Prayer to God regular and earnest, never intermittent for any reason, never hurried over for any weariness or for any coldness; this is one chief means of keeping our spiritual growth healthy and alive. If we would live in any degree by that ideal which our better selves sometimes set before us, we must steadily maintain the habit of regular prayer. For whether or not we are conscious of it at the time, there is a calm and unceasing strength which can be thus engrafted on our souls, and thus only.
Growth
Carol Kent
Growth takes time. God knows that. I know that. And to my surprise, His abundance is mine in the process — not as a prize at the end.
Verna Pollock
We need to be refueled often spiritually. That renewing fuel is found in Bible reading and prayer. Just like a fuel tank on the car, we need frequent filling. Lack of fuel causes spiritual weakness and stunted growth. Unlike the car, we don’t have to hunt for a gas station, and the price of fuel doesn’t change. This fuel is always available and free for the taking. There is no substitute. Our part is to keep our spiritual tank full.
Andrew Murray
Regeneration is a birth: the centre and root of the personality, the spirit, has been renewed and taken possession of by the Spirit of God. But time is needed for its power from that centre to extend through all the circumference of his being. The kingdom of God is like unto a seed; the life in Christ is a growth, and it would be against the laws of nature and grace alike if we expected from the babe in Christ the strength that can only be found in the young men, or the rich experience of the fathers.
John Owen
If I have observed anything by experience, it is this: a man may take the measure of his growth and decay in grace according to his thoughts and meditations upon the person of Christ, and the glory of Christ’s Kingdom, and of His love.
C. S. Lewis
It may be hard for an egg to turn into a bird: it would be a jolly sight harder for it to learn to fly while remaining an egg. We are like eggs at present. And you cannot go on indefinitely being just an ordinary, decent egg. We must be hatched or go bad.
Dr Henry Cloud
There is a big difference between hurt and harm. We all hurt sometimes in facing hard truths, but it makes us grow. It can be the source of huge growth. That is not harmful. Harm is when you damage someone. Facing reality is usually not a damaging experience, even though it can hurt.
George Macdonald
All growth that is not towards God is growing towards decay.
Phillips Brooks
Bad will be the day for every man when he becomes absolutely contented with the life he is leading, with the thoughts he is thinking, with the deeds he is doing; when there is not forever beating at the doors of his soul some great desire to do something larger, which he knows that he was meant and made to do because he is still, in spite of all, the child of God.
William Gurnall
As a man, looking steadfastly on a dial, cannot perceive the shadow move at all, yet viewing it after a while, he shall perceive that it hath moved; so, in the hearing of the Word, but especially in the receiving of the Lord’s supper, a man may judge even his own faith, and other graces of God, to be little or nothing increased, neither can he perceive the motion of God’s Spirit in him at that time; yet by the fruits and effects thereof, he shall afterward perceive that God’s Spirit hath little by little wrought greater faith and other graces in him.