March 7 – Constant Growth

“Many a man claims to have unfailing love, but a faithful man who can find?”(Proverbs 20:6)

IN WORD:
Billy Graham once wrote, “Nearly everyone has a spiritual mountaintop experience on occasion. For most of us, this is how we measure our spiritual maturity. We assume that the heights we’ve reached indicate the level to which we’ve grown.
But God has a different measure of our maturity. It’s not about the peaks we’ve scaled but our consistency between them. The peaks are great; we need them for an occasional boost. But they do not define us. Learning the mind of God is not a roller coaster experience. It’s a steady climb.”
This is where many Christians go astray. We let our spiritual highs determine our self-image, and we live off their memory while neglecting daily growth. We think we’ve stocked up on our Godward obligations and that He must be satisfied with us as long as we are satisfied with ourselves. A peak experience will indeed give us a satisfying feeling for a while, and we’ll gladly dwell on it as long as we can. But while we dwell there, we can lose sight of today’s needs.
Think of the inconsistency of that. Do we feast one day and then decide that we need no more nutrition for a few weeks? No, our bodies pester us with the need for daily sustenance, no matter how well we ate the day before. Our souls are more subtle. We respond to their hunger pangs with memories of past meals and expect them to be satisfied. But sporadic love isn’t love at all, and occasional obedience is an oxymoron. True discipleship is consistent.

IN DEED:
Our God is not the One to be appeased periodically and ignored in the interims. His love for us is constant and persistent. His character never changes. His mercy is new every morning, and His compassion does not fail. If our minds are being are being renewed to be like His, isn’t consistency a logical result? The blessings of discipleship and worship are found only in their constancy. Measure yourself not by your highs and lows, but by who you are in between them.

“By perseverance the snail reached the ark.”
-Charles Spurgeon-