A little over six months into My Grace Walk, and just when I think I have a handle on it, Father reminds me that I don't know anything.
When we tend to try to rely on our own knowledge, we get spanked, so to speak.
I am just thankful that I read the book Messy Spirituality by Mike Yaconelli. All of my Christian life I've been told that if we aren't growing then we're moving backwards. That Spiritual growth is linear and should be upward. Mike's book has shown me that growth is not inear. If we were to chart it, it would look like a sawtooth.
I beleive that the linear approach does a disservice to the believer in that we feel guilty when we see our growth as a sawtooth and not a straight line. When in actuallity,that when we are in the valleys, we are still growing.
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4 comments:
I too am learning that it's ok to mess up. If we take a closer look at the biblical characters, none of them were perfect including Abraham, Moses, many other OT figures, disciples, the list in Heb 11 etc.
Freedom always comes with the risk of messing up but the good news is that God is still with us when we mess up.
Keep growing in grace, brother!
I once told a pastor of mine that my spiritual life resembled the waves of the ocean and tides surging in and then retreating. He assured me that this was not what it was supposed to be. I believed him then and just tried even harder - only to fail. Now I know better. I am trusting myself to know what it is really like and again I am finding the ebb and flow is a normal progression in all relationships as well as mine with the Father.
We as humans have such a time line perspective that I think God does not have.
My choir director used to offer a telephone cord (the old-fashioned, spiraled kind) as an image for learning. We weren't always moving forward, but we were always making progress.
I'd never thought about applying such an image to spiritual growth, but I may now. It's certainly an encouraging reminder. Thanks!
Yeah it can indeed be messy! The Potter is shaping and molding, and sometimes trimming, and sometimes cutting off large chunks, to form the clay just as He wants is.
I shudder to think what my growth chart would look like! Up, down, back, forth, diagonal, curved, left, right, steps forward, steps backward, north, south, bent, straight, angled, entangled, rise, fall... And that's just this morning! LOL :)
I'm so glad we do grow in grace, but the church has got to get this squeaky clean polished version of growth out of their mindsets!
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