Quotes about Transformation

Because of the fall of Adam and Eve and the natural sinfulness of the human heart that was passed onto all of us, there are those who will oppose God with all their strength. Paul was one of them. It was on his way to persecute believers in Jesus Christ that Jesus knocked him off his horse, blinded him, and spoke directly to him: "Saul! Saul! Why are you persecuting me?" (Acts 9:4). Never, never, never give up on the person in your life who seems most opposed to the gospel.

Since Jesus went through everything you're going through and more, learn to think like him. Think of your sufferings as a weaning from that old sinful habit of always expecting to get your own way. Then you'll be able to live out your days free to pursue what God wants instead of being tyrannized by what you want. 1 Peter 4:1—2, THE MESSAGE

Jesus is revealed in the changed lives of His beloved children.

Don't let the hurts, disappointments, and regrets of the past cripple your present or define your future. Forgive.

The question for each of us is one of housekeeping. Are there attitudes or actions we have allowed to take root in our life that are keeping us from the pursuit of holiness?

We first must plant the gospel in the hearts and lives of people and then see what form of ecclesia emerges from the transformed community. If we begin with the premise that we are starting a "church," it will often come loaded with intuitional and cultural assumptions. Churches should grow out of the mission, not the other way around.

is true. We change not by mustering up willpower but by changing the way we think, which will also involve changing our actions and our social environment. We change indirectly. We do what we can.

Christ in me" means Christ bearing me along from within, Christ the motive power that carries me on, Christ giving my whole life a wonderful poise and lift, and turning every burden into wings... not as something you have to bear but as something by which you are borne.

The spiritual disciplines are wisdom, not righteousness. But they are wise practices that train and transform our hearts.

Separated Peter from the vile and suicidal Judas was that he, Peter, had lived long enough to find his offense transformed—through no merit of his own—by the loving acceptance of Jesus. The humiliated Peter was, in the same moment, the forgiven Peter.

Salvation is not the stopping point; it is the starting point.

The relevance of the church is not found in its capitulation to culture but in its transformation of culture.