Philippians -- Part 2 -- Growing

Growing

I pray that your love will overflow more and more, and that you will keep on
growing in knowledge and understanding. For I want you to understand what really
matters, so that you may live pure and blameless lives until the day of Christ’s
return. May you always be filled with the fruit of your salvation—the righteous
character produced in your life by Jesus Christ*—for this will bring much glory
and praise to God.
Philippians 1:9-11 (NLT)

One of the reasons I love the book of Philippians is that the author, Paul, balances the beauty and freedom of grace (that God accepts us even though we are broken) with the awareness that grace doesn't give us a reason to continue in harmful behaviours towards ourselves or others. In this passage, he highlights his strong desire for the people to continue growing in three key areas of our lives: Love, Knowledge, and Understanding.

Growth is an interesting term -- how does one grow? Does a tree focus all its energies on getting bigger and taller? Does a baby have to invest energy in thinking about how to grow and mature?

Having kids has taught me that growth happens -- simply by being exposed to the right environment. A healthy environment with the right balance of nutrition and exercise and a healthy dose of safe relationships allows a baby to grow and become a healthy toddler. Then as we get more mature, we need to become more intentional about growing -- as adults, we know that if we don't pursue growth, we can stagnate and become fat and lazy and bored.

In spiritual matters, I think it is too easy to think that growth comes from knowledge and understanding -- the more we learn, the more we grow. But this is not the truth. Knowledge doesn't produce spiritual growth any more than reading a book on physics makes you a physicist.

Growth happens when we experience truth. Science is all about the experiment -- creating an experience that tests a hypothesis so that we can gain knowledge and understanding. It is validated through observation and application.

In spiritual matters, the process isn't all that different -- except that we are dealing with things that we all know exist, but that really can't be explained in material ways. It's like love.

You can study about love all you want. You can read about it and write about it and talk about it, but unless you have really experienced it, it is pretty meaningless. The thing that makes the arts so valuable is that they reach out and touch our experiences and our feelings and reveal and confirm truth about them -- teaching us about ourselves and our world. Art is an experiment aimed at creating an experience of the emotions -- great art gives us new insight and understanding of our emotions and our relationships -- but only when we experience it personally. That's why some movies make such a lasting impression when we watch them. We share and experience with the characters in the movie and learn about ourselves and our world.

The same is true with an encouter with Jesus. Encounters with Jesus reveal truth to us. This truth revealed becomes knowledge and understanding. The more we experience Jesus (through worship,study, life, challenges, struggles, doubts, and fears) the more we are able to understand ourselves, our relationships and our world. As we allow a relationship with Jesus to have greater and greater influence in our lives, the Spirit of Jesus translates that knowledge into character -- expressed as a deepening love for God and people -- an overflowing love that leads us to desire to live a pure life that brings glory to God.

Thought for Today...

If you don't find yourself loving God and loving others more -- don't try harder to love -- rather -- spend more time encountering Jesus and let His love transform you.