Sermon quotes on maturity
Mark Batterson
To me, growing into spiritual maturity is becoming less self-conscious and more God-conscious.
Mark Batterson
One of the truest tests of spiritual maturity is seeing the miraculous in the monotonous.
Oswald Chambers
Spiritual maturity is not reached by the passing of the years, but by obedience to the will of God.
Matt Chandler
Immaturity talks when it should listen, and is silent when it should speak.
Elisabeth Elliot
Maturity starts with the willingness to give oneself.
John Huston Finley
Maturity is the capacity to endure uncertainty.
Richard Foster
The desperate need today is not for a greater number of intelligent people, or gifted people, but for deep people.
Joshua L. Liebman
Maturity is achieved when a person postpones immediate pleasures for long-term values.
Henri Nouwen
Spiritual maturity is not knowing what to do with your whole life, but just knowing what to do next.
Christian Smith
The clergy profession is fundamentally self-defeating. Its stated purpose is to nurture spiritual maturity in the church – a valuable goal. In actuality, however; it accomplishes the opposite by nurturing a permanent dependence of the laity on the clergy. Clergy become to their congregations like parents whose children never grow up, like therapists whose clients never become healed, like teachers whose students never graduate.
Andy Stanley
Spiritual maturity is measured in terms of persevering faith, not perfect behavior.
John Stott
Christians who neglect the Bible simply do not mature.
Samuel Ullman
Maturity is the ability to think, speak and act your feelings within the bounds of dignity. The measure of your maturity is how spiritual you become during the midst of your frustrations.
Philip Yancey
The proof of spiritual maturity is not how pure you are but awareness of your impurity. That very awareness opens the door to grace.
Augustine of Hippo
The Bible was composed in such a way that as beginners mature, its meaning grows with them.
Confessions
Richard Rohr
Maturity is the ability to joyfully live in an imperfect world.
Job and the Mystery of Suffering: Spiritual Reflections”, Gracewing Publishing.
Zach Galifianakis
I have a lot of growing up to do. I realized that the other day inside my fort.
Walter Trobisch
Suffering makes immature love grow into mature loves. Immature unearned love is egotistic. It’s the kind of love children have, demanding and wanting-and wanting instantaneously.
Abraham Wright
I am mended by my sickness, enriched by my poverty and strengthened by my weakness…. What fools are we, then, to frown upon our afflictions! These, how crabbed soever, are our best friends. They are not indeed for our pleasure, they are for our profit.
The Golden Treasury of Puritan Quotations, p. 17.
C.S. Lewis
God, who needs nothing, loves into existence wholly superfluous creatures in order that he may love and perfect them.
M. Scott Peck
[Maturity is] the ability to delay gratification. Delaying gratification is a process of scheduling the pain and pleasure of life in such a way as to enhance the pleasure by meeting and experiencing the pain first and getting it over with. It is the only decent way to live.”
The Road Less Traveled (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1978) 19.
Maya Angelou
Most people don’t grow up. Most people age. They find parking spaces, honor their credit cards, get married, have children, and call that maturity. What that is, is aging.
Irenaeus of Lyon
God wanted to give human beings their fullness right from the beginning, but they were incapable of receiving it, because they were still little children.
Against Heresies
Parker J. Palmer
The deeper our faith, the more doubt we must endure; the deeper our hope, the more prone we are to despair; the deeper our love, the more pain its loss will bring: these are a few of the paradoxes we must hold as human beings. If we refuse to hold them in the hope of living without doubt, despair, and pain, we also find ourselves living without hope, faith, and love.
A Hidden Wholeness: The Journey Toward an Undivided Life (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2004), 81.
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