Quotes about Growth

Christians are not born but made.

It is a dangerous thing to be satisfied with ourselves.

What Paul wrote in 2 Timothy 1:6 clearly indicates that one's gift does not always operate at the same level of intensity. Timothy is exhorted to "kindle afresh" his spiritual gift. This would imply that a gift can fluctuate on a sliding scale of relative effectiveness, the latter being in some measure dependent on us. Although a gift is from God, it can be improved upon. We can always learn to use it better, and with greater fruit.

Try again. Fail again. Fail better.

Adversity has ever been considered the state in which a man most easily becomes acquainted with himself.

Adversity leads us to think properly of our state, and so is most beneficial to us

We are easily shocked by crimes which appear at once in their full magnitude, but the gradual growth of our own wickedness, endeared by interest, and palliated by all the artifices of self-deceit, gives us time to form distinctions in our own favor,

What a strange narrowness of mind now is that, to think the things we have not known are better than the things we have known.

Our pride must have winter weather to rot it.

The good husbandman may pluck His roses and gather in His liles at midsummer, and, for ought I dare say, in the beginning of the first summer month; and He may transplant young trees out of the lower ground to the higher, where they have more of the sun, and a more free air, at any season of the year. What is that to you or me? The goods are his own.

find it most true, that the greatest temptation out of hell is to live without temptations; if my waters should stand, they would rot. Faith is the better of the free air, and of the sharp winter storm in its face. Grace withereth without adversity. The devil is but God's master fencer, to teach us to handle our weapons.

I see grace growth best in winter.