image by Frances Gunn from Unsplash Wet sand between my toes, committing ravages on my nail polish. The grumbling roar of the sea and the waves torpid from a recent downpour, dull and heavy like folds of carpet. A buried beer can, dented in half. The lightest drizzle of rain every time the wind changed. Wading into the water, squinting, feeling the sand shifting uneasily under your feet, roiling around your toes and heaving like a living animal. The silence as you stand there, waiting, tense yet calm, keenly alive to the wetness of the water soaking into your clothes, the blurred faces watching you on the shore. The words, sounding strangely distant and hollow with the sea pounding in the background, and the quick gulp of air before you go under, feeling the water gush upwards to meet you... I had the honour of attending a friend's baptism yesterday. When I was sitting down writing a note for her, I found myself thinking. What was the one thing I wanted to tell her based on my own experience, all these years since I was first converted, since my own baptism nine years ago? As a new believer--if my own experience isn't unique--you'd be full of enthusiasm and determination. I'm going to do my best to please God! I feel immature and ignorant about many things but I'm going to improve myself, and grow spiritually at a tremendous rate, put myself on a regime like one of those straining guys working the benchpress in the gymn like his life depends on it. I'm going to go for all the prayer meetings and Bible studies and talks, and show everyone that even though I'm young and inexperienced, I'm going to do everything that I can, I'm going to do everything right, I'm going to do my best. DO. I think we're so hung up on spiritual growth because we feel our need for it so acutely, at this point of time particularly. We feel so unworthy and unprepared compared to the other more mature Christians we know, we feel that even though we've taken the big step to ask for baptism it truly is just the beginning. And we go about dealing with this in the only way we're used to, the way we use for everything else in life. Work hard! Make a list of things you need to do in order to get there, and make sure the heck you plough your way down that list like a steamroller. Keep doing it and you're bound to get somewhere someday. Practice makes perfect and all that. And everyone around you encourages that, gives you endless lists of must-read Christian books, theology courses, Bible study plans, Bible study apps, devotional material, talks to attend, and so on. These are good things. They are indeed tools to help us grow spiritually. But if we attack them with the same formulaic mentality that we have when we attack practice papers, drills, and mock exams, we're misusing them. As a new believer, you face a dizzying spread of all the things you could do, all the helpful, useful, and most of all reassuringly concrete things which seem to promise direct spiritual growth, like protein powder or a shampoo advertisement or the latest teeth whitening product. Use this consistently for ____ time and see the results! Looking back at myself, I remember how I pushed myself to accomplish many things with a mentality like this, and proud of my success, lapsed into complacency that belied a lack of real spiritual growth. It was the things which I didn't take pride in, the things which I didn't see as earning me any merit, which most helped me grow spiritually. A Christian book which I read because I felt drawn to the topic, not because it was one of those "must-reads for Christians" on my list. A random talk with a friend. Hearing about someone's conversion. Seeing someone's relationship with Christ. Having someone tell me they had been praying for me for years. Going through several of the greatest hurts and heartaches I'd experienced as yet. Thinking through things which had troubled and disturbed me, despite being afraid to. Finding that the sources I had always relied on for comfort and peace failed me, being forced to rethink what it meant to find those things in God. Realizing more and more what it meant--practically--specifically--personally--to live out faith, to live out in application who God was. The connection between His attributes and my life. These things were what helped me grow. Understanding Him better, finding new reasons to love Him more, learning to love Him more--learning, because that requires putting away the idols which make this so difficult... Don't get too caught up in the "do." Our purpose is not proving to God that we're worthy of our salvation. Not giving Him new reasons to love us. Not making ourselves more like the image of the ideal Christian in our mind. We're trying so hard to grow spiritually, but we often fall into the trap of doing things for--about--Him, rather than actually knowing Him. Though "do's" are important and helpful, we need to be careful about the attitude with which we approach them. It's so easy to make them our idol. To focus on doing as many of them as we can, under the mistaken assumption that they give us some sort of merit in God's eyes, or somehow automatically improve our spiritual state. When we get to heaven, how much of that matters? What is heaven, anyway? Being with God, in perfect unity and reconciliation. Are we, therefore, preparing ourselves for that--in the best, happiest way--? We think we know, but it's so easy to get increasingly narrow-minded, to lose focus... It's so hard to discern that line, however. Like someone with their significant other-- you don't take her shopping to make her happy, you do it because you want to see what styles she likes, and what colours she prefers. You don't watch a soccer match with him because you feel obliged to show some token interest, but because you want to see why he loves it so much. You do it because you want to know them better, so you can love them better. Let's take this mentality instead towards all those "do" things.
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