“Goodness—in man is not a mere passive quality, but the deliberate preference of right to wrong, the firm and persistent resistance of all moral evil, and the choosing and following of all moral good.”
- Easton's Bible Dictionary

“Here's the thing: As great as this sounds, it isn't going to just magically happen.
Christlikeness is possible, but it's not natural. In fact, the gravity and inertia of life will likely take you in the opposite direction. "Small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it," as Jesus said. Put another way, there are no accidental saints. Nobody wakes up one morning around age fifty and thinks, Wow, would you look at that? I became a saint. Weird. Or Hmm, it seems I've been living the Sermon on the Mount. I'm increasingly free of all worry, care, judgementalism, lust, and anger; money no longer has a hold on my heart; I'm no longer run by fear and the need to look good to other people; I feel free; I've been pervaded by love, even love for my enemies. What a nice coincidence. Yeah... no. Formation will happen to you, per our earlier argument, with zero conscious decision on your part, but formation into a person of love in Christ will not. That you must choose, and keep choosing, day after day. It will require an intentionality. You will have to apprentice under Jesus and follow his process of training. "Yes," you say, "I'm in, but I'm not sure where to start." If that's your heart, you're not alone. But tragically, many people genuinely want to apprentice under Jesus, but they don't know how. Spiritual formation in the North American church is often truncated to this three-part formula:
1. Go to church.
2. Read your Bible and pray.
3. Give.
I'm all for these three practices (all three are in my Rule of Life). But in my experience, many Christians get thirty years down the road with this as their template for discipleship and don't feel all that different; they just feel older."
- John Mark Comer

“Formation into the image of Jesus is a long, slow process, not a one-time event. There's no lightning bolt from heaven. Spiritual growth is similar to bodily growth - very gradual. It takes place over a lifetime at an incremental, at times imperceptible rate. Yes, we experience periods of dramatic change like birth or a teenage growth spurt, but those key inflection points are the exceptions, not the rule. As the Regent College professor James Houston often said, "Spritual formation is the slowest of all human movements." This is a provocative challenge to our instant-gratification culture; we’re used to fast and faster— the entire world just a swipe of our thumb away. Click the button and have it delivered within hours. But the formation of the human soul doesn't work at digital speed. If we lose sight of this and I'm speaking to myself here as much as to you… we will either grow discouraged and give up, or settle for mediocre. "Christians aren't perfect, just forgiven." (As if the best we can hope for is a little tune-up on the way to the afterlife.) But we cannot lower the horizon of possibility that was set by the extraordinary life of Jesus and gift of his Spirit. Instead, we must stay with the process for as long as it takes to actualize our destinies.”
- John Mark Comer