Where pride thrives growth is impossible. It stifles a teachable spirit and with the absence of humility is found an inability to learn and grow. Pride wreaks all sorts of havoc. There can be received no help, kind-hearted aid or correction of any kind. Pride stunts any possibility of growth, for the one who suffers from it bears no hope of ever becoming something other than what he already is. He will always remain the creature he is, unable to become something else, for that something else requires growth. And growth is more than change, for change by itself, is simply change. But change, under the watchful eye of character’s continuity, produces growth. As C.S. Lewis wrote in They Asked For a Paper, “Mere change is not growth. Growth is the synthesis of change and continuity, and where there is no continuity there is no growth.” Growth requires patience, perseverance and discipline. Pride finds no need for any of these friends and chooses instead to be content in what has always been.

Leo Tolstoy

"Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself."

"Historians are like deaf people who go on answering questions that no one has asked them."

my heart's aim is to know the way God's heart aches. the throbbing of His soul is the heartbeat of my existence.


sometimes worship is us offering God a neatly wrapped gift, saying, "this is what i've decided to give you, nothing more, nothing less, dressed up in ceremony and ritual, offering you what i'm willing to afford." though God graciously accepts what we offer, He always extends the invitation to us to stay awhile, to enjoy the gift with Him. will we enter the throne room of God with our gift of worship and stay awhile, waiting on God, sticking around to see if there might be something else He'd like to do with us, something more, something different? He's hoping to share His heart with us if we might stay while and listen, but so often we drop the gift at His feet and run, preoccupied with our to-do lists and sunday brunch plans. can we forgo our schedules and time constraints to offer God more than our specifically prepared offering of worship ... our life? will we wait awhile with Him?

If you have only come the length of asking God for things, you have never come to the first strand of abandonment, you have become a Christian from a standpoint of your own. "I did ask God for the Holy Spirit, but He did not give me the rest and the peace I expected." Instantly God puts His finger on the reason - you are not seeking the Lord at all, you are seeking something for yourself. Jesus says - "Ask, and it shall be given you." Ask God for what you want, and you cannot ask if you are not asking for a right thing. When you draw near to God, you cease from asking for things. "Your Father knoweth what things ye have need of, before ye ask Him." Then why ask? That you may get to know Him. - O. Chambers, My Utmost For His Highest