Many of the heated debate regarding doctrines, ethics, morality, and evangelism would screech to a halt, if only the participants took the time to ponder one crucial but often forgotten concept: Growth.
We experience "growth" in our physical body every day, since the day we were born, until we die naturally. That's how God establish strength, character, and understanding. In nature, in our physiology, and yes, in our Spirituality. Yet, so many topics of arguments never considered this concept and went straight into "my interpretation/conclusion/brain/dedication/experience/witness/bible verse collection/bible verse fast-ball/bible verse curve-ball/intelligence is better than yours" mode.
A growing believer will never sin willfully, but a believer with stagnated growth, could not wholly overcome sin because they still rely on own strength.
A growing believer would never consider his works a co-means of salvation or sanctification, but a believer who never grow would work their life off, constantly struggling to lug his "Christian burdens" along with an already difficult life on this earth, never understanding the meaning of His rest, let alone the joy of it.
I found this book by Eli Stanley Jones (published in 1960) literally on the floor of an Estate Sale. Not knowing who the author was, I picked up the book and start flipping the pages. Immediately I was blown away. It's a devotional book that reads like one of C.S Lewis' masterpieces. It's concise, compact, yet heartfelt and genuine. The title: "Growing Spiritually" Later I found out that Mr. Jones was a well-known Methodist missionary to India, but regardless of what he had accomplished in his life, I simply see a mature brother in Christ admonishing fellow believers to grow in the Spirit.
Later I got a used copy and I felt so compelled to type away (no electronic copy available) the Introduction and share it with my bible study group. Here I share it with you all with the hope that it will be as inspiring and helpful as it has been to me. Let us grow up in submission to Him who gives out growth, not to grow our own head.
Quoted from the Introduction:
In the writing of all my books, I have tried first to sense a need and then have the book move in to meet that need. The need has been the call.
One would have thought that, in view of the need, there would be a spate of books on the subject of Growing Spiritually. But when I asked my publishers about it, they replied, to my astonishment, that they could not recall any.
Nor could I.
Plenty of books on various phases of the subject of growth and development, especially in the field of psychology, but very few if any, covering the subject from a Christian standpoint. This book tries to step into that need and meet it.
And it tries to meet it at the place where spiritual growth is made or marred (read: missed or broken), namely, at the place of the devotional. It is at the place of the devotional (read: deliberate, intentional Scripture readings) that we go up or down spiritually.
For in the devotional we expose ourselves to God's resources, we assimilate them and grow by them. But it must be an all-round growth of the total person: Intellectual, emotional, and volitional. If the devotional becomes merely emotional, then decay will set in in the other parts. And that means a decay of the whole.
We must grow totally or else we'll grow lopsidedly, which is not growth at all, except in the same sense as a "growth" out on the body, a cancer. A spiritual cancer that feeds on the rest (of the healthy part).
The necessity for spiritual growth is not merely our personal problem -- it is that, but also more: It is a big problem in the world.
At the center of almost every acute problems -- be it personal, social, economic, political and international -- is moral and spiritual immaturity. The problems and the possibilities in almost every situation have outgrown the persons in charge of it.
In other words, we are immature persons dealing with problems that requires maturity to handle. Dr. Rebecca Beard says: "The consuming illness of our times is our immaturity -- or our refusal to grow up."
We have on our hands powers and possibilities to become mature people, but the inner-person (self) who handle those powers are immature to begin with. Here is a man who is supposed to be the head of a home spiritually -- a situation demanding maturity -- but himself is spiritually immature. He ended up creating a havoc.
The same thing happens in larger situations -- the school, the church, the business, the state, the international relationships. Each time the area of possible havoc grows larger. Deficiency in our moral and spiritual growth means devastation around us.
Our immaturity is costly -- increasingly so. For larger and larger powers are put more and more into the hands of people morally and spiritually too immature to handle them for the collective good. As it has often been said, our intellectual loves have outgrown our moral and spiritual loves. We have grown-up powers handled by half-grown persons. And this is serious.
For the powers we now have are such that an irresponsible mistake by a few immature people can set the world on fire -- literally.
Today we see all life around us being tangled and snarled because of a lack of an intagible 'something', and that something is Christian maturity. Through it anything can happen anywhere, it is the key -- the master key to every situation.
Spiritual maturity is no longer a luxury for a few; it is a necessity for us all.
Then to produce that Christian maturity must be our the major business and endeavor of our race. It is either that or chaos. So this book attempts to point the way to that maturity of character without which we will remain an infantile civilization.
Where do we begin? Where everything begins -- with ourselves. "If religion does not begin with the individual, it does not begin. If it ends with the individual, it ends." The beginning must be within. We cannot point to the lack of spiritual maturity in others and leave it at that, for that may turn out to be what in psychology is called projection -- a projecting on others the faults and lacks we find in ourselves and thus mentally escaping the responsibility.
But we must not leave the reader feeling the club of necessity to be spiritually mature hanging over his head. We cannot be scared or clubbed into maturity. It must be a beckoning instead of a bludgeoning. We must feel the call. Fortunately that call comes from above and from within. God wills our maturity. He has arranged the world and us with one thing in view, namely, our maturity. And fortunately we are made for maturity -- for growth, for development, for perfection.
Everything within us works toward that end, everything except on thing: Sin, or evil. That is the unnatural intrusion throwing monkey wrenches into the machinery of human living.
God and nature and we can thus co-operate in our growth. And when we do, then nothing in heaven or earth can stop us from growing. But it all depends on our co-operation with God. Without this, the nerve of our growth is cut. With it, then anything can happen.
We are made to be made in His likeness. But it won't just happen. We have to will to grow and to create the conditions for growth. Not that growth is a strain -- it is really not. It is receptivity, as we shall see. So we have to will to receive.
Growth is not forced, it's receptivity.
The most open time of receptivity is the devotional time (reading, studying, and thinking about the Scriptures). Here the pores of our being are open to God and life, and we are receptive to our fingertips. Hence I have linked growth with devotional exercises, one page a day.
Growth in life is our greatest adventure. The business of life is to live and to live abundantly. But most people know everything about life except how to live it.
As one who has tried this business of living in every climate and in almost all conditions around the world and has found that it works, I would share my secret with you. It is not mine. I found it at the feet of Another -- a gift.
One night in India after a very hard week in which it seemed that everything adverse had piled upon me, I found my self awakening before daylight and saying to myself: "I can feel myself grow." I could. But it was all "in spite of" me. And it was not my own.
I had learned a secret. I share that secret with you in this book. For it is "an open secret" -- simple and learnable by anybody -- by anybody who wants to grow and wants it enough to pay the price.
-- end of quote.
We experience "growth" in our physical body every day, since the day we were born, until we die naturally. That's how God establish strength, character, and understanding. In nature, in our physiology, and yes, in our Spirituality. Yet, so many topics of arguments never considered this concept and went straight into "my interpretation/conclusion/brain/dedication/experience/witness/bible verse collection/bible verse fast-ball/bible verse curve-ball/intelligence is better than yours" mode.
A growing believer will never sin willfully, but a believer with stagnated growth, could not wholly overcome sin because they still rely on own strength.
A growing believer would never consider his works a co-means of salvation or sanctification, but a believer who never grow would work their life off, constantly struggling to lug his "Christian burdens" along with an already difficult life on this earth, never understanding the meaning of His rest, let alone the joy of it.
I found this book by Eli Stanley Jones (published in 1960) literally on the floor of an Estate Sale. Not knowing who the author was, I picked up the book and start flipping the pages. Immediately I was blown away. It's a devotional book that reads like one of C.S Lewis' masterpieces. It's concise, compact, yet heartfelt and genuine. The title: "Growing Spiritually" Later I found out that Mr. Jones was a well-known Methodist missionary to India, but regardless of what he had accomplished in his life, I simply see a mature brother in Christ admonishing fellow believers to grow in the Spirit.
Later I got a used copy and I felt so compelled to type away (no electronic copy available) the Introduction and share it with my bible study group. Here I share it with you all with the hope that it will be as inspiring and helpful as it has been to me. Let us grow up in submission to Him who gives out growth, not to grow our own head.
Quoted from the Introduction:
In the writing of all my books, I have tried first to sense a need and then have the book move in to meet that need. The need has been the call.
One would have thought that, in view of the need, there would be a spate of books on the subject of Growing Spiritually. But when I asked my publishers about it, they replied, to my astonishment, that they could not recall any.
Nor could I.
Plenty of books on various phases of the subject of growth and development, especially in the field of psychology, but very few if any, covering the subject from a Christian standpoint. This book tries to step into that need and meet it.
And it tries to meet it at the place where spiritual growth is made or marred (read: missed or broken), namely, at the place of the devotional. It is at the place of the devotional (read: deliberate, intentional Scripture readings) that we go up or down spiritually.
For in the devotional we expose ourselves to God's resources, we assimilate them and grow by them. But it must be an all-round growth of the total person: Intellectual, emotional, and volitional. If the devotional becomes merely emotional, then decay will set in in the other parts. And that means a decay of the whole.
We must grow totally or else we'll grow lopsidedly, which is not growth at all, except in the same sense as a "growth" out on the body, a cancer. A spiritual cancer that feeds on the rest (of the healthy part).
The necessity for spiritual growth is not merely our personal problem -- it is that, but also more: It is a big problem in the world.
At the center of almost every acute problems -- be it personal, social, economic, political and international -- is moral and spiritual immaturity. The problems and the possibilities in almost every situation have outgrown the persons in charge of it.
In other words, we are immature persons dealing with problems that requires maturity to handle. Dr. Rebecca Beard says: "The consuming illness of our times is our immaturity -- or our refusal to grow up."
We have on our hands powers and possibilities to become mature people, but the inner-person (self) who handle those powers are immature to begin with. Here is a man who is supposed to be the head of a home spiritually -- a situation demanding maturity -- but himself is spiritually immature. He ended up creating a havoc.
The same thing happens in larger situations -- the school, the church, the business, the state, the international relationships. Each time the area of possible havoc grows larger. Deficiency in our moral and spiritual growth means devastation around us.
Our immaturity is costly -- increasingly so. For larger and larger powers are put more and more into the hands of people morally and spiritually too immature to handle them for the collective good. As it has often been said, our intellectual loves have outgrown our moral and spiritual loves. We have grown-up powers handled by half-grown persons. And this is serious.
For the powers we now have are such that an irresponsible mistake by a few immature people can set the world on fire -- literally.
Today we see all life around us being tangled and snarled because of a lack of an intagible 'something', and that something is Christian maturity. Through it anything can happen anywhere, it is the key -- the master key to every situation.
Spiritual maturity is no longer a luxury for a few; it is a necessity for us all.
Then to produce that Christian maturity must be our the major business and endeavor of our race. It is either that or chaos. So this book attempts to point the way to that maturity of character without which we will remain an infantile civilization.
Where do we begin? Where everything begins -- with ourselves. "If religion does not begin with the individual, it does not begin. If it ends with the individual, it ends." The beginning must be within. We cannot point to the lack of spiritual maturity in others and leave it at that, for that may turn out to be what in psychology is called projection -- a projecting on others the faults and lacks we find in ourselves and thus mentally escaping the responsibility.
But we must not leave the reader feeling the club of necessity to be spiritually mature hanging over his head. We cannot be scared or clubbed into maturity. It must be a beckoning instead of a bludgeoning. We must feel the call. Fortunately that call comes from above and from within. God wills our maturity. He has arranged the world and us with one thing in view, namely, our maturity. And fortunately we are made for maturity -- for growth, for development, for perfection.
Everything within us works toward that end, everything except on thing: Sin, or evil. That is the unnatural intrusion throwing monkey wrenches into the machinery of human living.
God and nature and we can thus co-operate in our growth. And when we do, then nothing in heaven or earth can stop us from growing. But it all depends on our co-operation with God. Without this, the nerve of our growth is cut. With it, then anything can happen.
We are made to be made in His likeness. But it won't just happen. We have to will to grow and to create the conditions for growth. Not that growth is a strain -- it is really not. It is receptivity, as we shall see. So we have to will to receive.
Growth is not forced, it's receptivity.
The most open time of receptivity is the devotional time (reading, studying, and thinking about the Scriptures). Here the pores of our being are open to God and life, and we are receptive to our fingertips. Hence I have linked growth with devotional exercises, one page a day.
Growth in life is our greatest adventure. The business of life is to live and to live abundantly. But most people know everything about life except how to live it.
As one who has tried this business of living in every climate and in almost all conditions around the world and has found that it works, I would share my secret with you. It is not mine. I found it at the feet of Another -- a gift.
One night in India after a very hard week in which it seemed that everything adverse had piled upon me, I found my self awakening before daylight and saying to myself: "I can feel myself grow." I could. But it was all "in spite of" me. And it was not my own.
I had learned a secret. I share that secret with you in this book. For it is "an open secret" -- simple and learnable by anybody -- by anybody who wants to grow and wants it enough to pay the price.
-- end of quote.
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