Growing Pains

I have been going through a period in my life where I struggle with what can only be described as growing pains. Remember as a child when you’d complain to your parents that your legs hurt, especially at night? Their inevitable reply was that you would ok, it was only growing pains. Not a very satisfactory answer to a kid with hurtful legs but there was some sense of well being in knowing that at least it meant you were getting bigger.

Spiritually, we have growth spurts, too. It’s rather like the shedding of an old skin; somewhat snake like. To allow the growth to take place, we must shed that fleshly nature, layer after layer. As with the growing pains of our youth, this can be a painful process. Not always but decidedly from time to time. Our flesh hangs on to the old familiar ways with tenacity.

When I become aware that I’m dealing with spiritual growing pains again, I have found solace in a book called Joshua. The following paragraph comes from the book. I’ve removed character names and references but left the meat of content:

….We all have to be content with slow progress….Human beings are like plants. They grow in stages and those stages can’t be accelerated. In due time plants bear their fruit, and with human beings it is much the same. In the proper time and at the proper pace we grow into what God intends us to become. Events take place and strangers cross our paths that force us to think. All these things God uses to teach us and suggest a different way of understanding things. So we grow, gradually, imperceptible, under the subtle guidance of God’s own spirit. Being conscious of our success is not important. The left hand shouldn't know what the right hand is doing……

I have read this book at least six times; not as substitute for the Bible but, for me, another reflective source of how I aspire to be more Christ-like. When I am discontent with my personal spiritual growth, unhappy with myself, reading this book helps me align my thoughts back in a more proper order. God’s order, not mine, be done; the cry of my heart.

God shows me mercy but it seems I sometimes have difficulty showing myself any. I’m sharing all this to say, beating yourself up when you don’t feel you measure up is not a part of God’s growing plan. We are never going to be exactly where we aspire to be as long as we walk around in human flesh. It’s the process of the growing, the removal of our old self, the renewing of our minds that is the constant task before us. If we do our part, God is faithful to do His part and grow, we will.