We are all creatures of habit. We usually get up at the same hour, eat the same breakfast, make the same drive to our place of work and listen to the same radio station during our commute. We face endless repetition in our daily routines. That’s just life. While it may not seem like it at times, there is real maturity and growth in being faithful and responsible day by day, week by week, year by year.
Many Christians measure their spiritual lives by the way they feel and they are convinced they are not growing spiritually. They regularly attend church, hear God’s Word preached, read their Bibles, and diligently pray. But they feel that they’re not making much progress. One saint told me, “I used to weep easily before the Lord but now I’m not as tenderhearted as I once was. I’m simply not growing.”
The apostle Paul assured the Thessalonians that they had learned how to walk pleasing before the Lord. “You received from us how you ought to walk and to please God” (1Thessalonians 4:1). Paul had begun with this exhortation: “That you should abound more and more” (same verse).
To abound means to increase. Paul was saying, “You’ve been sitting under sound gospel preaching so you have a solid foundation beneath you. Therefore, you ought to be increasing in grace in all things — in your faith, your knowledge, your love.”
God’s secret to spiritual strength is found in Isaiah 30:15: “In returning [to Me] and rest you shall be saved; in quietness and confidence shall be your strength.”
Whenever we receive a great deliverance from God, we thank him with our whole heart. And then we make him this sincere promise, “Lord, from now on, I won’t go anywhere or do anything until I inquire of you. I’m going to pray about everything.” But when a new crisis arises, we think we can rely on our old plans and successes and we end up taking matters into our own hands.
The Word of God reveals how God delivers us from the pursuit of sin in our lives.
“His divine power has given to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of Him who called us by glory and virtue, by which have been given to us exceedingly great and precious promises, that through these you may be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust” (2 Peter 1:3-4).
God’s people have an important question facing them in these last days. Do you believe God is able to see you through while the foundations of the world are shaking? Satan is roaring like a maddened lion, and everywhere there is confusion, violence, and uncertainty.
Those who trust in the Lord, fixed and established in their confidence in him, will stand still and see God’s salvation — with hearts and minds totally at peace. They will enjoy rest, untouched by violence and fear, and sleep unafraid of conditions around them, rejoicing in hope!
The moment we surrender to Christ and commit ourselves to absolute obedience to him, a marvelous power is released in our inner man. Fear of what men can do to us vanishes. There is no more dread of God or hell or retribution. And instead of hurt, pain, trouble and anguish, the Spirit of God floods us with new light, fresh hope, great joy, glorious peace, and abounding faith.
In considering the issue of increasing our passion for Christ, we must look at Christ’s teaching on humility. “Whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted” (Matthew 23:12). Jesus has just called out the Pharisees for their proud behavior (23:5-7). They know the Scriptures and can interpret the Word to the masses, but their own lives do not measure up.
We see a glorious picture of grace in God’s intervention in Sodom when he literally grabbed Lot and his family and pulled them out of the city. “While he lingered, the men took hold of his hand, his wife’s hand, and the hands of his two daughters, the Lord being merciful to him, and they brought him out and set him outside the city” (Genesis 19:16).