Why do we always assume that God wants us to “grow” spiritually?
We don’t always grow physically. We have periods of growth, or seasons of growth. Every parent knows that their children experience spurts of growth. Growth is good and healthy, but there are times when we pause, and at some point stop, growing.
If we grew at the same rate our whole life we would wake up in our eighties at a height of 20’ 6” weighing 700 pounds.
Just like there are seasons of growth physically, followed by seasons where we don’t grow, there will be seasons of spiritual growth followed by seasons where we don’t grow. But there are many seasons in our life where growth is not the objective.
Physically, we experience seasons where we focus on physical health, or physical endurance, or physical healing.
When training for a marathon your objective is not to grow; your objective is to improve endurance. Sometimes you do this on your own, but success usually requires the guidance of a coach.
In mid-life we usually focus on improving our health. However we are often only successful at improving our health when we team up with others pursuing the same goal.
After an injury, or illness, our goal is first healing followed by rehabilitation under the direction of a medical professional.
Some injuries or illness require physical or occupational therapy applied with the close oversight of a trained therapist.
Spiritually, we have these same types of seasons but if we only focus on spiritual growth we will likely fail at satisfying our real need - spiritual health, endurance, healing, restoration, or rehabilitation.
One more observation: very few (if any) of these seasons can be navigated alone. God designed us for community. You need others to help you through these seasons ... and they need you.
So what season are you in? Are you proactively navigating this season? Who do you need to help you navigate it successfully? Are you available, prepared, and willing to help someone else through their season?
Posts
