We Will Be Changed: 9 Inner Glories the Spirit Is Cultivating in You 

Summary  

Trusted Bible teacher Alistair Begg offers hope and reassurance that the Holy Spirit is working in and through believers in Christ for our transformation. The Spirit is shaping our hearts, changing our character and forming our life into a testimony for Christ. You will be strengthened by the truth that we are partnering with the Holy Spirit as we seek spiritual growth evidenced through the nine fruit of the Spirit.  

Best Illustration 

“I cannot provide the power to the toaster in my kitchen but must use the electrical power source that comes into my home. Equally, I cannot change myself but must depend on the Spirit’s power. At the same time, though, my toaster does nothing with the electrical power until I turn the toaster on. I have to choose to use the power that is available to me. Likewise, I am called to make the effort to keep in step with the Spirit rather than ignoring or resisting him, either through self-reliance or through complacency.” Kindle location 94 

Best Idea 

“God saves us just as we are, but he is not content for us to remain just as we are. No—God’s great purpose for us, having saved us, is to conform us into the image of Christ (Romans 8:28-29). In fact, that is the good for which he is always working in all aspects of our lives.” Kindle location 7 

Best Take Away 

“We will be changed—but Christian change is produced in us, not by us. It is the work of the Spirit. God cares about your character enough to be at work on your character.” Kindle location 48 

Our Recommendation 

This is one of the best books on the Fruit of the Spirit in recent years. Practical, heart-searching, and even convicting, it will lead you to want a closer walk with the Spirit.  

Best Quotes 

“The Bible calls us to become what we are so that what God has done will be transparently clear. In other words, God cares about what you are like. He cares about your character.” Kindle location 13 

“And so the question we need to wrestle with is not simply ‘Does my ability to articulate the gospel make people want to believe it?’ or ‘Does my ability to answer questions—to act as an apologist—make people want to believe?’ but ‘Does my character make the gospel attractive so as to make people wish they believed it?’” Kindle location 25 

“What the church needs is Christians of increasingly Christlike character, so that what is found inside the church is radically different than the world outside the church. God cares about our character far more than he does our gifts or achievements or qualifications.” Kindle location 37 

“For none of us, if we are honest, are all that we would like to be. Most of us, in our quieter moments, wish we were better at the Christian life.” Kindle location 44 

“But fruit itself is an apt image for the way Christian character is formed in Christian believers, because fruit grows slowly and fruit grows continuously.” Kindle location 63 

We are saved in an instant, when we put our faith in Jesus; we are changed over time, as his Spirit goes to work. Fruit does not grow overnight, but it does grow. We will be changed. Kindle location 67 

“Fruit follows faith; fruit does not form faith. It is an inward change of heart that reveals itself in external changes in what we say and do.” Kindle location 72 

“Crucially—and this is a truth to which we shall return again and again throughout—the fruit of the Spirit is the fruit of the Spirit. It is not manufactured by us; it is cultivated in us.” Kindle location 82 

“The great secret of growth in true Christian character is to look far less at ourselves and far more at Christ as we depend less on ourselves and more on his Spirit.” Kindle location 108 

“The outpouring of the love of God is the story of the Bible; and the overflow of the love of God in and from his people is meant to be the story of the church.” Kindle location 114 

“Divine love is not predicated or conditional upon its recipient being worthy of it. We could say that it is grounded in the character of the Person who loves rather than in the performance of the person receiving it.” Kindle location 140 

“For, if there was nothing we did to earn his love, there is nothing we can do to lose it.” Kindle location 148 

“Love, then, is the nonnegotiable of the Christian life. With it, all else grows and flourishes. Without it, all else is useless.” Kindle location 217 

“Happiness depends on what happens; joy shapes our attitude to what happens. So it is that it is possible to know a joy that is not touched by the circumstances of life and is therefore inappropriate to—or inexplicable by—what is going on right now.” Kindle location 237 

“Joy is experienced when life disappoints me, or I disappoint myself, but I know that God is bringing me day by day toward a heavenly home where nothing will perish or spoil or fade.” Kindle location 249 

“Joy is experienced when my outer body is wasting away but I know that he is dwelling in me and renewing me inwardly and that one day I will stand before him in my resurrection body.” Kindle location 253 

“Joy flows from knowing we are saved. It is the result of believing the gospel.” Kindle location 320 

“Third, remember that you are saved by faith, not saved by joy. Have you been as joyful as you should have been this past week? Probably not, any more than you have been as loving as you should have been. So where do you look? Look to Jesus.” Kindle location 355 

“If you are a naturally anxious person—or if your past or your present has left you with good reason to be fearful as you navigate life—then for you growth in peace may be startling and encouraging while also being slow and unspectacular to the watching eye.” Kindle location 371 

“Giving thanks tends to put our worries into perspective and reminds our hearts that we have a God who is faithful to his promises, who loves his people, and who will therefore certainly work for our good in the situation about which we have little peace.” Kindle location 460 

“The peace that the Spirit grows comes as we come to our Father in dependence. Peace comes from letting our Father shoulder our problems. The question is: will you? Will you take not only your guilt but also your worries to him, and then leave them with him?” Kindle location 484 

“God is slow to anger—which is a great definition of divine patience. Literally, God is “long-nostriled”: that is, his nostrils don’t easily or quickly flare with anger.” Kindle location 508 

“If you want to know what patience is, look at how God has treated and is treating you. Consider what you were like before you came to faith.” Kindle location 528 

“Trials do not in and of themselves have the capacity to form patience in us. It is the Spirit of God who works patience in us. Trials are the soil in which he grows his fruit, if we will let him and look to him.” Kindle location 564 

“Our patience grows as we consider how patient the Lord is with us; our forgiveness is empowered by reflecting upon how much the Lord has forgiven us.” Kindle location 605 

“I’m not a kind person if I hold on to grudges and refuse to forgive. I’m not a kind person if my goodness to others is selective, based on how grateful or useful they are. Kindness is displayed in being good to those who are incapable of returning the favor.” Kindle location 654 

“Your experience of eternity is going to be one of God pouring out his kindness upon you as you dwell with Christ in glory.” Kindle location 695 

“Let’s love kindness. Let’s look on others as God does: yes, as those who are rebelling against their rightful ruler but also as sheep without a shepherd, as broken people struggling through a broken world, as those who desperately need to see the kindness and goodness of God expressed through his people.” Kindle location 702 

“Can you be trusted? That is essentially the question we must consider as we come to the next part of the fruit of the Spirit: faithfulness. The fruit of faithfulness is seen in fidelity to the truth and reliability in our dealings with others. It is to say what you mean and mean what you say, and to be consistent in doing so.” Kindle location 732 

“It’s no exaggeration to say that the whole Bible pulsates with the drumbeat of God’s faithfulness. If you have a few hours sometime, take a concordance and look up the word “faithfulness” in the Bible, and you’ll be richly repaid as you consider God’s amazing faithfulness.” Kindle location 741 

“This is why you can be confident you will make it all the way to glory—not because you have promised to follow him, though you have, but because he has promised to bring to completion the good work he has begun in you (Philippians 1:6). In no era more than ours, and in no place more than the Western world today, has unfaithfulness been more widely accepted and more often promoted.” Kindle location 760 

“And as you grow in faithfulness, you delight your Lord and Savior. God will reward faithfulness because faithfulness is what he is looking for.” Kindle location 825 

“The Greek word translated ‘gentleness’ (and in the Authorized Version and ESV also sometimes as ‘meekness’) is prautes, and it has the sense of ‘strength under control.’” Kindle location 852 

“What an amazing thing this is: that the King of the universe—the creator of it all, the Lord of glory—steps into time to make himself known not in a way that makes all humanity tremble with fear but by inviting all men and women who know their need to find tenderness and all that they need.” Kindle location 901 

“Yet gentleness tends to be one of those qualities we admire in others, desire in theory, and excuse ourselves for lacking as soon as someone makes it hard for us. What does real-life gentleness, in our attitudes and actions, require from us?” Kindle location 913 

“This, then, is the conflict. Because ‘the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh’ (Galatians 5:17), you do not always do what you want, as a Christian, to do. But you can—if you battle to ‘walk by the Spirit.’ Which is why we need self-control. And the wonderful news is that self-control is part of the fruit the Spirit grows in God’s children.” Kindle location 976 

“Self-control is the Spirit-enabled ability to avoid excess and to stay within God-given boundaries. It is, to borrow a definition from Jerry Bridges, ‘the exercise of inner strength under the direction of sound judgment that enables us to think, say, and do things that are pleasing to God.’” Kindle location 980 

“Consider how good we are at self-deception, thinking we’re better than we are, or self-importance, thinking we’re more central to the universe than we are, or self-reliance, thinking we’re more powerful than we are. We need self-control to keep our selves—our old selves—in check.” Kindle location 987 

“In other words, there’s no stage of life when you graduate from this class. For as long as we have sinful desires—which is precisely as long as we are in this life—we shall require self-control.” Kindle location 997 

“Self-control, then, looks like enjoying the good things God has given us, for the purposes they were given, in the measure that is good.” Kindle location 1050 

“Self-control is not about having lots of rules for what you must do and not do; it is to make it your goal to please him who has shown you such grace—to please your heavenly Father who has adopted you and to avoid grieving the Spirit who has chosen to dwell in you.” Kindle location 1070