The Bible talks a lot about growing.  The church grew, the gospel grew, believers’ faith grew, and God made (and still makes!) things grow.  Even science tells us that healthy things grow.  One of the best questions you can ask yourself is, “Am I GROWING in the things that are most important to me?“

We have become arrogant the moment we stop seeking growth.  By ignoring growth and progress, we are essentially saying that we have reached the pinnacle and have no need for anything more (which was the claim of the church of Laodicea in Revelation 3, which God wanted to spit out of His mouth because of how “wretched, pitiful, poor, blind, and naked” they were).  If you are not progressing you are most likely regressing…there is no middle ground.

But we must also be on guard from putting too much emphasis on progress and not enough emphasis on purpose.  We have to know WHY we are growing before we can best answer HOW to grow in the greatest way.  And if we fail to remember the purpose of what we’re doing, no amount of progress will ever be satisfactory…because we are so focused on the mileage gauge that we miss the fuel gauge, and the pit crew waiting to fix things up, and we may even miss the finish line.  If you never ask yourself why you’re doing something, you’ll end up doing a lot of things for no reason at all.

We cannot allow our progress to overshadow our purpose.  Progress may be the gas pedal, but purpose is the gas, and if we never return to the “why” of something, the “how” becomes empty and irrelevant.