a vibrant faith=a growing faith…
We hope that your faith will grow and that our work among you will be greatly enlarged. (2 Corinthians 10.15)
Guard your relationship with God, and do not take it for granted. Care and nourish it, or you may discover (already?!) that it will grow stale, stagnant, and second-hand. That is why there is no evidence— Biblical or historical— of vibrant faith in Christ that is not committed to personal spiritual growth. This begs us to ask the question: how does faith grow?
First, faith comes through the Word of God (Romans 10.17). Show me a man or woman who does not consistently, prayerfully, and thoughtfully study the Bible and I will show you a person whose body is going through the motions but whose soul is standing still. This is “virtual Christianity” that 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 life that 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 each day for our spiritual life and health. The Holy Spirit brings the tangible manifestation of God 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 power, grace, and love of God 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 such 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. Vance Havner observed:
“Have I ever bowed to the absolute sovereignty of the Holy Spirit? Do I lie to Him, grieve Him, quench Him? Do I regard my body as His temple? Have I ever been filled with the Holy Spirit? … The trouble with us today is that we say we are depending on the Holy Spirit, but we are actually so wired up with our own devices that if the fire does not fall from heaven, we can turn on a switch and produce false fire of our own. If there is no sound of a mighty rushing wind, our furnace is all set to blow hot air instead. 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. Fellow saint, a plant needs both to survive and grow—and so do we…
