YOUR SPIRITUAL GROWTH

 Virginia Brandt Berg

1970-01-02

Downloads:

•  Your Spiritual Growth.mp3
•  Your Spiritual Growth.oga

Greetings and welcome to Meditation Moments. God bless you, and may the program bring some blessing to your heart. I’m bringing you tonight from God’s Word this verse of scripture: God’s Word says, “We are ever learning but never coming to a knowledge thereof,” and I’m just wondering how much you have grown in the Christian life? (2 Timothy 3:7)

I’ve been asking the Lord to search me. Ask the Lord to search you. Say, “Lord, how much have I grown in my Christian life?”

To be years older and not be years nearer God is like walking in a circle; it’s motion without progress. So you search your heart and ask God how much progress you’ve made. I wonder if you remember the vision that God once gave you of the life that He wanted you to live.

I think every Christian has had that great longing to reach certain heights of Christian victory.—The vision you once had that God gave you: great expectations of victory, and great stirrings in your soul, and great determinations to live close to Him.

I wonder if you can say with Paul, “I’ve not been disobedient to the heavenly vision.” (Acts 26:19) Or have you become satisfied with a low level of Christian living, a mediocre life, sort of common and defeated? I have some friends that are just radiant and triumphant in their victorious Christian life.

I know some that are professing Christians that are frustrated, and they’re not conquerors. They’re like the old lady said, “I’m just a poor worm!” Well, I’d hate to call myself just a poor worm in the Christian life. God says that we’re more than conquerors! (Romans 8:37)

There’s no such thing as standing still in the Christian life. You’re either going backwards or you’re going forward. Can you be satisfied with anything less than victory? That’s God’s provision for you. God has provided victory. It’s all through His Word, all through the Word of God that you can be a victorious Christian. (Isaiah 25:8; 1 Corinthians 15:54–57; 1 John 5:4)

But if you’d make confession at this time, would you have to say, “I’m living a dwarfed, defeated, disappointed Christian life”? You know, there was a man that used to, when he was just a little bit of a fellow, he would go to his mother and say, “Mother, how big I am!” The mother would sometimes say to him, “How big are you today, son?” And he would say, “Oh, so big, mother, so big.” The years went by, many years, and he came home a defeated man, a defeated Christian, and his mother said, “How big are you, son?” He said, “Not so big, mother.”

I wonder if you’d have to say that spiritually if you went on a tour of inspection of your heart, if God would put His X-ray on your soul? All these wonderful expressions in God’s Word about the abundant life, I wonder if you are reaching on victoriously towards that. In the searching diagnosis would you find out that you’re really growing?

You know, you are really three persons: what you think you are, what others think you are, and what God knows you to be. There’s one that we know: there are no dwarfs in heaven. We have to grow, don’t we? Now God’s Word says in Revelation 11:1, “Rise and measure the people.” “And there was given me a reed like unto a rod, and the angel stood, saying, ‘Rise and measure the temple of God and the altar and them that worship therein.’”

Our measuring rod is God’s Word, so let’s use it and see. In 2 Corinthians 10:12–14, “For we dare not make ourselves of the number, or compare ourselves with some that commend themselves: for they measure themselves by themselves, and comparing themselves among themselves are not wise.”

So we don’t measure our growth by how others are growing; we measure only by the Word of God. And God’s Word in Psalms, a number of times God’s Word says, “Search me, O God.” You know that verse of Scripture, “Search me, O God, and try my thoughts, and see if there be any evil way in me” (Psalm 139:23–24).

I’m just thankful for anything that will break through and make me take a deep look at myself. We’re living in such a pressured age, no time for meditating or thinking, and we need to stop to take a look at ourselves and not gloss things over, not be deceived, not have a light view of sin. God’s Word says, “Let no man think more highly of himself than he ought to think, but let him think soberly.” (Romans 12:3)

You know how a baby grows? A baby grows by air and food and water and love, and that’s just about the way a Christian grows. Air is the prayer, and the food is God’s Word, and water is the thirst that’s in your soul and the everlasting love and power of God and His Words, and then love that’s in your heart.

You can tell if you’re growing, if you’re really growing in love. Are you more obedient than you used to be? Our time is so short and these things that we have to say to you, but let me just say this in closing, that you can’t make yourself grow in any way; it comes from just abiding in the Lord Jesus Christ.

It comes just from living in Him and living in His Word and the sweet personal union with Him. It isn’t by any straining or self-effort. It’s no self-dependence. It’s just putting yourself utterly in His hands. The center of Christianity is Jesus Himself—a living, loving personality. It’s fellowship with Him that will bring you the victory and bring about the growth that you want in your Christian life.

God bless you, and we pray that you’ll feed on the Word of God until you grow into the fullness of stature of Christ Jesus. He’s still on the throne and prayer changes things.