Love Transformation Quotes & Sayings

Religion teaches that faith and transformation are the only ways of drawing near to God. Faith shows us that we are never alone. Transformation helps us to love the mystery. — Paulo Coelho

Love is an expression of power. We can use it to transform our world. — Ericka Huggins

The married man and the mother of a Christian family, if they are faithful to their obligations, will fulfill a mission that is as great as it is consoling: that of bringing into the world and forming young souls capable of happiness and love, souls capable of sanctification and transformation in Christ. — Thomas Merton

When you love something or someone it transforms that thing or person. When you allow yourself to be loved, it transforms you. — Laura Lane

Everybody gets plagued by indifference and monotony. The truth is, there are concepts that are constantly being repeated in this world, since the beginning of time, but it doesn't seem like any of us have mastered them. So my advice is to keep going with the topic, which usually has to do with redemption, love, compassion, freedom, injustice, perversion, divinity, the diabolical ... keep going with your thoughts, and your heart, and push them through to transformation. — Kelly Cutrone

There's only about about 6 to 8 inches between an open book and a human being's heart. A lot can happen in those 7 inches. Perspectives, fresh perspectives occur and minds expand, and I love fiction and I feel like it's a possibility for transformation. — Aline Ohanesian

Sooner or later everything will turn to dust - except love — Rasheed Ogunlaru

My goal is always transformation. I love to watch people transform their lives, which includes their inner world and their outer world. — Debbie Ford

What we are is what we receive. It is not about waiting for something outside ourselves to change - we must actively be the change if we wish to see the result. — Alaric Hutchinson

It is not love that transforms the world, but pity. — Clara Winter

Life is nothing but continuous transformation. — Debasish Mridha

If Roman Catholic Christianity has always struggled with the threat of works righteousness, Reformed Protestantism has always struggled with the threat of cheap grace. For many, if not the majority of Protestants, God's love and acceptance do not lead to personal transformation. Evangelical formation often involves seeking to reestablish a pattern of maturing behaviour that should be integral to one's conversion. So both traditions can be challenged on whether there is a genuinely helpful connection between conversion and transformation. — Gordon T. Smith

Love is the fingerprint of the soul. — Jodi Livon

To carry the deep process of transformation
by inner silence, is the most lovely love of the soul.
Religious Leader Petra Cecilia Maria Hermans
Religion of Blue Circle
October 21, 2016 — Petra Hermans

I'm at the tipping point of a transformation that began months ago, an intentional decision put in motion. And it feels so fucking good. I've come to the full realization that my happiness, my life, falls squarely on my shoulders. No one's gonna do it for it me. I'm the one who makes it or breaks it. It's a choice. A choice that demands action in exchange for reward. Idleness and complacency lead to mediocrity. Sometimes action is really fucking hard fought, but that's when the payoff's the highest. That's when great things happen. Not good things ... but epic things. And I've fallen in love with epic. It's the only way to live. — Kim Holden

Is love the ultimate illusion? Or is it what it seems to be
the greatest transformation of all? (Glyrenden) — Sharon Shinn

No matter how strange things get, know that with every breath, you are becoming that which you have always been. — Eric Micha'el Leventhal

Men promise freedom while establishing laws; God promises laws while establishing freedom. — Criss Jami

Meditation is the process of transformation and beautification of soul from a leaf-eating caterpillar to a nectar-sipping butterfly. It grows with the wings of love and compassion. — Amit Ray

Mastery of Awareness. This is to be aware of who we really are, with all the possibilities. The second is the Mastery of Transformation - how to change, how to be free of domestication. The third is the Mastery of Intent. Intent from the Toltec point of view is that part of life that makes transformation of energy possible; it is the one living being that seamlessly encompasses all energy, or what we call "God." Intent is life itself; it is unconditional love. The Mastery of Intent is therefore the Mastery of Love. — Miguel Ruiz

There is no perfection, only beautiful versions of brokenness. — Shannon L. Alder

Govern your family as you would cook a small fish ------ very very gently. Everything in life happens for a reason and everything takes time... Allowing things to unfold gives you the opportunity to see it's beauty and be able to see every ripple and transformation. Be that diamond in your family and keep it together, family ties are strong look out for each other. Tell that person you LOVE them now don't waste time, call them up surprise them text them, show them you truly care. Have a blessed day everyone and remember I LOVE you too........ — Ainsley Carter

You are surrounded by beauty, the wonder of Creation, art, your music and culture, the sounds of laughter and love, of whispered hopes and celebrations, of new life and transformation, of reconciliation and forgiveness. These also are the results of your choices and every choice matters, even the hidden ones. — Wm. Paul Young

She's not happy in her marriage. Not unhappy exactly, but not happy. He doesn't want kids, so that's nothing to look forward to. Her life is chock-full of quiet tedium. Suddenly, she falls in love. And sure, there's the excitement of being with her lover, but there's also the excitement of not being with him. Of waiting and going on with her ordinary life. And all that dullness now becomes part of the drama. Because that's her cover story. All the dreary anguish and monotony that fills ninety-eight percent of her life is electrified with meaning, since it now serves as the perfect camouflage to hide the two percent of passion. And, yes, she felt guilt and, yes, she felt shame. But those are powerful emotions too, and were all part of the glorious transformation of a featureless bland life into an adventure. — Phoef Sutton

God's people are a hidden people, but when Christ receives his people into heaven, he will touch them with the wand of his own love, and change them into the image of his manifested glory. They were poor and wretched, but what a transformation! They were stained with sin, but one touch of his finger, and they are bright as the sun, and clear as crystal. Oh! what a manifestation! All this proceeds from the exalted Lamb. Whatever there may be of effulgent splendour, Jesus shall be the centre and soul of it all. Oh! to be present and to see him in his own light, the King of kings, and Lord of lords! — Charles Haddon Spurgeon

You'll realize the transformation is not for you alone. You'll learn that you're here to use this gift to shine light on the dark world around you. You become a miracle worker in the world. As you begin to understand how love is crucial to the healing of the world, your miracle work will take on a whole new meaning. — Gabrielle Bernstein

The healing that comes with self-acceptance rippled through my life. As I embraced my carefree nature, I began living from my truth, and watched as the pure expression of who I am and the love I bring to the world illuminated my life. — Shelley Lundquist

The best approach to religious codes that have become rigid and absolute is to acknowledge their arbitrariness and use them, if we use them at all, as a private discipline for ordering our own chaos. When they are proclaimed as the bearer of absolute and unchanging truth, defended in the traditional way, they enslave the human spirit rather than protect it from its own excesses. Jesus' vision burned through the external systems to the anxious human heart that lay beneath them and called for its transformation into a perfection of love. — Richard Holloway

Your desire for more of God than you have right now, your longing for love, your need for deeper levels of spiritual transformation than you have experienced so far is the truest thing about you. You might think that your woundedness or your sinfulness is the truest thing about you or that your giftedness or your personality type or your job title or your identity as husband or wife, mother or father, somehow defines you. But, in reality, it is your desire for God and your capacity to reach for more of God than you have right now that is the deepest essence of who you are. — Ruth Haley Barton

As far as inner transformation is concerned, there is nothing you can do about it. You cannot transform yourself, and you certainly cannot transform your partner or anybody else. All you can do is create a space for transformation to happen, for grace and love to enter. — Eckhart Tolle

Our spiritual traditions have carried virtues across time. They are tools for the art of living. They are pieces of intelligence about human behavior that neuroscience is now exploring with new words and images: what we practice, we become. What's true of playing the piano or throwing a ball also holds for our capacity to move through the world mindlessly and destructively or generously and gracefully. I've come to think of virtues and rituals as spiritual technologies for being our best selves in flesh and blood, time and space. There are superstar virtues that come most readily to mind and can be the work of a day or a lifetime - love, compassion, forgiveness. And there are gentle shifts of mind and habit that make those possible, working patiently through the raw materials of our lives. — Krista Tippett

When you plant a seed of love, it is you that blossoms. — Ma Jaya Sati Bhagavati

This vision is always available to us; it doesn't matter how long we may have been stuck in a sense of our limitations. If we go into a darkened room and turn on the light, it doesn't matter if the room has been dark for a day, or a week, or ten thousand years - we turn on the light and it is illumined. Once we contact our capacity for love and happiness - the good - the light has been turned on. Practicing the brahma-viharas is a way of turning on the light and then tending it. It is a process of deep spiritual transformation. — Sharon Salzberg

I love the whole kind of notion of transformation for me is (what) excites me about not only acting, but storytelling. I love, I love that notion of a slightly larger-than-life artistic truth, you know, magnifying real emotional truth (or) finding something about human condition (which), you wouldn't necessarily think you can learn from characters such as Kong or Gollum, but actually they are, you know, these huge amplifications of a human psyche and I suppose those kind of roles have always attracted me definitely. — Andy Serkis

Rationale still remains the greatest impediment to encountering God's mysteries. — Christian Hunt

As an epiphany of God, Jesus discloses that at the center of everything is a reality that is in love with us and wills our well-being, both as individuals and as individuals within society. As an image of God, Jesus challenges the most widespread image of reality in both the ancient and modern world, countering conventional wisdom's understanding of God as one with demands that must be met by the anxious self in search of its own security. In its place is an image of God as the compassionate one who invites people into a relationship which is the source of transformation of human life in both its individual and social aspects. — Marcus J. Borg

I try to write the books I would love to come upon, that are honest, concerned with real lives, human hearts, spiritual transformation, families, secrets, wonder, craziness- and that can make me laugh. When I am reading a book like this, I feel rich and profoundly relieved to be in the presence of someone who will share the truth with me, and throw the lights on a little, and I try to write these kind of books. Books, for me, are medicine. — Anne Lamott

The biggest battle in life is to change the negative stories we tell ourselves — Melanie Greenberg

Turning something over to the Holy Spirit is a leap of faith that lets go of attempting to control outcomes. The core of alcoholism, anorexia, bulimia, smoking and a host of things the world calls addictions is control. The little willingness the Holy Spirit asks is the key to letting go of the attempt to manage the body and the world, which is the insane attempt to maintain a self-concept image that God did not create. An idea to contemplate from the Course is this: "Seek not to change the world, but choose to change your mind about the world." The requirement is to change your thinking, not to focus on behavior and form. Behavior flows from thought, and transformation of the mind is synonymous with changing thought patterns from ego-based to Spirit-based. — David Hoffmeister

The gospel addresses our greatest need and brings change and transformation to every area of life. Let's look at just a few of the ways that the gospel changes us. Discouragement and depression. When a person is depressed, the moralist says, "You are breaking the rules. Repent." On the other hand, the relativist says, "You just need to love and accept yourself." Absent the gospel, the moralist will work on behavior, and the relativist will work on the emotions - and only superficialities will be addressed instead of the heart. Assuming the depression has no physiological base, the gospel will lead us to examine ourselves and say, "Something in my life has become more important than God - a pseudo-savior, a form of works-righteousness." The gospel leads us to embrace repentance, not to merely set our will against superficialities. — Timothy J. Keller

Healing comes in many ways, and no one formula fits all. — Sharon Salzberg

Don't forget that in the midst of all your pain and heartache, you are surrounded by beauty, the wonder of creation, art, your music and culture, the sounds of laughter and love, of whispered hopes and celebrations, of new life and transformation, of reconciliation and forgiveness. — Wm. Paul Young

Transformation comes in a lot of different forms, but going natural really helped me love myself. — Jillian Hervey

Material progress and a higher standard of living bring us greater comfort and health, but do not lead to a transformation of the mind, which is the only thing capable of providing lasting peace. Profound happiness, unlike fleeting pleasures, is spiritual in nature. It depends on the happiness of others and it is based on love and affection. — Dalai Lama

There is a blessing in losing the one we love. It's the blessing of self-transformation. You don't have to who you were anymore. You've struggled. And now you can change. It doesn't mean that bits of that person won't cling to you, they will throughout your life, but they are now subsumed into something greater. That person has given you, in fact, the most important blessing, which is they gave you the blessing of transforming your soul into
something better, something more beautiful. — Emma Forrest

there was no question but what he had just experienced came from beyond him - a sign of his transformation, and certainly the wonder of it all. Love so pure, so intense, burned away all he had been. No longer was he the second son, the princeling who would never make his rightful claim, the man of thwarted ambitions, the lonely officer trapped in a post and a land that hated him and all that he stood for. None of this mattered. Not in the face of this love. — Janette Oke

The way you eat is inseparable from your core beliefs about being alive. Your relationship with food is an exact mirror of your feelings about love, fear, anger, meaning and transformation. — Geneen Roth

For a true spiritual transformation to flourish, we must see beyond this tendency to mental self-flagellation. Spirituality based on self-hatred can never sustain itself. Generosity coming from self-hatred becomes martyrdom. Morality born of self-hatred becomes rigid repression. Love for others without the foundation of love for ourselves becomes a loss of boundaries, codependency, and a painful and fruitless search for intimacy. But when we contact, through meditation, our true nature, we can allow others to also find theirs. — Sharon Salzberg

The call of death is a call of love. Death can be sweet if we answer it in the affirmative, if we accept it as one of the great eternal forms of life and transformation. — Hermann Hesse

LOVE LETTERS TO YOURSELF This is taken from a love letter (a gentle reminder) I wrote to myself recently. Live in your joy today. Be authentic. Love yourself. First. Love others from your own abundance. Life Changes. Circumstances change. Sometimes you try to fit your old way of being into new circumstances rather than becoming new yourself. Embrace transformation as an opportunity. And keep on writing love letters to yourself. — Mary Anne Radmacher

In the museums we used to visit on family vacations when I was a kid, I used to love those rooms which displayed collections of minerals in a kind of closet or chamber which would, at the push of a button, darken. Then ultraviolet lights would begin to glow and the minerals would seem to come alive, new colors, new possibilities, and architectures revealed. Plain stones became fantastic, "futuristic ... " Of course there wasn't any black light in the center of the earth, in the caves where they were quarried; how strange that these stones should have to be brought here, bathed with this unnatural light in order for their transcendent characters to emerge. Irradiation revealed a secret aspect of the world.
Imagine illness as this light; demanding, torturous, punitive, it nonetheless reveals more of what things are. A certain glow of being appears. I think this is what is meant when we speculate that death is what makes love possible. — Mark Doty

If you want to see magic, love someone and see the magical transformation. — Debasish Mridha

By connecting with one's Divine Self, Carol Whitaker has captured the essence of transformation from within. Like a diet for the mind, Ridiculously Happy! guides you on a spiritual journey allowing you to harness the power of the mind, body and spirit to achieve a level of mental and physical wellness one may not have thought possible. I'm a big fan of energy therapy and love that Carol shares the EFT tapping technique which anyone can quickly and easily use to find peace and healing in their lives. This book is a must have! — Laura M. Brotherson

Where there is love, there is revolution, because love is transformation from moment to moment. — Jiddu Krishnamurti

I like things where I can do a physical transformation, and I love accents and voices, and I'm never going to play the same character twice. — Jessica Chastain

I let go of false hope. I let go of the hope that they would transform in favour of working on my own transformation. I let go of the hope that they would HEAR me. I let go of the hope that they would SEE me. Instead of my hope being in THEM, I listened to me. I heard me, I saw me, I validated my own pain and I began to emerge from the broken life I had been living. — Darlene Ouimet

Change is not always a good thing. What I need is not change from one thing to another but transformation from who I am into who I was meant to become. Only when God's transforming power touches me can I begin to live the simpler, freer, fresher, more creative, more patient, more passionate, more sacrificial, riskier, rawer, more real, more love-driven life God intended for me all along. That transformation is what awaits all who dare to enter the story of God. As Paul wrote, 'Let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think' (Romans 12:2) — Steven James

I danced with my shadows until they became part of my light. — Jodi Livon

If we could learn to trust and rest and be instead of always striving to do, we would find ourselves face to face with some of life's most perplexing paradoxes. First, that transformation comes only when we stop trying to transform ourselves. Second, that love can flow out of us only after we've allowed it to flow freely into us. And third, that you can't catch God by chasing him; you catch him only by accepting his pursuit of you. — Tim King

When I see brokenness, poverty and crime in inner cities, I also see the enormous potential and readiness for transformation and rebirth. We are creating an art form that comes from the heart and reflects the pain and sorrow of people's lives. It also expresses joy, beauty, and love. This process lays the foundation of building a genuine community in which people are reconnected with their families, sustained by meaningful work, nurtured by the care of each other and will together raise and educate their children. Then we witness social change in action. — Lily Yeh

In the beginning, New York and I had kind of a love-hate relationship. It seemed so abrasive compared to Europe. But the transformation here in recent years is really something. I don't think I would have seen as much change if I'd lived in any other city in the world. — Shalom Harlow

How will you go about finding that thing the nature of which is totally unknown to you? (Plato) The things we want are transformative, and we don't know or only think we know what is on the other side of that transformation. Love, wisdom, grace, inspiration- how do you go about finding these things that are in some ways about extending the boundaries of the self into unknown territory, about becoming someone else? — Rebecca Solnit

I see poetry as a path toward new understanding and transformation, and so I've looked at specific poems I love, and at poetry's gestures in the broadest sense, in an effort to feel and learn what they offer from the inside. — Jane Hirshfield

Unless you learn how to love yourself first, you will not be able to truly love anyone else — Camilla Dorand

When you find your definitions in God, you find the very purpose for which you were created. Put your hand into God's hand, know His absolutes, demonstrate His love, present His truth, and the message of redemption and transformation will take hold. — Ravi Zacharias

People love miracle stories and dramatic moments of transcendence or transformation, and may then pursue their own dramatic "awakenings." — Dan Millman

I love my job. It's such a privilege to be able to play such complicated characters. Growing up, I wanted to be a billion different things. I realized in order for that to happen, I don't have to be them all because the characters I want to play require such research and such a transformation to make that work - that's something that I love doing. — Ashley Bell

For the first time I was beginning to discern a God whom I actually wanted to live for. I was beginning to discover the motivation of Paul when he proclaimed, "Christ's love compels us" (2 Cor. 5: 14). All my life I'd tried to be good to avoid hell, or the ugly-stick flogging, or my stepmother's beatings with a two-by-four. But while most people would undoubtedly be better at behaving well with these frightful motivations than I ever was, no one could ever be transformed by these sorts of motivations. Threatening motivations address behavior, but they can never transform our identity. They motivate people to change as a means of protecting themselves, but for this reason they can never move us beyond ourselves to become someone fundamentally different from who we currently are. And threatening motivations can certainly never transform us into people with an other-oriented, self-sacrificial, loving character. Only a motivation that is anchored in love can do this. — Gregory A. Boyd

Acting is the great love of my life. It gives you permission to use all parts of yourself. Permission to be the hero, the love interest, the comedian, the villain. Transformation excites me. So does truth. Nothing is more thrilling, hilarious, and tragic than the truth. Those things motivated me to become an actor. Also, they always have the best food on set. — Blake Griffin

True and lasting solution to correct ills can be found only by inner, collective transformation of human beings. — Nirmala Srivastava

Never in the known history of man has a people or nation stockpiled weapons and in the end not used them. But if we use the weapons we have stockpiled it will be the end of nations and peoples if not the end of the whole race. Never has the human family so urgently needed a transformation of consciousness. Those who devote themselves to contemplative meditation are performing a most basic and loving service. It is a very real response to the call to love and to act. — M. Basil Pennington

A commitment to love and justice demands the transformation of social structures as well as of hearts. — Mary E. Hunt

Positive simply means unifying energies, while negative simply means separating energies. It's not about what's good or bad, right or wrong. It's about
embracing what feels good and brings us closer to peace. — Alaric Hutchinson

Jesus did not advocate non-violence merely as a technique for outwitting the enemy, but as a just means of opposing the enemy in such a way as to hold open the possibility of the enemy's becoming just as well. Both sides must win. We are summoned to pray for our enemies' transformation, and to respond to ill-treatment with a love that not only is godly but also, I am convinced, can only be found in God. — Walter Wink

If you want to save the snow leopard, or the giant Redwoods, or the Okavango delta, or the Amazon, or the atmosphere, or the Earth, or those you love, or yourself, or the human race, this is the only path that can achieve that-so the truth is the sooner you support and adopt this path of transformation through understanding the better. The choice is self-destruction or self-discovery. — Jeremy Griffith

The reality of en-masse inner transformation of human beings by self-realisation is the most revolutionary discovery of the present age. — Nirmala Srivastava

Don't try to change the world; just change yourself. Why? Because the whole world is only relative to the eyes that are looking at it. Your world actually only exists for as long as you exist and with the death of you, includes the death of your world. Therefore, if there is no peace in your heart; you will find no peace in this world, if there is no happiness in your life; you will find no happiness anywhere around you, if you have no love in your heart; you will not find love anywhere and if you do not fly around freely inside your own soul like a bird with perfectly formed wings; then there will never be any freedom for you regardless if you are on a mountaintop removed from all attachments to all of mankind! Even the mountaintop cannot give you freedom if it is not already flying around there inside your own soul! So I say, change yourself. Not the world. — C. JoyBell C.

Fear melts like ice when we allow love's divine light to shine upon our ignorance. — Soul Dancer

Though it may sound paradoxical, identifying our thoughts, emotions, and habitual patterns of behavior is the key to freedom & transformation. — Sharon Salzberg

When one becomes centered in love, then and only then will all paths become open to them — Timothy Moran

Love is a blend of heart and mind, it creates a euphoric fusion of energy and intellect, to induce a transformation in life as the Rays of Love gradually befall. — Harshada Pathare

The key to genuine happiness is in our hands. To think this way is to discover the essential values of kindness, brotherly love and altruism. The more clearly we see the benefits of these values, the more we will seek to reject anything that opposes them; in this way we will be able to bring about inner transformation. — Dalai Lama

19. Before the divine fire is introduced into the substance of the soul and united with it through perfect and complete purgation and purity, its flame, which is the Holy Spirit, wounds the soul by destroying and consuming the imperfections of its bad habits. And this is the work of the Holy Spirit, in which he disposes it for divine union and transformation in God through love. The very fire of love that afterward is united with the soul, glorifying it, is what previously assailed it by purging it, just as the fire that penetrates a log of wood is the same that first makes an assault on the wood, wounding it with the flame, drying it out, and stripping it of its unsightly qualities until it is so disposed that it can be penetrated and transformed into the fire. Spiritual writers call this activity the purgative way. — San Juan De La Cruz

We become what we love and who we love shapes what we become. If we love things, we become a thing. If we love nothing, we become nothing. Imitation is not a literal mimicking of Christ, rather it means becoming the image of the beloved, an image disclosed through transformation. This means we are to become vessels of God's compassionate love for others. — Clare Of Assisi

God is not some lesser employee, as many try to make Him out to be: rather He is the ultimate Treasure. He works in a man; He works on a man; He works through a man; He works around a man. Know that He does far more than simply work for a man. And yet, even as He Himself needs no one else, everyone else is ever in need of Him. — Criss Jami

You're like a gem shining ever brightly in an ever dimming world. — Zechariah Barrett

Success is a transformation not a final destination. — Debasish Mridha

It is this law of love and its recognition as a rule of conduct in all our relations with friends, enemies and offenders which must inevitably bring about the complete transformation of the existing order of things,
not only among Christian nations, but among all the peoples of the globe — Leo Tolstoy

Fairy tales are stories of triumph and transformation and true love, all things I fervently believe in. — Kate Forsyth

When De Long arrived in California with Emma that May, he went straight down to the yard and feasted his eyes upon his new ship. He was smitten by the transformation that had taken place during his absence. "I am perfectly satisfied with her," he wrote. "She is everything I want. — Hampton Sides

One thing we must understand, that if we have to change the world, we have to change human beings. People think by giving lectures, having conferences and this and that, peace will come. It will never come. A global transformation has to come for peace, for wisdom and for joy. — Nirmala Srivastava

A single change can sometimes change your entire life — Rahul Rampal

We've made it private, contained it in family, when its audacity is in its potential to cross tribal lines. We've fetishized it as romance, when its true measure is a quality of sustained, practical care. We've lived it as a feeling, when it is a way of being. It is the elemental experience we all desire and seek, most of our days, to give and receive. The sliver of love's potential that the Greeks separated out as eros is where we load so much of our desire, center so much of our imagination about delight and despair, define so much of our sense of completion. There is the love the Greeks called filia - the love of friendship. There is the love they called agape - love as embodied compassion, expressions of kindness that might be given to a neighbor or a stranger. The Metta of the root Buddhist Pali tongue, "lovingkindness," carries the nuance of benevolent, active interest in others known and unknown, and its cultivation begins with compassion towards oneself. — Krista Tippett

When love plus death surrounds you, there is a transformation, an immense mutation, as if a new being is born. You are never the same again. But people do not love, and because they do not love they can't experience death the way I experienced it. Without love, death does not give you the keys to existence. With love, it hands over to you the keys to all that is. — Osho

In certain company
Often the uninvited
We react
We transform one another — Michele L. Rivera

Forgiveness has the ability to transform our thoughts. — Asa Don Brown

If you do not feel deserving of happiness, consciously or subconsciously, or if you have accepted the idea that happiness is somehow wrong or cannot last, you will not respond appropriately when happiness comes knocking at your door in the form of romantic love. No matter how much you may have waited and cried, you will not welcome love when it arrives-you will find a way to sabotage it. What a challenge to resist this temptation! What an opportunity for true spiritual growth and transformation-to defy your negative feelings and honor the gift that life offers you! — Nathaniel Branden

Truth is more than trustable knowledge; it is deeply experiential, confessional, and contextual. It should be engaged in a community that he or she lives, embodied in a world beyond the immediate community, and testified at all costs because of the love of God for all. Truth is not possessive, but requires a life that engages the way, the truth and the life as we get clues from John 14:6."
-- Yung Suk Kim, Truth, Testimony, and Transformation: A New Reading of the "I am" Sayings in the Fourth Gospel (Cascade Books, 2013 forthcoming) — Yung Suk Kim

Most people in America, when they are exposed to the Christian faith, are not being transformed. They take one step into the door, and the journey ends. They are not being allowed, encouraged, or equipped to love or to think like Christ. Yet in many ways a focus on spiritual formation fits what a new generation is really seeking. Transformation is a process, a journey, not a one-time decision. — David Kinnaman

The world is more than black and white. Seeing everything in color helps me raise my spirit and find my happy. Life is meant to be lived in color! — Jodi Livon