A little 4 year old girl was once hard at study in her drawings with a crayon. Her mother asked her, "Sally, what are you doing which requires such concentration?" Sally said, "I am drawing a picture of spiritual growth." Her mother smiled and said gently, "Sally, no one knows what spiritual growth looks like." Sally responded, "Well, they will when I get through!"
Gauging growth is tough. How can you know if you are progressing in your walk with Jesus? What does spiritual maturity look like? I want to concentrate on three questions that can help. Ask yourself these questions weekly, during your Sabbath, I know that is a whole other struggle but your need to get away and get with God once a week. It is one of the Ten Commandments. It is right there with; thou shall not kill for a reason because if you don’t rest and take a day off you’re going to feel like killing someone. During this weekly time with God gather all the notes and thoughts from your disciplines you practiced over the past week and answer these three questions.
(1) What is God doing in me? What is God showing me about myself that is not Christ like? He will reveal where we’ve ignored him such as, pride, lust, greed and selfishness. Take these revelations to the cross and leave them there. Agree with God about the damaging effects of those activities and attitudes.
(2) What is God doing around me? This question gauges your God awareness. God is not dead and he is working in your world. This question takes our eyes off of ourselves and causes us to lift our heads up. Note what God is doing in your family’s life, your friends life, in the life of your church. What is God up to?
(3) What is God doing through me? In the past week what did God do through me to bring growth to His Kingdom and glory to His name? Evaluate your conversation and your conduct and celebrate how God used you.
I’m sure this is not the only way to gauge growth. But, if you lay out a spiritual workout and start practicing spiritual disciplines you will start to see personal, tangible growth marks on the spiritual door frame of your life. If you don’t work out spiritually by practicing spiritual disciplines then these questions can’t be answer honestly. Maybe you can feel in the blanks with some cliché but it’s tough to celebrate. Mark Driscoll has some incredible information about spiritual disciplines here. How would your answer the proposed question? How do you gauge your growth?
Becoming Christ like involves a progressive relationship with Jesus that practices spiritual disciplines which result in a first hand faith.
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