Quotes About Growth

Lord, when we are wrong, make us willing to change, and when we are right, make us easy to live with!

the focus of spiritual formation is the formation of our spirit.

Heroism, generally, is totally out of place in the spiritual life, until we grow to the point at which it would never be thought of as heroism anyway.

What God gets out of our lives—and, indeed, what we get out of our lives—is simply the person we become. It

God both develops and, for our good, tests our character by leaving us to decide. He calls us to responsible citizenship in his kingdom by saying—in effect or in reality—as often as possible, "My will for you in this case is that you to decide on your own.

Anyone who is not a continual student of Jesus, and who nevertheless reads the great promises of the Bible as if they were for him or her, is like someone trying to cash a check on another person's account. At best, it succeeds only sporadically.

plan for putting to death or mortifying

our relationship with Jesus, which he argued ultimately allows us to establish a relationship with the kingdom of God. This relationship is one of discipleship in which we learn to live our lives as Jesus would through progressively embodying and manifesting a Christlike character, which is attained through establishing a discipling relationship to Jesus.

great part of our growth includes disengaging from the expectations of others.

the governing assumption today, among professing Christians, is that we can be "Christians" forever and never become disciples.

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

We grow in our knowledge of God in the same way. We bring the reality of God into our lives by making contact with him through our minds, and our actions are based on the understanding that results from the fullness of that contact. There is nothing mysterious here. This is why the mind, and what we turn our minds to, is the key to our lives.

A human figure approaching, filling itself in slowly, putting on age and sex and race, like items of clothing, till she's looking at a black boy, also thirteen years old, wearing ragged shorts and T-shirt, broken takkies on his feet.

Tension is living in the gap between certainty and uncertainty. We always begin with what we know, and are irresistibly drawn to what we don't know. We are inveterately curious. We are wired to grow, and all growth stretches us beyond our comfort level. Comfort is the absence of tension; growth requires a swim in murky, dangerous waters... Tension is the medium which we breathe everyday.

The route to facing what we feel is not by devaluing the darkness of what we feel, but by valuing the deep structure of why we don't want to feel. Once we face why feeling is so hard, then we can move beyond what we feel to the deeper energy within us that keeps us from grappling honestly with our emotions. Then we will not only feel more deeply, but—more importantly—we will feel our feelings in a way that exposes our struggle with God.

you can be assured that the inciting events call for you to sacrifice your comfort and ease in order for your story to move forward. It's easy to ignore such inciting events...It's easy to flee your story.

The reluctant leader doesn't merely give accolades to others. It is her true joy to see others awaken to their potential and exceed their greatest dreams. It is the hope of every good teacher to have students who take their work further than the teacher was able to do. To be surpassed is the ideal. To be replaced is the goal, not a sign of failure.

Marriage requires a radical commitment to love our spouses as they are, while longing for them to be what they are not yet. Every marriage moves either toward enhancing one another's glory or toward degrading each other.

God's passion is to rig the world so that we are compelled to deal with whatever blocks us from being like His glorious Son.

Anyone who wrestles with an uncertain future on behalf of others—anyone who uses her gifts, talents, and skills to influence the direction of others for the greater good—is a leader. No one is a mere follower. If you are a follower of God, for instance, then you are called to lead. Every believer is called to help someone grow into maturity—and such is the core calling of a leader.

shortly after that, their brains began to grow! The human

Knowledge grows exponentially. The more we know, the greater our ability to learn, and the faster we expand our knowledge base.

Cancer is nothing more than a healthy cell that starts replicating out of control.

Don't spend...but mend yourself...