Quotes about Growth

Pruning includes purging the wrong thinking, the negative attitudes, and the wrong people that surround you.

Just as leaven in bread will cause it to rise, the words and actions of others will cause their bad seed to produce weeds instead of fruit.

Weeds choke the life out of anything good that might grow.

The wilderness creates unusual pressures and challenges.

A Christian who prays only when they feel like it may survive but they will never thrive. Their vast, innate potential will be stunted because grace needs a little space to take root between the cracks of a person's life.

Thus, we need the Bible as the guide to enable us to transform and purify our hermeneutical principles. The circle from the Bible to systematic theology to hermeneutics to the Bible is not a vicious circle, but a spiral of growth and progress, guided by the work of the Holy Spirit in illumination.

Knowledge has to be improved, challenged, and increased constantly, or it vanishes.

Results are obtained by exploiting opportunities, not by solving problems.

Still, shifting my thinking on the Bible did not mean I was losing my faith in God. In fact, I had the growing sense that God was inviting me down this path, encouraging it even.

God doesn't change, but God—being God—is never fully captured by our perceptions. As people continue to live and breathe and experience life, how they see God changes too.

judging by how the Bible actually behaves—God did not design scripture to be a hushed afternoon in an oak-paneled library. Instead, God has invited us to participate in a wrestling match, a forum for us to be stretched and to grow.

they introduced me to extended communities of faith through writers I had never heard of before . . . Along with the writings of Gerald May and Thomas Keating, whom I had not known before, I was encouraged to explore or revisit a few other writers, including Richard Rohr (Adam's Return and The Naked Now), Thomas Merton (Thoughts