Quotes about Growth

Christian spiritual formation rests on this indispensable foundation of death to self and cannot proceed except insofar as that foundation is being firmly laid and sustained.

In relation to spiritual disciplines, the most helpful distinction is the difference between trying to do something and training to do something.

There are no formulas—no definitive how-tos—for growth in the inner character of Jesus. Such growth is a way of relentless seeking. But there are many things we can do to place ourselves at the disposal of God, and "if with all our hearts we truly seek him, we shall surely find him

How to combine faith with obedience is surely the essential task of the church as it enters the twenty-first century.

Our task in ourselves and in others is to transform right answers into automatic responses to real-life situations.

A disciple is someone who is learning by going through the process of change. All the things that we moan about and talk on and on about, such as pornography, divorce and drugs, are things that can be dealt with effectively only by bringing change into the mind and the spirit, into the will, into the body and into the fellowship of the person. Then people come out saying, "Who needs that stuff? I've got something much better than that.

To train means arranging our life around those practices that enable us to do what we cannot now do by direct effort. The point of training is to receive power, so we arrange our life around practices through which we get power.

No good tree produces bad fruit, nor any bad tree good fruit…. The good person, from the good treasured up in his heart, produces what is good. LUKE 6:43—45

The spiritual side of the human being, Christian and non-Christian alike, develops into the reality that it becomes, for good or ill.

Disciplines are activities that are in our power and that enable us to do what we cannot do by direct effort.

Life as usual must go. It will be replaced by something far better.

But—for good reasons rooted deeply in the nature of the person and of personal relationships—his preferred way is to speak, to communicate: thus the absolute centrality of scripture to our discipleship. And this, among other things, is the reason why an extensive use of solitude and silence is so basic for growth of the human spirit, for they form an appropriate context for listening and speaking to God.