Think of spiritual growth like gardening. Paul did. God makes the soil, He controls the weather, He ordains all the varying circumstances of the garden. Plus, He gives us the seeds. And all we do is scatter the seeds and water them. Then we wait and watch to see what grows (1 Cor 3:6).
Will anything grow? How fast will it grow? How much will grow? What will grow?
We wait and watch because “neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but God who causes the growth” (1 Cor 3:7). Only God is anything. The rest of us are mere instruments in God’s hand to do the work of gardening. But the internal growth, the sanctification – that is God’s handiwork alone.
Consider how we grow in grace. We take up the means of grace: Bible, prayer, and fellowship. But generally speaking, growth by those means doesn’t happen overnight. Growth, whether in a garden or in our heart, takes time. But we can falsely believe that doing something more – like reading, praying, or serving – will automatically produce growth in an area of weakness. Have you ever noticed the day after you come back from a spiritual high, you get into a fight, you get restless, you get discontent, or you grumble? That happens because the spiritual high is not the norm, and when we compare our norm to that, it’s easy to get frustrated.
True growth happens incrementally and internally by God’s grace. When we use Bible reading or service or some other good thing as the formula to produce instantaneous and fail-proof growth, we are in danger of deceiving ourselves and despairing (in sorrow and anger) when that growth doesn’t happen the way we thought it would. But take heart, growth is assured. It is the fruit of God the Spirit after all (Gal 5:22-23). He will produce His fruit in us unfailingly. But fruit takes time, and so, its growth is imperceptible to the naked eye. But after a while, it’ll be there, having budded and blossomed. The means of grace are great! But don’t trust in them; use them as means to trust in the God of grace. Use them as means to see and savor the beauty of Christ. Let them feed Christ into your soul, and over time, without noticing it, you will have grown. Because when you use God’s means of grace that way, you will see more than ever before your sin against His holiness and Christ’s all-surpassing love and power for you. Then, your heart will be melted with love for Him and others. Did I do that? Well, I read my Bible; I prayed. But apart from Christ, would my Bible reading and praying have done anything inside me? No! God does it through my act of reading and praying. So, let’s be grateful for that, because then we know the growth is both real and really going to happen.
