Quotes About Transformation

God is at work, taking people who instinctively speak for themselves and transforming them into people who effectively speak for him.

We need more than acceptance or practical strategies for change. We need the forgiveness, deliverance, and empowerment that only God's grace can give.

If you aren't daily admitting to yourself that you are a mess and in daily and rather desperate need for forgiving and transforming grace, and if the evidence around has not caused you to abandon your confidence in your own righteousness, then you are going to give yourself to the work of convincing yourself that you are okay.

Change is about learning what is right, acknowledging that it is right, confessing that you have been wrong, committing to a new way of living, and seeking the help you need to do

The cross welcomes us to look inside and around us and be dissatisfied. It welcomes us not to the dissatisfaction that leaves us hopeless, but a dissatisfaction that leads us to the foot of the cross where mercy and grace are found.

When the Word of God, faithfully taught by the people of God and empowered by the Spirit of God, falls down, people become different.

We must always, always, remember that the theology of the Word of God is not an end in itself but a means to an end, and that end is a radically grace-transformed

For most of us, church is merely an event we attend or an organization we belong to. We do not see it as a calling that shapes our entire life.

God's grace not only provides you with what you need, but also transforms you into what he in wisdom created you to be.

Here it is: if you are God's child, the life force that energizes your thoughts, desires, words, and actions is no longer you; it's Christ! God didn't just forgive you. No, he has come to live inside of you so you will have the power to desire and do what he calls you to do.

All their commitments to change have been subverted by the one thing they seem unwilling to do: take the focus off the other and put it on themselves. Here is the point: no change takes place in a marriage that does not begin with confession.

Here's how confession works. You cannot confess what you haven't grieved, you can't grieve what you do not see, and you cannot repent of what you have not confessed. So one of the most important operations of God's grace is to give us eyes to see our sin and hearts that are willing to confess it.

God is using the difficulties of the here and now to transform you, that is, to rescue you from you. And because he loves you, he will willingly interrupt or compromise your momentary happiness in order to accomplish one more step in the process of rescue and transformation, which he is unshakably committed to.

This death that I have just described is a process of daily scanning our lives to see where things still live in us that should not live, then praying for the strength to die once again. Like the death of Jesus, this death is not a defeat, but a huge and glorious victory. For everywhere you die, you will be resurrected to new life in that area. It is the continuing resurrection/transformation/liberation work of sanctifying grace. So this season, how about scanning your heart and life?

You can't buy wisdom. You can't get it by hard work or lots of experience. No, wisdom is the result of rescue and relationship. To be wise, you first need to be rescued from you. You need to be given a new heart, one that is needy, humble, seeking, and ready to get from above what you can't find on this earth. And then you need to be brought into a relationship with the One who is wisdom.

God is rescuing fallen humanity, transporting them into his kingdom, and progressively shaping them into his likeness—and he wants you to be a part of it.

God's grace dethrones you from your little kingdom and welcomes you to a much better kingdom than you could ever want for yourself.

Only when we are progressively freed from our bondage to ourselves do we come to love God as we should; and as we love God as we should, we love people in the way that God has designed. For this struggle, there is amazing, perseverant grace. God bestows on us his eternal transforming love so that by means of that love we will become people who find our rest in his love, and because we do, we are then able to love others well.

Finally, we must understand that theology is never an end in itself, but a means to an end, the end that we would progressively become like the One who is the ultimate definition of what love is and what love does.

Marriage is meant to expose your self-focus and self-reliance. It is meant to convince you that you are needier than you thought you were and to encourage you that God's grace has more power to transform than you thought it did. Marriage is meant to teach you how to give, love, serve, forgive, support, encourage, and wait. Think

The ultimate purpose of the Word of God is not theological information but heart and life transformation. Biblical literacy and theological expertise are not, therefore, the end of the Word but a God-ordained means to an end, and the end is a radically transformed life because the worship at the center of that life has been reclaimed.

The purpose of God's grace is not to make your little kingdom of one work better.

Sin is not just a matter of bad behavior. It is a condition of the heart. That's why you cannot free yourself from it.

Theology that isn't zealous to promote forgiving and transforming grace, the kind of grace that changes your life, is simply bad theology.