Christian growth

Sometimes I look at my walk with God and I think “What a mess! Have I really changed that much? What about this issue I have in my life! Oh gosh I am so up and down, up and down, up and down!”.

But here I was given a great analogy on Christian living…Look at this first graph of the stock exchange…

This is the NY stock exchange over ten years. There is so much fluctuating! Looks bad doesn’t it? Up and down all the time…But that’s only the last 10 years…Often we focus on our Christian growth as a hear and now thing….But look…See the stock exchange over the last 100 years….

We tend to focus on the green whereas Christian growth is the whole Christian life…You will look like a failure most of the time, but that’s pretty normal (See Paul’s life description in Romans 7!). Instead see the real growth in the long haul, and if you have the upward trend in the long haul, you can be sure that Jesus is a friend of yours.

So relax. As a friend once said to me “Be both okay with being not okay, and not okay with being not okay”. Why? Because Jesus has separated sin forever from us- for God determined to destroy the powers of sin and enable New Creation to flourish by separating sin from humanity and destroying it on the cross. In the words of Jesus on the cross: It is finished….Or as it says in the Greek “Debt paid in full”.

Now of course, if you have said “I am a Christian” for a very long time and you have seen no change ever since that day confession of faith, then I think it’s time to have a ‘DTR’ chat with God…A ‘define the relationship’ chat with God…Are you just a fan of Jesus? Or are you a follower of Jesus? Because that means a world of a difference.

Now, in the context of a sincere relationship with God, allow God’s Spirit to transform you over the lifetime and “Be both okay with being not okay, and not okay with being not okay”.