Quotes About Renewal

I saw meadows and trees burning a young, fiery green, as if leaves had just opened, as if green itself had never existed before. I breathed heavy, golden air that might have pooled all summer over roses blooming in every color on a hundred trees.

I'm still an old pearl in a new oyster.

Only at dawn should a man awake from excess - at dawn agleam with red and sorrowful resolve.

The river changes every second; and so does the man who stepped in it. Life is a ceaseless change.

He saves us by realistic restoration of our heart to God and then by dwelling there with his Father through the distinctively divine Spirit. The heart thus renovated and inhabited is the only real hope of humanity on earth.

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.

Father, we remember now that we are right here with you and that you are in our midst and that you love us and that you long for us to be healed and whole and that we do not do any of this on our own and that this universe is a perfectly safe place for us to be and that you are closer than the air we breathe. And so we ask that you would be at work now and help us and give us energy and openness and strength, and we pray this together in Jesus' name. Amen. John Ortberg

The revolution of Jesus is in the first place and continuously a revolution of the human heart and spirit.

Accordingly, the greatest need you and I have—the greatest need of collective humanity—is renovation of our heart. That spiritual place within us from which outlook, choices, and actions come has been formed by a world away from God. Now it must be transformed.

Worship is at once the overall character of the renovated thought life and the only safe place for a human being to stand.

The revolution of Jesus is in the first place and continuously a revolution of the human heart or spirit.

The Day Begins . . . at Sundown

Thank you, God, for this new day. Thank you for this new beginning.

Search me, O God." "Let the meditations of my heart be acceptable to you." "Renew in me a right spirit." At a certain point my own "beyond that is within" (my heart) has been formed and I am then at its mercy. Only God can save me.

In particular, I had learned that intensity is crucial for any progress in spiritual perception and understanding. To dribble a few verses or chapters of scripture on oneself through the week, in church or out, will not reorder one's mind and spirit—just as one drop of water every five minutes will not get you a shower, no matter how long you keep it up. You need a lot of water at once and for a sufficiently long time. Similarly for the written Word.

Worship nevertheless imprints on our whole being the reality that we study. The effect is a radical disruption of the powers of evil in us and around us. Often an enduring and substantial change is brought about. And the renewal of worship keeps the glow and power of our true homeland an active agent in all parts of our being. To "hear and do" in the atmosphere of worship is the clearest, most obvious and natural thing imaginable.

So, C. S. Lewis writes, our faith is not a matter of our hearing what Christ said long ago and "trying to carry it out." Rather, "The real Son of God is at your side. He is beginning to turn you into the same kind of thing as Himself. He is beginning, so to speak, to 'inject' His kind of life and thought, His Zoe [life], into you; beginning to turn the tin

soldier into a live man. The part of you that does not like it is the part that is still tin."13

That spiritual place within us from which outlook, choices, and actions come has been formed by a world away from God. Now it must be transformed.

spiritual formation is a matter of reworking all aspects of the self.

Third, the "correcting" to be done is not a matter of "straightening them out." It is not a matter of hammering on their wrongness and on what is going to happen to them if they don't change their ways. It is a matter of restoration. The

he ruined soul must be willing to recognize its own ruin before it can discover how to enter a different path

There may be times when you have to renew your commitment to release what you want, how you look, and especially what you are doing for the Lord. Much of our effort to do things for the Lord is really the resurgence of our desire to dominate and make things happen in our own strength.

If we are to be transformed, the body must be transformed, and that is not accomplished by talking at it.