Indeed, if we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that Our Lord finds our desires, not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.
C.S. Lewis 

Our lord came not to destroy but to save. Everything is safe which we commit to Him, and nothing is really safe which is not so committed.

AW Tozer, Pursuit of God, Location 252

I have said that Abraham possessed nothing. Yet was not this poor man rich? Everything he had owned before was his still to enjoy: sheep, camels, herds, and goods of every sort. He had also his wife and his friends, and best of all he had his son Isaac safe by his side. He had everything, but he possessed nothing. There is the spiritual secret. There is the sweet theology of the heart which can be learned only in the school of renunciation

Pursuit of God, AW Tozer, Location 243

It is seldom that any of our bad habits or flaw disappear by a mere process of natural extinction. At least, it is very seldom that this is done through the instrumentality of reasoning .. .or by the force of mental determination. But what cannot be destroyed may be dispossessed - and one taste may be made to give way to another and to lose its power entirely as the reigning affection in the mind.

The only way to dispossess the heart of an old affection is by the expulsive power of a new one ... It is only .. when admitted into the number of God's children, through faith in Jesus Christ, that the spirit of adoption is poured out on us - it is then that the heart, brought under the mastery of one great and predominant affection, is delivered from the tyranny of its former desires and the only way that deliverance is possible

Thomas Chalmers - The Expulsive power of a new affection

Now, the gospel brings us a new freedom from lying. How? We don't overcome lying by simply saying to ourselves, "stop lying!" Rather, we ask, why do I lie? What leads me to do it? And the answer is always that something that we delight in (i.e. worship or rely on for our worth) more than God is threatened. And so we lie. But how do we change? We cannot "just say no". The most effective way of withdrawing the heart from one object is not by turning it away upon desolate and unpeopled vacancy, but by presenting to its regard another object more alluring still.

Thomas Calmers - Expulsive power of new affection

If I may speak my own experience, I find that to keep my eye simply on Christ, as my peace and my life, is by far the hardest part of my calling. It seems easier to deny self in a thousand instances of outward conduct, than in its ceaseless endeavors to act as a principle of righteousness and power

 John Newton (Counterfeit Gods, pg 176)

The man or woman who knows the difference that Newton refers to - the difference between obeying rules of outward conduct rather than setting your heart on Christ as your peace and your life - is on the road to freedom from the counterfeit gods that control us. 

- Tim Keller, Counterfeit Gods, pg 177 - 

Mature Christians are not people who have completely hit the bedrock. I do not believe that is possible in this life. Rather, they are people who know how to keep drilling and are getting closer and closer 

- Tim Keller, Counterfeit Gods, pg 176 - 

"Setting the mind and heart on things above" where "your life is hid with Christ in God" means appreciation, rejoicing and resting in what Jesus has done for you. it entails joyful worship, a sense of God's reality in prayer. Jesus must become more beautiful to your imagination, more attractive to your heart, than your idol. That is what will replace your counterfeit gods. 

- Tim Keller, Counterfeit Gods, pg 172 -