Spiritual Growth

  As a child, it is amazing how many things that my mother considered to be wrong, would stunt your growth.  One of them was whether or not I would eat the crust on the bread.  If I would not eat it, then my growth would be stunted.  That, of course, meant that I would be forever short in stature.  People often come up with a list of things that will supposedly stunt your growth.  The list is usually just so that the child will do what it doesn't want to do.  Spiritually speaking, there is one thing that will stunt your spiritual growth.  It is refraining to read and study the Word of God.  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."   Peter's epistle here reminds us that we are indeed commissioned to grow.  The Lord wants us to grow and this growth is determined by how much we know about Him.  This means that we will take various opportunities to be in God's Word.  As you may remember, the group called, "The Navigators," had an illustration of a hand gripping a Bible.  The more fingers that were wrapped around the Bible, the harder it would be for someone to pull the Bible out of their hand.  The five fingers were to signify five different ways of getting God's Word into the life of a believer.  Those ways were:  Hearing, Reading, Studying, Memorizing and Meditating.  If the believer would do these five things in regard to the Word of God, then the Word would be implanted into their lives.  We have found it convenient to probably do the first two of those methods.  We can use tapes to "hear" the Word of God and then we can find maybe 15 minutes a day to read a portion of the Scripture.  But, do we get involved in the actual "study, memorizing and meditating" on the Scripture?  These require more time and our time seems to be chewed up by other things.  We have meeting with others, we have exercise classes or just time blocks that have been committed to exercise because we have eaten too much, and affairs to attend because of our social commitments.  As you can see, it is difficult to maintain a time of study, memorizing and meditation.  What will happen?  Oh, it probably won't be disastrous, but you will find that your spiritual life will be stunted.    It will do a lot more to stunt your growth than not eating the crust on your bread.  Praise God today that He has given you the instructions that you need in order to achieve an increase in your spiritual stature.