“The aim of spiritual formation is not behavior modification but the transformation of all those aspects of you and me where behavior comes from…Circumcision of the heart.”

Grace is not just about forgiveness but about life.

A carefully cultivated heart will, assisted by the grace of God, foresee, forestall, or transform most of the painful situations before which others stand like helpless children saying “Why?

We are invited to make a pilgrimage – into the heart and life of God.

The more we pray, the more we think to pray, and as we see the results of prayer-the responses of our Father to our requests-our confidence in God’s power spills over into other areas of our life.

In one way or another, it is a common mistake to think transformation is all in the will. And it isn’t! It’s in the mind – how we think, what occupies our minds, and so forth. It’s in our feelings. It’s in our body.

Relations between parents and children and siblings and mates. This is not external. We can’t separate them.

Solitude well practiced will break the power of busyness, haste, isolation, & loneliness.

We don’t have to be brilliant.

Understanding is the basis of care. What you would take care of you must first understand, whether it be a petunia or a nation.

Human beings are at their core defined by what they worship rather than primarily by what they think, know, or believe. That is bound up with the central Augustinian claim that we are what we love.

Belief is when your whole being is set to act as if something is so.

You really can’t justify anything else but giving your whole attention to spiritual formation in Christ.

What a child does when not told what to do is the final indicator of what and who that child is.

Few people arise in the morning as hungry for God as they are for cornflakes or toast and eggs.

If we do not make formation in Christ the priority, then we’re just going to keep on producing Christians that are indistinguishable in their character from many non-Christians.

We don’t believe something by merely saying we believe it, or even when we believe that we believe it. We believe something when we act as if it were true.

They feel they have to look after their image.

That I should die next week, I would still be able to sit at my desk all week and study with perfect equanimity, for I know now that life and death make a meaningful whole.

Put me in front of a crowd of science teachers or astronauts! The guileless aren’t our audience – it’s the critical thinkers we love.

Our relations with others are not external. They enter into our very identity. And that’s why people struggle with them so.

A kiss is a rosy dot placed on the “i” in loving.

We are more inclined to hate one another for points on which we differ, than to love one another for points on which we agree.

The Great Commission is still the mission statement of the Church.

Independence is not an option for us. Remember, God existed without us.