growth on Self-Improvement

Our problem with following Jesus is we’re trying to be a better version of us, rather than a more accurate reflection of Him.

Our faith is not a matter of our hearing what Christ said long ago and “trying to carry it out. The real Son of God is at your side. He is beginning to turn you into the same kind of thing as Himself....

G. K. Chesterton said, “Anything worth doing is worth doing badly.” Chesterton wasn’t encouraging mediocrity; he was alerting his audience to an important truth: if you wait to do something until you ...

If you would attain to what you are not yet, you must always be displeased by what you are. For where you are pleased with yourself there you have remained. Keep adding, keep walking, keep advancing.

A major problem with a preoccupation with my individual development is that it provides no intrinsic value ‘for you,’ except as an environment for my growth,”

Be patient with everyone, but above all with yourself. I mean, do not be disturbed because of your imperfections, and always rise up bravely from a fall. I’m glad that you make daily a new beginning; ...

Self-acceptance gives assent to be who I am—a small, limited person with bents toward sin as well as hungers for holiness—and allows me to live with all my contradictions, because my will, at least on...

The right manner of growth is to grow less in one's own eyes.

Qui cessat esse melior cessat esse bonus (He who ceases to be better ceases to be good)

In an essay on friendship, the renowned poet Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote, “My entire success, such as it is, is composed of particular failures.” There’s a deep truth in that line—one many of us need to...

The animal behavior scientist Temple Grandin, who achieved significant success while struggling with autism, has this to say on the subject of progress: People are always looking for the single ma...

Experienced mountaineers have a quiet, regular, short step—on the level it looks petty; but then this step they keep up, on and on as they ascend, whilst the inexperienced townsman hurries along, and ...

If the amount of energy lost in trying to grow were spent in fulfilling rather the conditions of growth, we should have many more cubits to show for our stature.

When we devote no time to the inner life, we lose the habit of soul. If we fail to acquaint ourselves with soul, we will remain strangers in our own lives.

I have a lot of growing up to do. I realized that the other day inside my fort.

Spiritual growth is, in large measure, patterned on the nature of physical growth. We do not expect to put an infant into its crib at night and in the morning find a child, an adolescent or yet an adu...

What is spiritual formation? There is an outer you—your body—that is being shaped all the time by the way you eat, drink, sleep, exercise, and live. You may do this well or poorly, intentionally or no...

The truth is, that more spiritual progress is made through failure and tears than success and laughter.

Spiritual nourishment cannot be seen purely in our outward behavior. The process of sanctification is a deeply internal process. Outside growth is merely a symptom, and acting better does not mean our...

Spiritual growth depends on two things: first a willingness to live according to the Word of God; second, a willingness to take whatever consequences emerge as a result.

Sad will be the day for every man when he becomes absolutely contented with the life he is living, with the thoughts that he is thinking, with the deeds that he is doing, when there is not forever bea...

Too often we fail to appreciate that (the) apprehension of God is not only the test of our worship, but also the test of our spiritual growth. A Christian's real development in spiritual life will...

A Friend's Question: How Do I Go Deeper? I was having coffee with a good friend, which everyone knows is the best place for conversation, when he blurted out the question: “How do I go deeper ...

We should not judge people by their peak of excellence; but by the distance they have traveled from the point where they started.

At every point in the human journey we find that we have to let go in order to move forward; and letting go means dying a little. In the process we are being created anew, awakened afresh to the sourc...

The human soul is like a fine wine that needs to ferment in various barrels as it ages and mellows. The wisdom for this is written everywhere, in nature, in scripture, in spiritual traditions, and in ...

The fatal metaphor of progress, which means leaving things behind us, has utterly obscured the real idea of growth, which means leaving things inside us.

I lust after recognition, I am desperate to win all the little merit badges and trinkets of my profession, and I am of less real use in this world than any good cleaning lady.

External manifestation of “Christlikeness” is not, however, the focus of the process; and when it is made the main emphasis, the process will certainly be defeated, falling into deadening legalisms an...

Individual disasters, too, very largely follow upon human choices, our own or those of others. And whether or not they do in a particular case, the situations in which we find ourselves are never as i...