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Bible Studies Faith & Spiritual Growth
Growing in Faith
Christian maturity is slow, ordinary, and mostly unspectacular. What growth looks like, and what actually produces it.
Christian maturity in the New Testament is slow, corporate, and mostly undramatic. This study is about what it looks like and what actually produces it.
What you’ll explore
- 01 Growth as the normal expectation
- 02 What maturity looks like in Scripture
- 03 The difference between knowing and doing
- 04 Why growth is usually slow
- 05 Other people as the means of it
- 06 Seasons of dryness
- 07 Measuring yourself against Christ, not against others
Growth as the normal expectation
Read 2 Peter 1:5-8; Colossians 2:6-7
Peter gives a chain — faith, virtue, knowledge, self-control, steadfastness, godliness, affection, love — and says to make every effort to add them. Paul talks about being rooted and built up, which are both processes. Standing still is not presented anywhere as an option.
What maturity looks like in Scripture
Read Galatians 5:22-23; Philippians 1:9-11
The fruit of the Spirit is a list of characteristics, not achievements: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Paul prays that the Philippians’ love would abound more and more, with knowledge and discernment. Notice that none of it is measured in activity.
The difference between knowing and doing
Read James 1:22-25; Matthew 7:24-27
James compares hearing without doing to looking in a mirror and forgetting your own face. Jesus’ two builders hear the same words; the difference is who acts on them. It is possible to become steadily better informed and no more mature.
Why growth is usually slow
Read Mark 4:26-29; Hebrews 5:12-14
Jesus compares the kingdom to seed that grows while the farmer sleeps and he does not know how. Hebrews rebukes readers who still need milk, which tells you the writer expected time to have done more. Both assume growth happens on a timescale you cannot force.
Other people as the means of it
Read Ephesians 4:11-16; Proverbs 27:17
Paul’s picture of growing up into Christ is explicitly a body growing together, each part working. Iron sharpens iron. Almost nothing in the New Testament about maturity is addressed to an individual working alone.
Seasons of dryness
David writes of a dry and weary land where there is no water — as a description of his own soul, in a psalm about seeking God. Dry seasons are recorded, not explained away. Keeping the habits when they feel like nothing is the historic Christian counsel, and it is unexciting on purpose.
Measuring yourself against Christ, not against others
Read 2 Corinthians 10:12; Philippians 3:12-14
Paul says those who compare themselves with one another are without understanding. Of himself he says he has not obtained it and presses on. Comparison produces either complacency or despair, and neither is growth.
Questions to sit with
- Which fruit of the Spirit is most obviously growing in you? Which is not?
- What have you learned recently and not acted on?
- Who in your church actually knows you well enough to sharpen you?
Every passage in this study
Go deeper
Where this connects
This study sits inside a larger story. Read the passages above in their own books, and follow the thread back through Scripture as a whole.