Quotes About Spiritual Growth

“Spiritual growth and creativity are two sides of the same coin.”

— Lada Ray

“We must admit that simply knowing the contents of the Bible is not a sure route to spiritual growth. There is an aweful assumption in evangelical churches that if we can just get the Word of God into people's heads, then the Spirit of God will apply it to their hearts. That assumption is aweful, not because the Spirit never does what the assumption supposes, but because it excused pastors and leaders from the responsibility to tangle with people's lives. Many remain safely hidden behind pulpits, hopelessly out of touch with the struggles of their congregations, proclaiming the Scriptures with a pompous accuracy that touches no one. Pulpits should provide bridges, not barriers, to life-changing relationships.”

— Larry Crabb

“Spiritual growth is more than a procedure; it's a wild search for God in the tangled jungle of our souls.”

— Michael Yaconelli

“True love heals and affects spiritual growth. If we do not grow because of someone else's love, it's generally because it is a counterfeit form of love.”

— John Bradshaw

“Spiritual Partnership
... The new female and the new male
are partners on a journey of spiritual growth.
They want to make the journey.
Their love and trust keep them together.
Their intuition guides them. They consult with each other.
They are friends. They laugh a lot. They are equals.
That is what a spiritual partnership is:
a partnership between equals
for the purpose of spiritual growth.”

— Gary Zukav

“One of the essential requirements for
true spiritual growth and deep personal
transformation is coming to peace with
pain.”

— Michael Singer

“When I view motherhood not as a gift from God to make me holy but rather as a role with tasks that get in my way, I am missing out on one of God's ordained means of spiritual growth in my life. Not only that, but I am missing out on enjoying God. No amount of mommy angst can compare to the misery that comes from a life devoid of the comforting, encouraging, guarding, providing, satisfying presence of our holy God.”

— Gloria Furman

“The path of least resistance never gets us where we want to go. Shortcuts always end up being cul-de-sacs. The key to spiritual growth is the willingness to go out of your way for God. You will find God in uncomfortable places at inconvenient times. But if you go out of your way for God, God will go out of His way for you. Crash the party!”

— Mark Batterson

“Similarly, loving spouses must repeatedly confront each other if the marriage relationship is to serve the function of promoting the spiritual growth of the partners. No marriage can be judged truly successful unless husband and wife are each other's best critics.”

— M. Scott Peck

“If necessary, they will even kill to escape the pain of their own spiritual growth. As the integrity of their sick self is threatened by the spiritual health of those around them, they will seek by all manner of means to crush and demolish the spiritual health that may exist near them. I define evil, then, as the exercise of”

— M. Scott Peck

“If I truly love another, I will obviously order my behavior in such a way as to contribute the utmost to his or her spiritual growth.”

— M. Scott Peck

“When we see love as the will to nurture one's own or another's spiritual growth, revealed through acts of care, respect, knowing, and assuming responsibility, the foundation of all love in our life is the same. There is no special love exclusively reserved for romantic partners. Genuine love is the foundation of our engagement with ourselves, with family, with friends, with partners, with everyone we choose to love.”

— Bell Hooks

“Complacency is a deadly foe of all spiritual growth.”

— A.W. Tozer

“I want deliberately to encourage this mighty longing after God. The lack of it has brought us to our present low estate. The stiff and wooden quality about our religious lives is a result of our lack of holy desire. Complacency is a deadly foe of all spiritual growth. Acute desire must be present or there will be no manifestation of Christ to His people. He waits to be wanted. Too bad that with many of us He waits so long, so very long, in vain.”

— A.W. Tozer

“I know that Julia has been given to me for my spiritual growth, and this moment is perfect for us both. I know that I love her, and I know she's my soul mate.”

— Kenny Loggins

“Second-and this is by far the bigger emphasis and the one that gets to the heart of this book-we wanted to bring the idea of working on relational and emotional issues back into the mainstream of spiritual growth. Spiritual growth should affect relationship problems, emotional problems, and all other problems of life. There is no such thing as our "spiritual life" and then our "real life." It is all one.”

— Henry Cloud

“It may sound harsh to say, but the number-one contributor to spiritual growth is not sermons, books, or small groups; the number-one contributor to spiritual growth is difficult circumstances.”

— Kyle Idleman

“My happiness is not dependent on others; it comes from within. Spiritual growth in a person is never encouraged, but it is important. I don't know why people want to judge others instead of doing their own thing. I firmly feel that I don't need to follow or live according to other people's rules. I like living life the way I want to.”

— Sonu Nigam

“The great awareness comes slowly, piece by piece. The path of spiritual growth is a path of lifelong learning. The experience of spiritual power is basically a joyful one.”

— M. Scott Peck

“The agony of breaking through personal limitations is the agony of spiritual growth. Art, literature, myth and cult, philosophy, and ascetic disciplines are instruments to help the individual past his limiting horizons into spheres of ever-expanding realization. As he crosses threshold after threshold, conquering dragon after dragon, the stature of the divinity that he summons to his highest wish increases, until it subsumes the cosmos. Finally, the mind breaks the bounding sphere of the cosmos to a realization transcending all experiences of form - all symbolizations, all divinities: a realization of the ineluctable void.”

— Joseph Campbell

“Consider the emotional patterns of infants. Have you ever noticed how changeable they are? A baby may be crying lustily, but if you say, "Goo, goo, goo" and call his attention to something else, suddenly he's giggling. But ten seconds later, he can be crying again. A child's emotions are like that until he gets to a point where the highs and lows are less extreme. Likewise, in spiritual growth, we tend to follow a generally upward trend in which our ups and downs, over time, become less severe. As we grow in maturity, we settle into a more consistent pattern of spiritual behavior.
But”

— R.C. Sproul

“In this book I would like to describe how this message of falling down and moving up is, in fact, the most counter-intuitive message in most of the world's religions, including and most especially Christianity. We grow spiritually much more by doing it wrong than by doing it right. That might just be the central message of how spiritual growth happens; yet nothing in us wants to believe it. I actually think it is the only workable meaning of any remaining notion of original sin.”

— Richard Rohr

“I'm just telling you, God permits things in our lives sometimes for reasons that we do not understand yet because of the spiritual level that we're on. We can't have any understanding of it, because we're not at a place of spiritual growth yet where we understand the deeper things of God.”

— Joyce Meyer

“A competitive and insecure woman will tell you that "true love" is never giving up on someone you're in love with. A confident and spiritual woman knows that "moving on" doesn't mean you never loved someone. She realizes that letting go is what God needs her to do because both your happiness and hers requires taking different journeys for spiritual growth. Letting go is sometimes the hardest thing, but it is the most "real love" you will ever experience.”

— Shannon L. Alder

“Remember, that which appeals to the ego cannot help your spiritual growth.”

— Osho

“Broadly speaking, I learned to recognize sin as the refusal to live up to the enlightenment we possess: to know the right order of values and deliberately to choose the lower ones: to know that, however much these values may differ with different people at different stages of spiritual growth, for one's self there must be no compromise with that which one knows to be the lower value.”

— Margaret Bondfield

“The more difficult it is to forgive someone the greater the opportunity for spiritual growth.”

— Gabrielle Bernstein

“Many people find spiritual growth possible only when times are hard; prosperity tends to promote complacency.”

— Max Anders

“You are living in a time when opportunities for self-empowerment, expanded awareness and spiritual growth appear to be unlimited.”

— Barbara Marciniak

“The history of the creative progress of individual artists shows that, along with their spiritual growth and the increasing complexity of their inner life, their forms of expression become more complex.”

— Mieczyslaw Jastrun

“At the soul level, we get precisely what we need in our lives for our spiritual growth. How we judge what we get determines whether we experience life as painful or joyful.”

— Colin Tipping

“Complacency is easy ... and it is a deadly foe of spiritual growth.”

— Aiden Wilson Tozer

“At every stage of spiritual growth, the greatest ally you have is your body.”

— Deepak Chopra

“Although spiritual growth puts our wills to the test, after the battle has been won, we recognize that the Lord is the true victor in the struggle.”

— Max Anders

“Heartbreak makes us stronger; it's an opportunity for spiritual growth. How can you understand someone else's pain if you have not yourself suffered?”

— Sandra Cisneros

“It is not sex per se - your identification with the body is the impediment to your spiritual growth.”

— Jaggi Vasudev

“Spiritual growth depends on two things: first a willingness to live according to the Word of God; second, a willingness to take whatever consequences emerge as a result.”

— Sinclair B. Ferguson

“Spiritual development requires the freedom to connect with different parts of reality in order to understand them more fully. The more you're able to explore, the more connections you can form, and the greater your spiritual growth will be. When you feel a strong desire to connect with something in your reality, listen to your intuitive guidance, and make the connection.”

— Steve Pavlina

“If we're going to strive for spiritual growth, we have to be willing to put concepts into practice in our everyday lives, in all relationships with all people. You can't separate your "spiritual life" from your "work life." They're both your life! In the same vein, you can't separate money and happiness.”

— T. Harv Eker

“Humility is the most important quality in the spiritual life. When it is lacking spiritual growth stops.”

— Frederick Lenz

“The first step toward spiritual growth is to become aware of your emotions.”

— Gary Zukav

“Spiritual growth requires the development of inner knowing and inner authority. It requires the heart, not the intellect.”

— Gary Zukav

“Becoming integrated and whole is the spiritual path. The body is your vehicle. Your job is to learn about yourself from your experiences and change yourself. This is spiritual growth.”

— Gary Zukav

“As you become multi-sensory, you begin to see yourself as a soul first and a personality second. You begin to experience yourself as more than a body and more than a mind. and the circumstances around you as meaningful and designed for your spiritual growth.”

— Gary Zukav

“Although others may feel sorry for you, never feel sorry for yourself: it has a deadly effect on spiritual well-being. Recognize all problems, no matter how difficult, as opportunities for spiritual growth, and make the most of these opportunities.”

— Peace Pilgrim

“Difficulties with material things often come to remind us that our concentration should be on spiritual things instead of material things. Sometimes difficulties of the body come to show that the body is just a transient garment, and that the reality is the indestructible essence which activates the body. But when we can say, 'Thank God for problems which are sent for our spiritual growth.' They are no longer problems. They then become opportunities.”

— Peace Pilgrim

“Spiritual growth is marked by a growing realization of just how much grace you need.”

— Tullian Tchividjian

“If you have a problem or desire a healing, try this exercise before falling asleep. Catch yourself at that point just before you fall asleep - between waking and sleep. Imagine bathing yourself with the healing orange light. You then can ask the Inner Master to help you regain spiritual balance by saying, "If it's for the good of all concerned and doesn't interfere with my spiritual growth, would you please heal me?" Then holding that thought, drift into sleep.”

— Harold Klemp

“The path of spiritual growth is a path of lifelong learning.”

— M. Scott Peck

“I write and speak about personal and spiritual growth. One week I write about illness and another week I speak about relationships and another week I write about work and money and another week I speak to people with obesity issues. I write about whatever wounds seem to cry out for more enlightened solutions, and the love that heals them all.”

— Marianne Williamson