Green and Growing

            A couple that we know are missionaries and as is usual missionaries, they sometimes travel with a variety of things in their luggage. This couple were traveling to a country in the Caribbean to do some work there and had an extra suitcase packed with flannel wordless books. If you remember, Child Evangelism Fellowship came up with the idea of the Wordless Book for its work with children. The pages have no words on them but are just colored pages. There is the yellow, black, red, white and the outside binding of green. Upon arrival at their hotel, they were setting the bags out of the taxi and when they turned around, the suitcase with the wordless books was gone. Someone had stolen it in that brief moment. We could only imagine the surprise on the faces of the thief when the case was opened as they looked at the pile of wordless books. They probably didn't get the message that the books were intended to send. Second Peter 3:18 says, “But grow in grace, and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. To him be glory both now and for ever. Amen.”

          The green page of the wordless book is the last to be explained in the presentation of the Gospel to children, or to anyone for anyone. The green page is green because there are many things that are green in this world and they are mostly things that grow such as grass, trees, weeds, many vegetables and such. After explaining the first four pages, you instruct the listener to be actively involved in spiritual growth in the days, weeks and years to come. You might say that it is just plain basic discipleship. We often remark that when a person is physically not growing anymore, they are “stunted” in their growth or the development of the physical body. The same can be said of believers who just sit down and quite growing spiritually. You can sometimes hear a person give a testimony of what God is doing in their life and it is always the same testimony and always refers back to their salvation experience. That is great but isn't God doing anything else in their life? What did God do for you yesterday? How did God work in your life last week? Is God doing something in your life since you were saved? The verse for today exhorts us to “grow in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ...” How are you going to do that? You can do it by “growing” spiritually through the practice of God's Word. You can hear the Word, read the Word, study the Word, memorize the Word and meditate on the Word. All of these methods are mentioned in the Scriptures themselves. A failure to do these things will result in being spiritually stunted in our growth. When the green things in the world don't receive the right things to make them grow such as water and sunlight, they slowly wither and die and eventually turn brown. There are too many believers in the world who have come to the same end as their spiritual growth has stopped and they are in a process of withering up. As Peter remind his readers so many years ago, may we also be exhorted to continue in our spiritual growth. There is always room for growth especially in the spiritual life. Praise God today that He continues to feed us through His Word and His working in our lives.