Quotes About Growth

We have to keep letting go, and slowly and surely the great full life of God will invade us in every part, and men will take knowledge of us that we have been with Jesus.

Never let the sense of past failure defeat your next step.

It is not true to say that God wants to teach us something in our trials. Through every cloud He brings our way, He wants us to unlearn something.

The saint who satisfies the heart of Jesus will make other saints strong and mature for God.

When Jesus drives something home to you through His Word, don't try to evade it. If you do, you will become a religious impostor. Examine the things you tend simply to shrug your shoulders about, and where you have refused to be obedient, and you will know why you are not growing spiritually. As Jesus said, Ã¢â'¬Å"First . . . go . . . ." Even at the risk of being thought of as fanatical, you must obey what God tells you.

The test of mountain-top experiences, of mysticism, of visions of God and of solitariness is when you are "in the soup" of actual circumstances.

The only way we can be of use to God is to let Him take us through the crooks and crannies of our own characters.

Beware of anything that would tarnish God's mirror in you. It is always something good stains it—good, but not best.

It is not so true that "prayer changes things" as that prayer changes me and I change things.

God does not give us overcoming life: He gives us life as we overcome. The strain is the strength. If there is no strain, there is no strength.

The grace you had yesterday will not be sufficient for today.

Always make it a practice to stir your own mind thoroughly to think through what you have easily believed. Your position is not really yours until you make it yours through suffering and study. The author or speaker from whom you learn the most is not the one who teaches you something you didn't know before, but the one who helps you take a truth with which you have quietly struggled, give it expression, and speak it clearly and boldly.

Beware of harking back to what you were once when God wants you to be something you have never been. "If any man will do . . . , he shall know .

If you believe in Jesus, you are not to spend all your time in the calm waters just inside the harbor, full of joy, but always tied to the dock. You have to get out past the harbor into the great depths of God, and begin to know things for yourself—begin to have spiritual discernment.

Beware of paying attention or going back to what you once were, when God wants you to be something that you have never been. "If anyone wills to do His will, he shall know . . ." (John 7:17).

We can only be used by God after we allow Him to show us the deep, hidden areas of our own character. It is astounding how ignorant we are about ourselves! We don't even recognize the envy, laziness, or pride within us when we see it. But Jesus will reveal to us everything we have held within ourselves before His grace began to work. How many of us have learned to look inwardly with courage?

Man is not God but hath God's end to serve, A master to obey, a course to take, Somewhat to cast off, somewhat to become. Grant this, then man must pass from old to new, From vain to real, from mistake to fact, From what once seemed good, to what now proves best. —Robert Browning

God gives us a vision, and then He takes us down to the valley to batter us into the shape of that vision. It is in the valley that so many of us give up and faint. Every God-given vision will become real if we will only have patience.

Sanctification is an impartation, not an imitation. Imitation is something altogether different.

Never live on your memories of past experiences, but let the Word of God always be living and active in you.

Many of us do not continue to grow spiritually because we prefer to choose on the basis of our rights, instead of relying on God to make the choice for us.

Receiving Yourself in the Fires of Sorrow

Purity is not innocence, it is much more. Purity is the outcome of sustained spiritual sympathy with God. We have to grow in purity.

God can do nothing for me until I get to the limit of the possible.