling. God has called us to live our lives by faith and not by sight – and this can mean nothing less than committing our lives to the pursuit of language, revelation, and great books.”

— Tony Reinke

28. “Life online is a whiplash between deep sorrow, unexpected joy, cheap laughs, profound thoughts, and dumb memes.”

— Tony Reinke

29. “Jesus is always near, about our path by day, and our bed by night; nearer than the light by which we see, or the air we breathe; nearer than we are to ourselves; so that not a thought, a sigh, or a tear, escaped his notice.”

— Tony Reinke

30. “The Christian’s hope is based not on our unsettling feelings of joy in Christ, but on Christ himself.”

— Tony Reinke

31. “If our awareness of indwelling sin humbles us and makes our sovereign Christ more precious to us, we are safe.39.”

— Tony Reinke

32. “The joy of the Lord is our strength in the Christian life; unbelief is our Kryptonite.”

— Tony Reinke

33. “Though I cannot see why my life has unfolded in the way it has, God is in control and I am upheld by grace.“-The Happy Calvinist.”

— Tony Reinke

34. “In the gospel-simple life we do not live to please men; we live to please the Lord alone.”

— Tony Reinke

35. “The Christian life is Christ – a truth that deeply reassures our souls, focuses our hearts, and simplifies our spiritual lives. But it’s a calling that we perpetually fumble. The veil removed from our eyes in conversion gives way to clouds over our eyes in trials and sleepiness in our steps with the spiritual disciplines. The greatest challenges we face are Christ-clouding distractions.”

— Tony Reinke

36. “My annual goal is to read seventy-five books, which may sound like a lot.”

— Tony Reinke

37. “If we’re being honest, we don’t call ourselves royalty. If we’re being honest, we call ourselves timid, confused, and insecure. All our self-loathing and self-promoting is a thin veil covering over our frightening conviction that we are nobodies.”

— Tony Reinke

38. “Desirable and precious as sanctification is, it is not, I trust it will never be, the ground of my hope. Nor, were I as sinless as an angel in glory, could I have a better ground of hope than I have at present. For acceptance, I rely simply, wholly, and solely, upon the obedience unto death of my surety. Jesus is my righteousness, my life, and my salvation.”

— Tony Reinke

39. “Illuminated by the gospel, we now perceive and enjoy God’s truth, goodness, and beauty – whether it’s in the blazing sun of the inspired Word of God, in the moonlight of creation, or in the starlight of great books.”

— Tony Reinke

40. “Books are great tools, but they are disappointing gods. And once books become idols, those idols will leave us deeply unsatisfied.”

— Tony Reinke

41. “Every time we open our Bibles, our souls are being fed through centuries of technological advancement.”

— Tony Reinke

42. “The question of this book is simple: What is the best use of my smartphone in the flourishing of my life? To that end, my aim is to avoid both extremes: the utopian optimism of the technophiliac and the dystopian pessimistic of the technophobe.”

— Tony Reinke

43. “We lose out on communion with Christ when we gorge on entertainment.”

— Tony Reinke

44. “Freedom in Christ is not freedom to do whatever you want; it is for sure-footed self-reflection and for avoiding the cultural bondage of sin. My freedom in Christ gives me eyes to see that not all things are helpful for me, helpful for others, or acceptable for my witness in the world.”

— Tony Reinke

45. “The self-boasting life is a direct contradiction to the Christ-boasting life. Pride sucks away our spiritual joy and vitality and clouds over Christ. “O to live in and by and to and for and with Jesus by faith, this is life indeed. How different from that dry contentious self-applauding spirit, which makes so much noise and does so little good.”70 We are prone to exchange the glory of Christ for the lentil stew of self-consumed pride. We.”

— Tony Reinke

46. “We cannot look to Christ without looking beyond ourselves. Assurance in the Christian life is measured not by our wins or our losses, even religious and moral wins and losses, but by Christ as we find our daily assurance in his all-sufficiency.”

— Tony Reinke

47. “The nearness of God is our good. And the trials we endure in this fallen world awaken us to this truth.”

— Tony Reinke

48. “The statistics show that Christians who struggle to read books are struggling to break free from poor smartphone habits as one root cause.”

— Tony Reinke

49. “Sin is what makes the things we know we ought to do so difficult and lifeless.”

— Tony Reinke

50. “Reading is an act of contemplation, perhaps the only act in which we allow ourselves to merge with the consciousness of another human being.”

— Tony Reinke