The Reality of Spiritual Growth

Stabilizing One's Spiritual Growth

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The Reality of Spiritual Growth

Staying stationary in your faith is easy, but growing in your faith is a lot more challenging. It involves sacrifice, vulnerability, and relinquish of your own areas of comfort. I find myself a lot more now than ever, struggling to remain steadfast in my spiritual growth. I do devotions, read my Bible, remain grounded in prayer, repent of my sins, and love others. However, I find that these things alone are not going to grow me spiritually if i’m not entirely postured in allowing God to grow me. There are many individuals who read the Bible, and pray daily, and still struggle with exemplifying a life that God calls of them to live. 

My Realizations

I'm learning that spiritual growth involves full engagement... engagement of one's heart, mind, and soul in it's entirety. God yearns to grow us in every aspect as we walk with Him. Our growth will even involve sacrifices, and many times it won't be what the world would agree with or favor. Something we all will eventually have to understand is if we're halfway engaged in our walk with God our growth will always appear stunted.

Personal Experiences

I have moments where I feel like I am doing a great job at being observant of what I am feeding my soul with. I am observant of what I say, what I think, and what I allow into my heart. I take time to understand what hurts my feelings, or what specific thoughts I am allowing to consume my mind. However, it seems as if right when I am beginning to "grow" and make changes, something comes in to stunt my growth. Whether if that is finding myself listening to music that I know God wouldn't approve of, slipping and gossiping about another, or having emotions of jealousy and envy.When these moments occur,  I feel so disappointed in myself. To be more specific, I feel I am not fulfilling the standard God holds me to. This is a very wrong way of thinking though. These feelings allow me to enter into a place of defeat, guilt, and shame. Which are not emotions God wants me or you to feel. If you can relate to this in any way please know that you're not alone. In fact, because of the way we sense when we are not aligned with Christ, we have clarity to know God is with us and guiding us.

Words of Encouragement

We are not perfect, and that's why we can't remain 100% free of sin and wrongdoing. If we were perfect we wouldn't need a Lord and Savior. To conclude, our spiritual growth is dependent on our engagement with God. Wanting to "grow" is one thing, and praying and staying planted in the word is another, but we must surrender our hearts, minds, and souls to allowing God to grow us in the ways He wants to.



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