Quotes About Growth

death is a necessary prelude to resurrection. To bear long-term fruit for Christ, we need to recognize that some things must die so something new can grow.

Our churches are filled with "leaking" Christians who have not treated their emotions as a discipleship issue.

Most of us never examine the scripts handed to us by our past.

ese día, sentados en la oficina del consejero y muy avergonzados por la situación de nuestro matrimonio, aprendimos una lección que nunca olvidaremos: aunque éramos cristianos comprometidos desde hacía casi veinte años, nuestra manera de relacionarnos reflejaba mucho más la de nuestra familia de origen, que la forma que Dios tenía pensada para su nueva familia en Cristo.

God never asks us to annihilate the self. We are not to become "non-persons" when we become Christians. The very opposite is true. God intends our deeper, truer self, which he created, to blossom as we follow him.

I prefer the notions of seasons to stages when describing our life in Christ. We don't control the seasons; they happen to us. Winter, spring, summer, and fall come to us whether we like it or not.

We view conflict as a sign that something is wrong, so we do whatever we can to avoid it. We prefer to ignore difficult issues and settle for a false peace, hoping our difficulties will somehow disappear on their own. They don't.

Those who cannot learn from the past are doomed to repeat it.

Pain has an amazing ability to open us to new truth and to get us moving.

To become a Christian and to be adopted into God's family with the new name of "Christian" does not erase the past. God does not give us amnesia or do emergency emotional/spiritual reconstructive surgery. God does forgive the past, but he does not erase it. We are given a new start, but we still come in as babies drinking milk and are expected to die daily to the parts of our lives that do not honor God and follow Jesus.

God intends that we mature in learning to recognize how he speaks and guides us through our feelings.

Grow me, I pray, into an emotionally mature adult through the Holy Spirit's power.

Stage One: "You are wrong for changing and here are the reasons why." Stage Two: "Change back and we will accept you again." Stage Three: "If you don't change back, these are the consequences" (which are then listed).21

Mature spiritual leadership is forged in the crucible of difficult conversations, the pressure of conflicted relationships, the pain of setbacks, and dark nights of the soul.

Using God to run from God Ignoring anger, sadness, and fear Dying to the wrong things Denying the impact of the past on the

You must let God teach you the only way to get rid of your past is to make a future out of it. God will waste nothing.35

We change our behavior when the pain of staying the same becomes greater than the pain of changing.

The degree to which you recognize and engage your own shadow is the degree to which you can free others to face theirs.

Whenever I feel discouraged in my own progress, I remember what one Trappist monk said to me as he reflected on his sixty years of life dedicated to prayer, "I am only a beginner.

parece que hace falta una crisis de extremo quebranto para hacer que cambien otros de nosotros que hemos estado en la iglesia durante mucho tiempo.

You would think the church and its leaders would be all for healthy leadership and whatever it takes to achieve it. But the truth is that there are parts of church leadership culture that actually work hard against it.

While I was disciplined in spiritual practices, the people closest to me (starting with my wife, Geri) did not experience me as more loving with each passing year.

La salud emocional y la madurez espiritual son inseparables.

One of our greatest obstacles in knowing God is our own lack of self-knowledge. So we end up wearing a mask—before God, ourselves, and other people. And we can't become self-aware if we cut off our humanity out of fear of our feelings. This fear leads to unwillingness to know ourselves as we truly are and stunts our growth in Christ.