What's Growing in Your Life

What's Growing in Your Life 

Do not labor for the food which perishes, but for the food which endures to everlasting life, which the Son of Man will give you, because God the Father has set His seal on Him. JOHN 6:27 

One day following the end of World War I, General Louis Lyautey asked his gardener to plant a particular type of tree on his estate. The gardener objected that the tree, being unusually slow to grow, would take nearly a century to reach maturity. “In that case,” the marshal replied, “there is no time to lose. Plant it this afternoon!” Maturing is a long and sometimes slow process. You don’t need to rely on church for your spiritual food. Rather, take in portions throughout the week—do a personal Bible study, attend a group Bible study, listen to Bible teaching on the radio or watch teaching on TV, be focused on your prayer life. As a child grows into a man, he is ready for solid foods. In the same way, when Christians mature spiritually, they crave deeper satisfaction. It takes a lifetime of growth to become spiritually mature, but it’s a beautiful and worthwhile process, just as waiting for a tree to blossom. Be patient as you work toward maturity in Christ. - Dr. David Jeremiah Morning and Evening 

In your walk with Jesus, if you have one, there ought to be changes happening. 

The turning away from sin and worldly lusts, desires, towards thoughts and desires of God in your life. 

Dr. Jeremiah writes of a tree in a garden, in my life its been about surgeries. 

A surgical procedure is, its simplest terms, a meticulously slow and intentional job.

Something as simple as removing a splinter is still technically a surgical procedure. Things within the body obviously are the complicated types of surgery. 

What the Bible says of our relationship with Christ Jesus is that He is the Potter and we are the clay.  He's working a masterpiece in every life that comes to Him for salvation. As a Master Potter, He takes each person that comes and through time and patience rebuilds people into the Child of God that salvation brings. 

Often the surgeries are small and for lack of a better way to say it, are simple. 

I have been through some serious surgeries with Jesus in the last decade or so.  Things that were seriously painful, emotionally, to go through.  Things that I could not find anyone to assist me in going through because the surgeries were meant for me alone. 

God doesn't like inflicting pain on people, regardless of what Satan says. It's sin that's the problem and to remove it, to deal with it, takes the deft sure hands of the expert Great Physician.  

I by no means have arrived at a full understanding of why some surgeries still happen in my life.  I still imagine that in my change from who I am when the Rapture of the Church occurs to what I will be in Heaven will still be profound.  

Whether or not it's been the Spiritual Surgeries or something else, I am a far more sensitive person than I was even 10 years ago.  In easily the right circumstances I can go from ok to an emotional wreck in no time flat. 

I have, through all of this, through all these years, learned to cry out to my Savior more and more.  To be open with Him about what I am feeling.  My prayer life has been radically altered in the last 10 years.  My Bible reading has become far more consistent.  My outlook on the possessions that I have has changed.  My thoughts on what's important and what isn't have, I think, matured.  

But it's all because of where I am growing. Of what Jesus is doing in me.  I have confessed to confusion. To weariness. To grief. To any and all things to Jesus. Not comprehending things often nauseates me.  It frustrates me...and tell Him so.  

I look to passages like Psalms 23. 

The Lord is my shepherd,
I will not be in need.
He lets me lie down in green pastures;
He leads me beside quiet waters.
He restores my soul;
He guides me in the paths of righteousness
For the sake of His name.

Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,
I fear no evil, for You are with me;
Your rod and Your staff, they comfort me.
You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies;
You have anointed my head with oil;
My cup overflows.
Certainly goodness and faithfulness will follow me all the days of my life,
And my dwelling will be in the house of the Lord forever.

Note that much of this is applicable to a Spiritual Surgery. The only place David was safe to rest was in green pastures. Look at the rest. He leads, He restores, He guides, I walk through, You are with me, You prepare. Jesus’s rod n staff were a comfort to him. He knew of what they were and what they were used for.  Peace came in who he was with and trust in who he was with. 

We are learning what David knew.  I know that I am.  I struggle when it appears that I am standing in the valley of the shadow of death. Uncertainty causes me more fear than people do.  

Scripture also tells us to bear one another's burdens.  All too many within the Church are not doing this well at all and the Church turns to seek a different vision for people. God wasn't stuttering when He said what those in the Church ought to be like. Wasn't joking about the wages of sin. Wasn't making off-handed remarks that could be taken seriously or not about the drive for purity in the holiness of a life in Christ Jesus. Too many people within the Church will be terrified on the day of the Rapture to find they are still here because they never really gave their lives to Christ Jesus.  They never took God at His Word. Never believed things were as bad as they are with sin.

You and I were told to deny self, take up our own cross and follow Jesus. 

We were shown the lives of the Disciples, in that's what they did. It's how they lived with Christ Jesus. 

I am thankful and grateful to my Savior and Physician, my Potter and Lord for all that He's guided me through in life. The good things and the bad that have been a part of my life. 

I am growing in Christ in His hands because that's where I am. 

Are you?  Or would a look at your life by examination reveal more of the world in you than Jesus?