Slow Growth
A couple of weeks ago, the boys and I planted some grass seed in our front yard. We have a bald spot growing right in the middle where the kids like to play. Because sod is expensive, I decided to DIY this one. How hard can it be to grow some grass?
So, we went out on Saturday and turned the dirt up, tossed out some seed, and set the sprinklers to water in that area. We checked it the next day and it didn’t look much different. Several more days went by without much progress. Now a few weeks have gone and it looks like a few of the seeds have sprouted, but it’s certainly not the lush field that I was hoping for when we seeded the area. As I looked over my dirt patch recently I was reminded that this is often how we think about spiritual growth. I planted the seeds, I watered the seeds, and now I’m expecting some results! But God’s timeline is not our timeline, and so my exhortation this morning is: Trust God’s plan for spiritual growth in your life. Don’t get discouraged when growth is slow.
It is easy to walk in faith when we see success in our lives. Success breeds confidence because it means something is working right. Think about times when you have experienced spiritual success.
Maybe you had victory over a habitual sin and felt the temptation toward it diminish. What a gift!
Maybe you made a concerted effort to love your spouse or friend or child better and they responded favorably. You got to experience the strengthening of a relationship because you walked in obedience.
When we experience spiritual success like this there is an amazing cohesion between our professed faith and our lived experience. God is real, his promises are true, I am safe in the palm of his hand! Our faith grows in confidence.
Hebrews 11:1, “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” What does it mean for faith to be the practice of trusting in things not seen?
God in his infinite wisdom knows that our lives will be marked by seasons of spiritual success, as well as spiritual struggle. God knows that when the grass seeds in the front lawn of your spiritual life don’t burst forth like you’d hoped you will be tempted to doubt. And so he provides his people with clear-eyed promises of
his love for them. Today, tomorrow, and for all eternity.
his total victory over all their sins (past, present, and future)
and his guarantee to bring them home to heaven: fully mature, sinless, and relieved of all earthly burdens.
Slow growth is not an obstacle to God’s plan in your life. God is a loving father who understands our weakness and is gentle with us when we struggle. His daily call for us is to walk in repentance and faith, not perfection. Perfection comes when we die, and God completes his work of sanctification in us in an instant. Until that moment comes, you will not experience sinless perfection and God’s call for you remains repentance and faith.
If you are a perfectionist and a moralist like me, this may seem very disheartening to you. We want to be done with our sin so that we can move on to other, more important things, like helping people. For all my fellow moralists in the room, here the exhortation again: Trust God’s plan for spiritual growth in your life. Don’t get discouraged when growth is slow. God is at work exposing and rooting out sin and the hard work of repentance and faith will continue until the day God takes us home.
My final word is to trust God’s plan for spiritual growth in others. Maybe I am comfortable with how God is patient with my struggles, but the sin and struggles of my fellow church members will lead me to frustration and grumbling. Why is it so difficult for this person to stop making this mistake? Don’t they know how it is hurting them? Don’t they know how it’s hurting me?
Colossians 3:12-13. “Put on then, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other.”
In this verse, Paul is connecting our personal holiness to our treatment of others who offend us. To put it another way, our personal sanctification is proved out when we extend mercy to fellow sinners. You will never give more forgiveness than you have received. We cannot out-mercy God. Trust him with the spiritual growth of your fellow church members.