Word of the Week - Spiritual Growth
In fact, though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you the elementary truths of God’s word all over again. You need milk, not solid food! Anyone who lives on milk, being still an infant, is not acquainted with the teaching about righteousness. But solid food is for the mature, who by constant use have trained themselves to distinguish good from evil.” Hebrews 5:12-14
Spiritual Growth and Maturity – Similar to how we want our kids to grow and mature in the things of life, so does our heavenly Father desire for us to grow up and mature in the spirit to become mature and complete, not lacking anything. The goal is to become Christ-like and spiritually fruitful. We watch babies learn to crawl, walk, talk and then develop life skills and knowledge through education to become healthy and productive young adults. Ultimately we hope and pray that our children develop goldy character in their journey of transition from dependence on their parents to independence from their parents to dependence on God. In our spiritual journey, we generally start off with an independent or rebellious spirit towards God until we realize we need Him, which hopefully prompts our spirit to pursue a relationship with Him. This is salvation, the beginning of our spiritual journey; we are born of the spirit and begin as infants in our faith. Some Christians stop here and never grow and mature in their faith and miss out on the greatest opportunity. Just like a good parent, God desires for us all to grow and mature in our spiritual journey by becoming fully dependent on God and relying on Him rather than ourselves in every area of our life. Walking by faith and not by sight, realizing that He is our everything, and we need Him and should desire to pursue Him in all things.
So what does spiritual growth and maturity actually look like? What are we doing to grow up in Christ? Here are a few areas to consider as we evaluate ourselves in the area of spiritual growth and maturity:
Are you growing in godly character – Just as we desire for our children to grow up and develop our values and a good and healthy character making them productive young adults. As Christ followers, we grow and develop godly character by living life with steadfast godly values and virtues. If we have godly character, we stand firm on the rock of Christ in the good times and through the challenging trials of life; this is what develops and demonstrates our true character, the essence of who we are and what we believe. Generally the trials of life are most revealing of our character and are the biggest opportunity to forge our character and help us grow and mature as followers of Jesus. James 1:2-3 clearly communicates this process of maturity “Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.” This is the process of building godly character to become mature in Christ. The goal of a believer is to continue to be transformed into the likeness of Christ. He is our model for godly character and we know if we are taking on His nature and character if we grow and produce “the fruit of His spirit, which is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such there is no law.” Galatians 5:22-23
Are you a consumer/taker or a contributor/giver – “God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten son Jesus so that we can have eternal life” John 3:16 The essence of God is love and He demonstrated His love by giving us Christ who gave up His life so that we can have access to God and our salvation through the cross. We serve a loving and giving God who desires for us to have His giving nature. In our human nature we are born selfish and focused on what we want and need. It is only through God’s spirit that we are transformed and made new in Christ. In our new identity in Christ, we begin to understand that “It is more blessed to give than to receive” Acts 20:35. This is truly a test of our spiritual maturity. Are we men and woman who wake up every day thinking about ourselves and what we desire to consume or how we can be a blessing to others. Are we thinking about how we can use our gifts and resources to serve ourselves or are we thinking about how we can use our gifts and blessings to love and serve God by serving others. It is usually easy for us to see self-centeredness in others, especially our kids, but not so easy to see it in ourselves; Therefore, it is important for us to do an honest assessment of ourselves in this area as it is a key indicator of spiritual growth and maturity.
Is your life bearing fruit and are you reproducing in the things of the spirt – “Even so, every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit. A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a gad tree bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Therefore by their fruits you will know them”. Matthew 7:17-20. At the end of the day, the real test to whether or not we are growing and maturing in our faith is the fruitfulness of our lives. Are our lives bearing fruit and reproducing by multiplication? Can we truly point to godly fruit from our lives in areas such as our children, our families, our businesses, our ministries, our centers of influence? Can we point to specific lives that have been impacted by Christ working in us and through us? This is God’s heart for us to know Him in a personal relationship then grow up and mature so we can impact others and grow His family as we grow up and mature in His image. This is the gospel and the abundant life He speaks about. “The seed on good soil stands for those with a noble and good heart, who hear the word, retain it, and by persevering produce a crop.” Luke 8:15
Many Christians are living their lives still drinking milk as infants or they are stuck in adolescence and have not grown up. The best things of God can only be experienced through growing up and maturing in Christ. No matter where we are in the process, we all need to be growing and maturing in our spiritual journey. I encourage us all to take time to evaluate our spiritual growth and maturity and step into whatever is needed to continue growing up in Christ. This is the only way we will experience the fullness of what God has in store for us so we can become mature and complete, not lacking anything. “So we fix our eyes upon Jesus, the author and perfector of our faith”. Hebrews 12:2
Have a great week.
-Duane