The breaking down of the old and the cleaning out of the rubbish accumulated over the past must precede new construction. Repentance is the first condition of a new heart; we must turn from in order to fully turn to. To rush the job by leaving out the first steps may result in delay or damage to the intended project.
Sanctification
Martyn Lloyd-Jones
What accounts for most of our failures in Christian living is our failure to realize what we are. It is our failure to realize what God has done to us, what has happened to us.
Martyn Lloyd-Jones
Mark Potter
Jesus, like any good fisherman, first catches the fish; then He cleans them.
Doug Addison
Honor people’s process.
Sometimes, asking them to change too quickly will do more harm than good.
C. S. Lewis
Imagine yourself as a living house. God comes in to rebuild that house. At first, perhaps, you can understand what he is doing. He is getting the drains right and stopping the leaks in the roof and so on; you knew that those jobs needed doing and so you are not surprised. But presently he starts knocking the house about in a way that hurts abominably and does not seem to make sense. What on earth is he up to? The explanation is that he is building quite a different house from the one you thought of — throwing out a new wing here, putting on an extra floor there, running up towers, making courtyards. You thought you were going to be made into a decent little cottage: but he is building a palace. He intends to come and live in it himself.
Thom S Rainer
We are God’s building, God’s spiritual house. He first built us (created us). He then bought us back (redeemed us) with His own blood. Next, He moved in. He took up residence in our lives. And He is not done. He continually works on us. He is constantly redecorating. Continual transformation is the work of the Holy Spirit.
Steve Stockman
The evangelical wing of the Church spends a lot of energy on being “born again” but little time on “growing up” again. There is a failing to encourage newborn believers out of the maternity ward and into a big world where they will spend the rest of their spiritual lives trying to find what they are looking for.
Ed Silvoso
Transformation is a process. Like the feeble light at the crack of dawn, it is meant to grow brighter and brighter. But the “dawn” does not happen, and the path remains untraveled, until one begins taking steps of obedience in the right direction.
C. S. Lewis
Imagine turning a tin soldier into a real little man. It would involve turning the tin into flesh. And suppose the tin soldier did not like it. He is not interested in flesh; all he sees is that the tin is being spoiled. He thinks you are killing him. He will do everything he can do to prevent you. He will not be made into a man if he can help it. The real Son of God is at your side. He is beginning to turn you into the same kind of thing as Himself; He is beginning, so to speak, to ‘inject’ His kind of life and thought, his Zoe, (spiritual life) into you; beginning to turn the tin soldier into a live man. The part of you that does not like it is the part that is still tin.
A.W. Tozer
How tragic that we in this dark day have had our seeking done for us by our teachers. Everything is made to centre upon the initial act of accepting Christ, a term incidentally which is not found in the Bible. And we are not expected thereafter to crave any further revelation of God to our spirit. We have been snared in the coils of a false logic, which insists that if we have found him, we need no more seek Him.