Spiritual formation for the Christian basically refers to the Spirit-driven process of forming the inner world of the human self in such a way that it becomes like the inner being of Christ himself.
Ruthlessly eliminate hurry from your life.
Discipleship is the process of becoming who Jesus would be if he were you.
You cannot trust Jesus in areas in which you don’t think him competent.
Crooked thinking, unintentional or not, always favors evil.
Bodily pleasure is not in itself a bad thing. But when it is exalted to a necessity and we become dependent upon it, then we are slaves of our body and its feelings. Only misery lies ahead.
The greatest challenge the church faces today is to be authentic disciples of Jesus.
Spiritual formation in Christ moves us toward a total interchange of our ideas and images for his.
My central claim is that we can become like Christ by doing one thing – by following him in the overall style of life he chose for himself.
Suppose our failures occur, not in spite of what we are doing, but precisely because of it.
Feelings are good servants, but they are disastrous masters.
The kingdom of God is the true ecology of the human soul.
Spiritual people are not those who engage in certain spiritual practices; they are those who draw their life from a conversational relationship with God.
Our failure to hear His voice when we want to is due to the fact that we do not in general want to hear it, that we want it only when we think we need it.
Fasting confirms our utter dependence upon God by finding in Him a source of sustenance beyond food.
Happiness in reality consists only in rest, and not in being stirred up. This instinct conflicts with the drive to diversion, and we develop the confused idea that leads people to aim at rest through excitement.
Jesus is actually looking for people he can trust with his power.
Today it is the skeptics who are the social conformists, though because of powerful intellectual propaganda they continue to enjoy thinking of themselves as wildly individualistic and unbearably bright.
Most problems in contemporary churches can be explained by the fact that members have never decided to follow Christ.
In many cases, our need to wonder about or be told what God wants in a certain situation is nothing short of a clear indication of how little we are engaged in His work.