God is working in us, the point is that we grow and make progress

illustration: baju yang banyak bulu2, even though you roll it with that thing, in overall, still lot of blemish, but if you look closer, it just gets better. Same thing, God is working

No matter how it makes you feel, if you want to minister to others, ask God first of all to minister to you. He wants to work through you, but he can't until he works in you. He'll use you as his instrument, but he wants to sharpen and cleanse that instrument so it becomes a more effective tool in his hands

- Howard Hendricks, teaching to change lives

“Meditation is a cross between Bible study and prayer.  Meditation is both, a blending of prayer with Bible study.  Most of us first study our Bible and then move to prayer, but the prayer is detached from the Bible you just studied.  Meditation is praying the truth deeply into your soul until it catches fire.  By fire I mean, until it makes all sorts of personal connections so it shapes your thinking, it moves your feelings and changes your actions. Meditation is working out the truth personally.

The closest analogy to meditating is the way a person eagerly reads a love letter. You tear it open and you weigh every word.  You never simply say, ‘I know that,’ but ‘What does it mean?’  You aren't reading it quickly just for information; you are looking for feelings, for what lies beneath what is said.  Most important, you want the letter to sink in and form you.”

Does this practice sound foreign to you?  You already meditate in many harmful ways!  Compulsive worry or anger are forms of meditation.  You keep rehearsing a past offense, or plotting (Ps. 2:1) revenge, or you keep imagining fears concerning the future (Matt.6:25 – merimnao; “brood”).   You keep going over and over these things in your thoughts and imagination, and they destructively affect your emotional state and choices.  God calls on us to replace these “natural,” spontaneous meditations with the deliberate, habitual (“day and night”) choice to meditate on his Word!

Paul Thompson

If Jesus, after being with his disciples almost continuously for three whole years, found that they took a long time to understand his teaching, we should not be surprised when progress is slow in our attempts to disciple people. ..... We musn't get discouraged when those we disciple act in ways that seem to betray all that we have taught them. We must persevere in teaching them the Word, knowing that this is what will ultimately effect a change in their thinking and attitudes.

Ajith Fernando, Jesus Driven Ministry, Chapter 10