4 Steps to Spiritual Maturity
By Jeff Cranston
The following is an excerpt from Pastor Jeff’s new book, “Your Greatest Adventure: Taking the Next Steps in Your Faith.” This useful guide for new believers is now available on Amazon.
I hold a belief that the key to systematic, healthy spiritual growth in someone’s life begins with their morning hours. In other words, connecting with God in the morning hours of our day can be a springboard to taking Him with us throughout the remainder of our day. (This is not always a popular opinion!)
Some reading this will agree and say, “Yes! Love those morning hours!” Others don’t believe in God before 11:00 a.m. and four cups of coffee. The entire human race can often be placed in one of two camps: morning people and non-morning people. They have very little in common, and they often marry one another.
I think it’s interesting that as you look at the life of Jesus, you find that He was just as much a night owl as a morning person. I don’t think we always see that. Maybe you grew up in church and often heard the Bible verse, “In the early morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house, and went away to a secluded place, and was praying there” (Mark 1:35). Jesus was a morning person. What we often don’t realize, however, is that He also prayed and went to be alone at night; He was a night person, too. I find that Jesus went to be by Himself to have some alone time with God in the evening just as much as He did in the morning. Jesus didn’t seem to favor one time over the other. I don’t think Jesus was a morning person or a non-morning person; I think Jesus was more of a God-person.
Consider the following action steps that you can take daily to awaken intimacy with God and recognize His presence in your life. When that happens, spiritual growth occurs. Spiritual growth is not a program, or a system, or a plan, as much as it is simply spending time alone with God.
Action Step 1—Praise Him!
In the initial moments immediately upon waking up, take a few moments to turn your heart to the worship of God and rejoice in who He is. Moses wrote, “Acknowledge and take to heart this day that the Lord is God in heaven above and on the earth below. There is no other” (Deuteronomy 4:39).
The Bible says to acknowledge that this day. The acknowledgment of your allegiance to Him is a great way to begin your day. Think this through with me: we ought to begin our day by lying in bed! This concept may be delectable to you, and you’re thinking, “I can do that! I like this approach already.” This is not, however, about grabbing some additional shuteye; this is the discipline of being still for a few moments, which can be a challenge for both morning and non-morning people.
Why is it a good idea to begin our day with words of worship? Words of worship immediately place you in the mode of recognizing God’s presence in your life. You start your day by thinking, “God, I want to recognize who You are because as soon as I step out of bed, I want to be on track with You.”
This one step alone will help you to become a better person, a better parent, a better spouse, a better child, a better employee, a better Christ-follower.
Action Step 2—Recall What He Has Done For You
The Psalmist wrote, “May the Lord be praised, for he has wonderfully shown his faithful love to me . . .”(Psalm 31:21a) We need a daily reminder of God’s love. Some people don’t think they need to be reminded of God’s love every day; I would question that. I think you do. I need to be reminded that God is crazy about me, that He loves me no matter what, and that I’m not just a number on this planet. I need that because I will face people in my day who are going to have negative feelings about me.
One of the great ways to defend yourself against that certainty is to be reminded of your worth in God’s eyes. Perhaps you do that while still in bed or perhaps as you go about your process of getting ready in the morning. We all need morning-hour reminders:
• That reminder that God loves you.
• That reminder that you are created in the image of God.
• That reminder that you are fearfully and wonderfully made.
• That reminder that the author of the universe loves you so much that He sent His Son Jesus to die on the cross in your place.
Action Step 3—Open God’s Word
The Psalmist wrote, “I have hidden Your word in my heart, that I might not sin against You” (Psalm 119:11) and, “Your word is a lamp for my feet and a light for my path” (Psalm 119:105).
This is the action step where you take some time with the Bible, and you hide God’s Word in your heart. Hide it there so that God’s Word will guide you and speak to you, so that you can recall it throughout the day. It will guide the way that you live in a dark world.
If you are just getting started reading the Bible, I encourage you to begin in a wonderful book of the New Testament: The Gospel of John. Start there and read to the end of the New Testament. Beginning with John means that you will begin your Bible reading with the life of Jesus, and then you’ll get the history of the church in the book of Acts and some practical faith teaching in the book of Romans.
Now that you know where to start (John’s Gospel), just how do you start? What if you started with two minutes today and tomorrow and the next day and so on? What if you decided “For two minutes a day, I’m going to read to develop an appetite”? Those two minutes may quickly turn into five or ten minutes.
Action Step 4—Talk to Him
Take a few moments in the day’s initial hours to reveal your thoughts, hurts, cares, and plans to God in prayer. Similar to Bible reading, please don’t get hung up on the amount of time you need to pray. But I do want to encourage you to take some time during your morning to focus on a connection with God.
When you pray in the morning, you are simply jump-starting a conversation that will continue throughout your day. That was eye-opening to me when I realized that. I wasn’t just getting one more thing done and crossing it off my list. I was beginning a conversation that would carry on throughout the day. Perhaps as you drive to work or school imagine Jesus in the seat next to you and talk to Him. As you move throughout your day, share with Him about how things are going. Share your joys and your burdens with Him. The conversation you carry on with Him throughout your day starts in the morning hours.
If you want to grow spiritually mature as a follower of Jesus, then you need to arrive at the point where, even if it’s just for a few minutes, you check in and connect with God. In doing so, you begin the day with Him and carry that relationship with Him throughout your entire day.
Jeff Cranston is the lead pastor of LowCountry Community Church in Bluffton, S.C.