Growth

Change is inevitable. We would never expect a newborn to remain a baby forever. We understand that they will grow and develop. They will soon start speaking and walking; their personalities will shine forth, and as parents, we will teach them valuable life lessons. We will give them instruction and wisdom to sustain them while in this world. “If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give you good things to those who ask Him!” (Matthew 7:11).

Once we’ve accepted Christ into our heart, mind, and soul, we must have the mentality that “it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me”(Galatians 2:20). If He is genuinely living in and through us, we will grow. We will speak the truth in love and grow into Christ, the head of the body (Ephesians 4:15). This means the ways of the “old man” should decrease over time as we allow our hearts and minds to be transformed and reflect the image of Christ in truth, love, action, and deed. Change is inevitable and necessary. Growth is required, and our Father in heaven gives perfect gifts to help with the process. Our growth should be evident by the fruit we bear and the words we speak. He has done too much for us to remain the same. Let us add to our faith and grow thereby.

But also for this very reason, giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue, to virtue knowledge, to knowledge self-control, to self-control perseverance, to perseverance godliness, to godliness brotherly kindness, and to brotherly kindness love. For if these things are yours and abound, you will be neither barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. For he who lacks these things is shortsighted, even to blindness, and has forgotten that he was cleansed from his old sins.

2 Peter 1:5-9

Shalom,

Kelly Vonner, Restoring the Branches Ministry