Guard and grow…
We hope that your faith will grow and that our work among you will be greatly enlarged. (2 Corinthians 10.15)
We must guard and grow the activity and exercise of our faith in God and beware that we do not take it for granted. We must care for and nourish it, or we may discover (already?!) that it will grow stale, stagnant, and second-hand. That is why there is no Biblical or historical evidence of vibrant faith in Christ that is not committed to personal spiritual growth. How does faith grow?
First, faith comes through the Word of God (Romans 10.17). Show me a woman or man who does not consistently, prayerfully, and thoughtfully study the Bible, and I will show you a person whose faith is going through the motions but whose soul is standing still. This “counterfeit soul” may tickle our spiritual ear, but it will lack the power to transform our hearts and minds so that we think God’s thoughts, perceive God’s presence, and fulfill God’s purposes.
Martin Neimoller, a German pastor imprisoned in a Nazi concentration camp because of his faith, wrote: “The Bible: what did this book mean to me during the long and weary years of solitary confinement… The Word of God was simply everything to me— comfort and strength, guidance and hope, master of my days and companion of my nights, the Bread that kept me from starvation, and the water of life that refreshed my soul. And even more: ‘solitary confinement’ ceased to be solitary.”
The Word of God is the “sword of the Spirit” (Ephesians 6.17). We who want to be filled and empowered by the Holy Spirit must first give Him something to grasp and brandish. Not even God can wield a soft noodle!
Second, faith comes from the Spirit of God (John 14.16f). It is impossible to be genuine, alive, and growing in Christ without knowing the new birth and new life the Holy Spirit brings. All that we esteem and treasure about the Christian life is cultivated within us by the Holy Spirit as we depend on Him daily for our spiritual life and health. The Holy Spirit brings the tangible manifestation of God the Father and God the Son into our lives as He steadily transforms us into the likeness of Jesus— full of “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, humility, and self-control” (Galatians 5.22ff).
There is nothing more frightening to me than a “spiritless” Christianity that has denuded itself of the very power, grace, and love of God and for others that He desires to confer upon us through His Holy Spirit. The “Spiritless Christian”— in truth, an oxymoron— exchanges a relationship for a religion, makes the Church an institution rather than a living Body and treats the Bible as a rulebook and doctrinal encyclopedia rather than the Book of Life. May God spare us from this twisted orthodoxy!
It doesn’t take much for the devil to compromise a Christian. He needs to do little more than to sow apathy towards the Holy Spirit. We say we depend on the Holy Spirit, but if there is no sound of a rushing mighty wind in our lives, then I wonder if the furnace of our soul is set to simply blow hot air instead. May God save us from a synthetic Pentecost!
It is the nature of the Christian to be a woman or man whose growth reflects both the light of God’s revelation and the water of His Holy Spirit… a plant needs both to survive and grow—and we do too.
