Keep Advancing

Keep Advancing 

Augustine wrote, “If you would attain to what you are not yet, you must always be displeased by what you are. For where you are pleased with yourself there you have remained. Keep adding, keep walking, keep advancing.” For the child of God growth is a constant pattern of life. As in the physical life, the body is designed to grow year by year from infancy to adulthood. When the body is sick and ill the body will not grow in proportion to its design. A lack of growth will bring about early death. So in the spiritual world the need for growth is a manifest desire to live each day growing in the “grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ” (2 Peter 3:18).

Jesus told Nicodemus entrance into the kingdom of God is likened to a birth. "Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God" (John 3:3). As a newborn baby we enter the spiritual world of God’s family through the water and the spirit (John 3:5-6; Romans 6:3-4). Peter used this illustration to exhort the pilgrims in 1 Peter 2:2, “as newborn babes, desire the pure milk of the word, that you may grow thereby, if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is gracious” (1 Peter 2:2-3). Newborn babies long for sustenance to fill their needs of hunger. As newborn children of God we should always have the yearning desire for the “milk of the word” so that we can grow up in Christ (Ephesians 4:15). The reason we stop growing is because we have lost our taste for the Lord. We must guard against this disease.

Growth is a process that takes time and effort. We continue to seek avenues to learn more about the Lord and His will. Paul reminded the Philippians that growth is pressing on and reaching for a higher calling (Philippians 3:12-16). Can we ever be pleased with where we find ourselves in our faith? If we decide we know all we need to know about the will of God we begin to die.

The other important part of this growth process is leaving the milk for ‘meatier’ matters. The Jewish Christians of the New Testament had a great struggle in their faith. “For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you again the first principles of the oracles of God; and you have come to need milk and not solid food. For everyone who partakes only of milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness, for he is a babe. But solid food belongs to those who are of full age, that is, those who by reason of use have their senses exercised to discern both good and evil” (Hebrews 5:12-14). A time comes in the life of God’s people to move beyond the first principles and seek a higher plane of learning. This does not suggest a scholarly approach to the word of God but a clearer meaning of the will of God.

Paul reminds us that “faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God” (Romans 10:17) and our faith will be dependent upon our growth in the word of God. Knowledge is power and the knowledge of the word of God will empower us to grow beyond our struggles to trust in the Lord and follow His guidance. It is written of Jesus that He “increased in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and men” (Luke 2:52). If Jesus is put forth as an example of growth then we must realize the need for our own growth. Keep advancing: “I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. Therefore let us, as many as are mature, have this mind; and if in anything you think otherwise, God will reveal even this to you” (Philippians 3:14-15).