Growing is spiritual exercise

by Donna Churchill


Our lives are full of twists and turns, many can be painful detours from the road we expected to take. Our goal should be to learn and grow through these challenges. The sufferings and trials we encounter can take the form of sickness, loss of a loved one, job or educational challenges, relationship failures, unsaved loved ones, etc. Facing our suffering with a determined purpose can help us keep our focus through them.

 My husband died almost twenty years ago. He was young when he died and I was only 54 years old myself, so I didn’t know many women who had walked through the journey of losing a spouse. It was a very painful, lonely time and I didn’t know if I was “doing it right” before God or not. 

I was out walking one day, talking to the Lord, acknowledging that I didn’t know how to continue to navigate this journey of grief. One day soon after, I came upon a book that I was attracted to just by the title alone: “A Grace Disguised: How the Soul Grows Through Loss.” THAT’S IT!, I thought. THAT’S WHAT I WANT! I didn’t ask for this experience, actually had no choice in the matter, but if I had to walk through it, and I did, I wanted to grow through it. I wanted to experience all the Lord had for me and I wanted to walk through it getting to know Him better and growing in my faith as a result. Many of you, too, I’m sure, have had to walk through situations that you never signed up for. You had no choice or say in what happened, but you can have a choice in how you respond to it and how you grow through it.

That book proved to be a blueprint for me and was so valuable in my growing in the knowledge of Jesus and His love and care for me during the most difficult period of my life. Since that time, the cry of my heart has been that the Lord would continue to teach me how to grow in Him through all the situations and circumstances in my life and not let the suffering go to waste.

I have learned that in our individual walks with God, we never “arrive.” There is never a time we are “all grown up.” There is always something more we can learn, always a deeper way our faith can grow, and always more aspects of God’s character to know and experience.

Being saved is about a lot more than just having the assurance of eternal life in Christ. Being saved is all about sanctification and letting the Lord, through the work of the Holy Spirit, change us and grow us up in Him.

Ephesians 4 tells us that God has provided for us to be equipped so we would no longer be as children tossed by every deceitful scheme, but rather, “….. we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ…”

Romans 12:2 admonishes us, “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.” As we allow the Holy Spirit to renew our minds in His Word, we grow in knowledge of the Word and how we should live - different, for sure, from the standards of this world.

As I am aging, one of my favorite verses and promises of the Bible is found in 2nd Corinthians 4:16-18, “So we do not lose heart. Though our outer man is wasting away, our inner man is being renewed day by day. For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.” Paul is telling us that the outer body, that which is seen, is of only temporal value and will grow old and decay, no matter how we try to stop that process. But the inner man, which is not seen, is being renewed day by day and bears a weight of far greater value because we will take that into eternity with us. We are to continue growing in the Lord and being renewed in our spirits even as our bodies are decaying.

One of the sweetest men I’ve ever been privileged to call friend in this life, died recently at the age of 93 and though his outer body was decaying and his mind was being ravaged by dementia, he read his Bible faithfully every single day and would always talk to me of the goodness of the Lord. At every meal, grace alone wasn’t enough for him to give thanks, he sang a precious chorus to Jesus – “Let there be glory and honor and praises, glory and honor to Jesus. Glory, honor; glory and honor to Him.” What a wonderful testimony to the strength of God’s Spirit within a man, that even though his body was slowly diminishing, his spirit was growing stronger day by day. His life and diminishing capacity spoke such encouragement to me about the strength of God’s spirit within us.

In Paul’s 2nd letter to the Thessalonians, chapter 1:3, he gives thanks to God for the brothers because “your faith is growing abundantly, and the love of every one of you for one another is increasing.” This is what we should strive to be commended for, not a shallow compliment for the attractiveness of our bodies (though that’s nice to hear, too), but for the abundant growth of our faith and trust in the Lord.

As we experience the trials and sufferings of this world, it speaks volumes to our saved and unsaved friends and family, when we endeavor to walk through these trials growing in the grace and knowledge of the Lord, growing stronger in our faith to trust Him through all circumstances, situations and sufferings. We will not always get it right, we will not always respond graciously; we are after all only human and God acknowledges that. But as we endeavor to learn from each failing, repent, accept His forgiveness and be open to learning what He desires to teach us in and through it all, we will grow in faith and assurance that God is sovereign over all and our hearts will begin to respond to Him in new and trusting ways.

I want to close by quoting an excerpt from the devotional I read:

“We never stop imaging God. When we use a phrase like, ‘he’s the spitting image of his father,’ we usually mean that the son displays the physical characteristics of his earthly father. He looks (and perhaps acts) like his dad. In a similar, but far more profound way, we resemble the God of the universe, both in his character and actions. You are created in the image of God. God made us to reflect his image to the world. We don’t do this perfectly because of sin and disease, but no matter what, we never stop imaging God!
The gospel is about renewing the true image of God through Jesus. This process is not derailed by illness or disability. Instead, God uses these things to make us more like him. God promises he will complete the work he began in each of us. This means that God is doing transforming work in you no matter what challenges you face. He is perfecting the character of Christ in you in the midst of your struggles.”  The Heart of the Matter, October 30 reading 

It’s precisely through our challenges and how we respond to them that we grow in the Lord. Learn to let God grow you “to be conformed to the image of his Son.” Romans 8:29

---