Growth Stuff That Takes Time

We all want to grow in our relationships, an emotional area, address some specific issue, or simply want to grow spiritually. It seems as if there is a spiritual life where we learn about God and we grow in a relationship with Him. Then it seems there is the emotional and relational life where we learn how to deal with real life problems. As we do our part, we can get what we have learned and stored up in our heads, and down into the heart so it all becomes one. Taking in grace, learning truth, practicing, failing, and other repeated exposure to the elements of growth are all parts to the process:

Experience versus intellectual learning: Spiritual growth should affect relational problems, emotional problems, and all other problems of life. Spiritual growth involves the whole person. All of our parts need to be exposed to God’s love and healing: heart, soul, and mind (see Matthew 22:37). Growth is much more than just a mental understanding or memorizing a fact, idea, or principle. Understanding and memorization is the mind working, which is a necessary component of growth but if that were all there was to growth then you could just memorize a list and then you would be done. While a thorough understanding of God’s ways are certainly a requirement, even the Bible itself teaches that knowing truth is not enough and that we have to do what it says (see James 1:22-25). We need to add experience to our intellectual understanding of growth, what people call those eighteen inches between the head and the heart. It takes time to experience grace and the forgiveness of God, learning to connect with and trust others, differences of opinions without condemnation, facing fears and other ways that require more than just head knowledge.

Taking in grace and forgiveness: Of the many principles and lessons of growth, the process of internalizing God’s grace and forgiveness takes the most amount of time. Believing and trusting in God’s love and unmerited favor require faith and hope: “Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God” (Romans 5:1-2). It is much more natural for people to try to earn God’s love or to learn a habit or ritual than to believe in things not yet seen. Believing in our own effort to get it done and repeating the same old patterns continues the cycle of living under the law rather than grace: “So then, I myself in my mind am a slave to God’s law, but in the sinful nature a slave to the law of sin” (Romans 7:25).

Internal versus external change: Spiritual growth is change on the inside that produces growth on the outside. A repentive heart causes true character growth. As the heart is transformed, the life of the believer is then transformed on the outside. “You believe in Him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy, for you are receiving the goal of your faith, the salvation of your souls” (1Peter 1:8-9). It is much easier for us to focus on the external, behavioral change: “These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me” (see Mark 7). While our actions are important, and we are responsible for them, we must ultimately focus on our character growth of our hearts. What area of your life can be less about the intellectual “knowing” and more about a “knowing” in the heart?