Wednesday 31 December 2014

5 Ideas for Spiritual Growth in 2015

If you are anything like me you are entering 2015 with a number of things you want to do or develop in this New Year. I hope that one of your desires for the new year is that you will grow in your faith. So here are five ideas to help you in your desire to grow.

  1. Switch off from the TV and the Internet. How much time do you waste on watching rubbish TV (and let's face it there is a lot of it around!) or aimlessly surfing the net. Just spend one hour a day free from these things and use the time to develop your relationship with Jesus.
  2. Learn how to feed yourself. How many times have you heard people blaming their church or their church leader etc for their failure to grow in their relationship with God. Yet it is the basic, daily, interaction with the Word of God and the presence of God in prayer that is the bedrock of our growth. If you are not growing in your faith then work out what is going wrong in your personal time with God rather than looking to blame others.
  3. Admit you need other people to grow. What I said in number 2 does not mean that you do not need other people in fact what Christians often fail to realise is how much we need to be sharing our lives with other Christians in order to grow. We need others to inspire and encourage us and we need others to challenge and correct us.
  4. Take every opportunity to serve. Jesus once said that his "food is to do the will of him who sent me". Jesus got nourishment from serving his Father. Look for opportunities to serve God and others, and you will find yourself growing in ways that will astound you.
  5. Choose to love others. 1 John 4:12 says 'No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.' You cannot learn to love God more without also learning to love other people more. The two are inseparable.
Warning: there is a basic assumption here in everything I have said above which is - growth is not about what you know but about who you are becoming and how that is displayed in what you do. Never mistake knowing more about the Bible with growing spiritually, the two do not always go hand in hand. Yes, we should develop our knowledge and understanding of scripture but that does not necessarily mean we grow in our relationship with Jesus.