Growing IN grace, not INTO grace.

For those of us who may be trying to ‘grow in grace’: “The trouble with every such case is simply this: they are trying to grow INTO grace instead of IN it. They are like a rosebush planted by a gardener in the hard, stony path with a view to its growing INTO the flower-bed, and which has of course dwindled and withered in consequence instead of flourishing and maturing. …To grow in grace is opposed to all growth in self-dependence or self-effort,–to all legality, in fact, of every kind. It is to put our growing, as well as everything else, into the hands of the Lord and leave it with him.” (Hannah Whitall Smith, The Christian’s Secret of a Happy Life, “Growth.”)