Grow or Plateau?
Few things excite more than growth! By his grace, we were made to grow. We love to be around growth. We buy a house plant and kill it in a month but we always buy another. We want forest preserves set aside. People in frozen places like Wisconsin wait for months for the first blade of green grass to peep up through the snow, enjoy it for two weeks, and then long for it again eleven months later. “Wasn’t the grass green?! Did you see how it grew?!”
My wife and I are watching our grandchildren grow. It looks as though both Emma and Shiobahn will triple their weight, each in only a single year of life. If my math is correct, at the age of four Shiobahn will weigh 523 pounds and little Emma will tip the scale at a pleasant 438. It’s thrilling. But seriously, to hear our older grandkids Luci, Ethan, and Lilly increase in meaning and joy for Jesus in their meal prayers alone is priceless.
Or consider the satisfaction of a founder of a company recovering from this pandemic. In spite of all the setbacks, Chef Brother Luck has his small Colorado Springs restaurant Lucky Dumpling expanding, achieving its mission, and giving vocational opportunities to women and men as he excites taste buds with delicacies from dynamite dim sum to always want more wonton nachos. Brother Luck is living the miracle of growth.
On the other hand few things are more despairing than stagnation. In 2015 Lake Travis near Austin went dry. So did vacation rentals and campers. No one wants a marriage that began with bright dreams of love for the other in Christ but has now plateaued, where two complete strangers live under the same roof each for their own self. ESPN made a best-selling documentary of Michael Jordan’s brilliance as a Chicago Bull called “The Last Dance.” There won’t be one on the Bulls after MJ left called “No Chance.” We love growth but deplore torpor, especially as Christ-followers. So how do you replace spiritual stagnation with transformation?
Want to Know and Enjoy Jesus Better Than Before
It’s no accident that Peter charges us to, “Grow…” in 2 Peter 3:18 and then right on the heels of that imperative he adds, “in the grace and knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.” To grow in Christ, we don’t set out as much to grow; as we do to taste his goodness in his Word and sacraments. “Like newborn infants, long for the pure spiritual milk, that by it you may grow up into salvation - if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good” (1 Peter 2:2–3).
To hear the joy of my sins forgiven thanks to Christ’s innocent death and glorious resurrection on my behalf, to brush up against his body in the Lord’s Supper hearing, “Given and shed for you for the forgiveness of sins,” this is to grow. To hear Christ say to me in his Word, “Neither do I condemn you, go and sin no more,” this is spiritual milk I want more of. This is to taste and see that the LORD is good. Now I am knowing Christ better and will enjoy him even more.
Just as God alone is the giver of growth for kingdom citizens through his Word, so Christ alone becomes the main focal point for both his people and his church. We would see Jesus. After all, how does the whole body grow? By “holding fast to the Head, from whom the whole body, nourished and knit together through its joints and ligaments, grows with a growth that is from God” (Colossians 2:19).
Jesus is the Head of the church (Colossians 1:18); she only grows as she holds fast to him. “From Jesus the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work” (Ephesians 4:16). So make this the goal in your life - not mere effort to be more spiritual not just growth as a goal, no, “but to be the one who ‘understands and knows me, that I am the LORD’” (Jeremiah 9:24). How are you doing at knowing and enjoying Jesus better than before in your life today?
Many years ago now I rented a car to drive to a Pastor’s Conference in Arkansas. At the rental counter they offered a GPS unit. With my tech abilities I declined. Later I came back into the rental company because I could not find the stall my rental was in. Thankfully, the rental lady then insisted she help me install the GPS in the car because – in her words -“Arkansas highways are not like the stripe down a skunk’s back.”
Well, Arkansas is not a state of straight highways for sure. A voice came out of that box that I didn’t really know as I was going through valley after valley. It was a voice with a British accent because the Brits always sound smarter. People are more inclined to listen to them. And it was a woman’s voice because, well…same thing. At one point that British lady told me to take a particular highway. I knew she was wrong and told her so and turned her off. A man can only take being told what to do for so long from a woman not his own and from across the pond!
I got lost as a goose. I eventually turned the British lady on again and she did not say to me, “Blimey, I told you so you sop and now I am not going to help you.” No, she showed me G-R-A-C-E and got me to where I needed to be. I was so grateful. And now that I knew her better I let her talk more freely on the way home, without rebuke but with, dare I say it, a measure of joy. You might say I grew in the “grace and knowledge of that British lady” who got me home as I had gotten to know her better, trust her more readily, and actually enjoy her.
Sorry if I took too long to get here. But I hope you get the point. In an infinitely greater and far more intimate way you can do that with the Son of the Living God, who loves you as if you were and are the only one. For heaven’s sake, taste and see that the LORD is good. Be seeking to know and enjoy him better and you will not plateau, my friend, you will grow.