The Essential Elements for Spiritual Growth

Therefore leaving the principles of the doctrine of Christ, let us go on unto perfection;
not laying again the foundation of repentance from dead works, and of faith toward God
Hebrews 6:1

Recently, while I was out with my family, we had the opportunity to meet a mother and her son. The boy was considerably older than our youngest son, yet in some ways far behind developmentally. Although each child develops at a different pace, every parent desires to know that their child is progressing in their development. The same is true in the Christian life. Every believer will grow in grace and knowledge of Lord at a different pace than other believers. The key, however, is that every believer should be progressing in their spiritual life. The writer of Hebrews understood this and therefore challenged Christians to “go on unto perfection”. The word perfection is a word that speaks about one level of maturity. For many Christians in the early church their growth had been stunted by the afflictions that came upon them in the form of persecution. Instead of demonstrating maturity (being able to handle the meat of God’s Word), the Christians were spiritually immature and in need that someone else feed them the milk of God’s Word. Over the course of the next several devotionals, we will look at the essential elements for spiritual growth. The question for us today is, are we developing in our Christian growth or are we far behind developmentally? God’s desire for all His children is that each one of us would progress in our spiritual development. Let us go on unto spiritual growth.

Pastor Jeffrey Bateman
First Baptist Church