G.R.O.W IN FAITH

[6-minute read]

Adults often nudge children to embrace new experiences because they want their little ones to learn to embrace life as an adventure and grow in the confidence that they are surrounded by people who love them. Strangely, as adults, we tend to depend more on ourselves, telling ourselves that our past experience is our best teacher. But because humans tend to remember unpleasant experiences, we avoid all kinds of new situations even when there is a real chance that we may experience something good. We take pride in doing things the same way we have always done even when deep inside, we are yearning for a change in our lives.

As believers of Jesus Christ, it is not just good enough for us to advance in years but we must continue to grow spiritually – regardless of our age. Spiritual growth is nourished by faith in God, starting from the time we let God into our lives. To grow in faith means to grow in grace, to grow in our relationship with God, to grow in overcoming life challenges, and to grow in wisdom.

The Bible tells us: For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith – and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God – not by works so that no one can boast. (Ephesians 2:8-9). This means that if God could give you the gift of your salvation, we can trust, by faith, that He has much more in store for our lives.

Let us examine the four aspects of growing in faith for every believer:

Grow in Grace

We can think of the words ‘grace’ and ‘gift’ as synonymous where God is concerned. He gave us the seed of grace at our salvation - the moment we invited God into our lives to be our Lord and Saviour. If you have seen someone before and after the experience of God’s salvation, you know how real He is and how much He is able to transform a person. That is the active grace of God in our lives every day.

The grace of God is also a gift that enables us to do that which it is difficult and unimaginable for us to do on our own. You could ask God to help you to forgive someone who has hurt you deeply and go a little further to even ask Him to give you His compassion for that person so that you can feel what He feels for that person. (This is a bold request and it will not be what you imagine!) Isn’t that something that is near impossible to do on your own? Here, the grace of God is the gift of releasing ourselves from the right to assert moral superiority over the offender, and letting God make good the situation any way He wants. Grace is the ability to let go of bad things that happened to us without giving up on anyone involved!

Grow in Our Relationship with God

As we grow in grace, our relationship with God becomes more resilient against hard knocks, disappointments and injustices done to us. We grow in our relationship with God when we stop acting like childish grownups who are happy only when everything is highly agreeable in our lives. It means to hold on to Him even when we have more trials than testimonies, and even when things don’t happen the way we expect them to.

There are no short cuts to grow in our commitment to God and in our obedience to Him. We can’t rely on rituals like reading a Bible verse a day on our smartphones, or consuming a buffet of online sermons and teachings. Rather, to grow in our relationship with God is to observe His nature unfold in our lives, and allow Him to shape our thinking and behaviour. We don’t settle on being comfortable with God, but we are honest about how unreformed we still are deep within, and we just want to be more and more like Him!

It does not matter if we enjoy long term good health or not, if we have achieved financial freedom or not, if our children are independent or need our attention throughout their adulthood, if we have caring families who support us or highly dysfunctional ones that have never been there for us, we need to pay attention to growing our relationship with God. That means to let Him show us who He is - as our Father, our Provider, our Counsellor, our Friend and so much more! 

Grow in Overcoming Life Challenges

Each of us have our own lot in life for growing our faith in God. We have our own mountain to conquer, our own battles to overcome and we have to allow God to enter the places of our hearts where we are still stuck in the past.

It has been said that life is not a problem to be solved, but a reality to be experienced (Soren Kierkegaard). By God’s grace, we will overcome the walls of silence we have erected in our lives, we will overcome relationship standoff, we will overcome persistent hopelessness, we will overcome reasoning that says something cannot be done because we have a God who answers us and who enables us to walk with our heads held high! (Psalm 3:3-4). 

Believe that when you have God on your side, the supernatural will overshadow the natural!

Grow in Wisdom

Invariably, to grow in faith is to grow in wisdom because when we allow God to transform the way we think and reason, we no longer behave and act in the same way. Know that wisdom is transformative and it is not found in intelligence. A person may be very intelligent but that person may not have an iota of wisdom.

Wisdom does not grow naturally in us. Therefore, the Bible says in James 1:5, ‘If any of you lacks wisdom, you should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to you.’ We ask God for wisdom not because we are slow-witted or want to be smarter than everyone in the room.  ‘But the wisdom from above is first of all pure. It is also peace loving, gentle at all times, and willing to yield to others. It is full of mercy and the fruit of good deeds. It shows no favoritism and is always sincere.’ (James 3:17). Wisdom is an uber human quality that only God can cultivate in us.

Let us all commit to grow in faith and in spiritual maturity to keep our soul ageless and vibrant!

This is a summary and reflection based on a virtual BIR session held on 19 February 2022.