In their book how people change, Timothy S. Lane and Paul David Tripp tackle the ever-present issue of how spiritual growth happens. From the foreword:
How People Change starts with God, and so avoids the fatal flaw in all the self-help books. You become profoundly different as you come to the growing realization, “It’s not all about me.” It’s all about the One who is remaking us – each one and all together – into his image, and thus into a community that practices loving-kindness, justice, and righteousness in the earth. “In these things delight.” – David Powlison
A thought-provoking paragraph from chapter 1:
We all know on some level that Christ must be our identity, meaning, purpose, hope, and goal. Yet our self-righteousness dies hard. We want to be at the center of our world, and we think we are capable of more independence than would be spiritually helpful. So we tend to reduce the gospel to comfortable elements, none of which do justice to the message of grace found in Christ. (p. 14)
