Quotes About Character

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

One has to feel strong revulsion toward the wrong feeling one now has or is likely to have and at the same time strong attraction to good feeling that one does not now feel.

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

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.

Spiritual formation in Christ is the process whereby the inmost being of the individual (the heart, will, or spirit) takes on the quality or character of Jesus himself.

We cannot behave "on the spot" as he did and taught if in the rest of our time we live as everybody else does.

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

Prayer is, above all, a means of forming character. It combines freedom and power with service and love. What

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.

Now just think of what the quality of life and character must be in a person who would routinely interrupt sacred rituals to pursue reconciliation with a fellow human being. What kind of thought life, what feeling tones and moods, what habits of body and mind, what kinds of deliberations and choices would you find in such a person? When you answer these questions, you will have a vision of the true "rightness beyond" that is at home in God's kingdom of power and love. Of

But this is an age for spiritual heroes—a time for men and women to be heroic in faith and in spiritual character and power.

Such planning should include identifying the things in your life that you believe trouble Jesus—impatience, overeating, lying, or whatever it may be for you.

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.

The world can no longer be left to mere diplomats, politicians, and business leaders. They have done the best they could, no doubt. But this is an age for spiritual heroes—a time for men and women to be heroic in faith and in spiritual character and power. The greatest danger to the Christian church today is that of pitching its message too low.

In people without rock-solid character, feeling is a deadly enemy of self-control and will always subvert it. The mongoose of a disciplined will under God and good is the only match for the cobra of feeling.

He calls us to him to impart himself to us. He does not call us to do what he did, but to be as he was, permeated with love. Then the doing of what he did and said becomes the natural expression of who we are in him.

Past a certain point, maybe, a person's character defines itself and stays fixed in your mind.

if you are names without a nature, it's not because I don't remember, no, the opposite is true, you are remembered in me as an endless stirring and turning. But it's for this precisely that you must forgive me, because in every story of obsession there's only one character, only one plot. I am writing about myself alone, it's all I know, and for this reason I have always failed in every love, which is to say at the very heart of life.

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.

We should expect anyone who remains in a formal leadership context to experience repeated bouts of flight, doubt, surrender, and return. Why would this be God's plan? Why does God love the reluctant leader? Here is one reason: the reluctant leader is not easily seduced by power, pride, or ambition.

The Christ in Paul's writings is a different character from the Jesus of the Gospels.

I am a good person because I am a good person! God has nothing to do with it!

It's the training, not the screening, that creates Marine Corps leaders of all ranks.