Knowing The God Of Increase: a practical approach to an ever increasing life

Jerry L Martin August 16, Reply. There will be more about evil later in the book. May God bless you and guide you with wisdom and love! Charles February 6, Reply. I was having a good day hanging with my friends and everything going pretty swell. When I went home I was confronted with a problem that I had been dealing with in my personal life. I always prayed to god about it, but in a simple matter of just words, not going into depth about how I felt on the matter. This day the problem really got to me and I had to speak to someone about it. I went over to my couch and started praying silently to myself.

As I continued praying the problem just started to break me down, I started praying harder and harder and harder till I was out of words. That although he never speaks directly to me that I need a sense of direction, that I needed help at probably one of the lowest points I had faced in my life. I let the feeling stay for a bit, and then it got so overwhelming I had to open my eyes and look around, I strongly felt my chances seeing something out of the norm would be good.

I opened them and nothing was there. Although the sun outside beaming through my window, was so bright and had a very bright white color to it. Usually my prayers are the same short with emotion but never really any true passion. I was born Jehovah witness, which gave me the opportunity later in life to leave the religion because of how strict it was.

I am familiar with God. But this incident was different, what I felt was different. Sometimes you have to force your mind to believe you felt something, but no this was physical and mental. Never had I felt it before in a prayer. Almost as if someone told me they were listening. I struggle whether to call myself crazy or embrace and invest in what I felt. Very confusing episode in my life, as far as what to take on it. If that was truly Him or if it was something, I truly hope it comes back because there are so many things I need answers for in my life.

Jerry L Martin February 10, Reply. What you have described, Charles, is what it is like to feel the presence of God. We are not alone. God is with us and on our side. No, this was probably the sanest moment of your life. Embrace and invest in what you felt? Yes, it is a blessing, one you should cherish and remember and keep close to your heart.

My sense is that God will almost certainly help you, but help may come in a form you do not expect. You may not even recognize it as help. It might come from someone around you or within reach — a friend, a minister, a counselor, or just a stranger. It could require that you reach out for their help. Pay close attention if you sense that God is pointing you in a direction. Be well, my friend, and God bless! Matthew Foster February 1, Reply. Jerry, reflection on your experience of hearing God speak to you reminds me of others with similar accounts, and both lead me to consider a variety of questions.

Various people in history have said God spoke to them, and now a friend of mine, whose sanity and rationality I do not doubt, is one of them. What am I to make of what he reports—and of what others reported long ago as well? I notice that as long as I am in the majority who has not had such an experience, I can comfortably view your and their accounts as curious, puzzling specimens of abnormal human experience. But even a brief look at what more than a few people have written at this website indicates that there are more like you than I imagined—yikes! What should we make of such experiences?

What do you make of your own experience, Jerry, and how do you compare it to other such cases in history? You have written eloquently of how you accepted the authenticity of what you experienced. But I know you acknowledge that such an acceptance is not the end of reflection on what has happened to you. Is God really speaking to you and to all of these people in history? What about the ancient prophets of the Hebrew scriptures, like Isaiah and Jeremiah, Amos and Hosea—did they really hear what they wrote down? Or did they invent it and deceive us? Or were they trying to give expression to what they thought God would say if God were to speak in a human language?

But then why go to such lengths to describe a seemingly independent source of these thoughts? Whatever we conclude about them, should it also guide how we view other famous cases? What did Muhammad really hear or experience? Or are none of them what they appear to be, and they should all be demythologized, deconstructed somehow? While these two appear to be mutually exclusive, is it possible in any sense for both to be true?

Are there any additional possibilities? Of course, any of us can choose to ponder these questions, and to many of us they may seem ultimately irresolvable. Thus, Jerry, you have an opportunity most of us do not have, to engage in an internal dialogue—between the mind which has had these experiences of God speaking, and the mind that can investigate, as logically and as objectively as one can, what these experiences mean.

Nor do I myself think one must take such a position, although I acknowledge that on this I can only speak as an outsider. On the contrary, it seems to me, to be a human being is to be thrown into a life where we cannot avoid such questions, a life in which these questions assail and also intrigue us—and, yes, may also tempt with distracting digressions as well as enlighten with new understanding. To take one example of this kind of comparing and testing: Muhammad said God told him there would be no subsequent messengers after him.

Who is right, and why? But perhaps neither claim should be judged by whether it corresponds to an objective reality, which in any case seems impossible to resolve empirically. Alternatively and this, for now, is perhaps my response to my own inquiry here , we could interpret such claims through an hypothesis about how all humans are quite capable of finding within ourselves many voices. All these voices give us information about the world, the whole of reality, and, simultaneously, information by means of which we try to navigate our way in that reality. We may wish that the investigation of such experiences could end by telling us whose claims are correct and whose are false.

I suspect we all cling or one of the voices within us clings! And obviously, sometimes we must, with fear and trembling, make such judgments about the more mundane, internal conflicts we all experience. And no experience excuses any of us, as either subjects or observers, from the tasks of life and the challenges of being faithful to God as best we can understand God.

While that conclusion may be disappointing, there is at least one respect in which it leaves me glad: It preserves Jerry, certainly in my mind and I hope in his, from the burden of somehow having to prove he is neither weirdly gifted nor bizarrely deficient, and lets him continue to be himself—and just my friend. Most religious people sometimes sense the divine presence.

It may be a moment of inner prompting or warning, similar to the voice of conscience. It may be a moment of worship or meditation, of tragedy or joy, of profound loss or miraculous rescue. It may occur in the I-Thou of love and family and friendship, or in appreciation of the mighty frame of the universe, as we sense the divine auspices. Or, for some of us, it comes in a voice or vision. The voice and vision are not strange, separate categories.

They are merely at one end of a spectrum of ways the divine reality manifests itself. If you were an atheist, all this would make no sense, of course, but this is a conversation between friends. Can such experiences be mistaken? Human beings are fallible. Mistakes can range from mental derangement to mistaking the thrill of seeing the Grand Canyon for a burst of the divine. How do you test the spirits, the voice, the divine prompting or warning? There are two places to check, the inward and the outward. Was the person on drugs or prone to fantasy?

Does the person have a fanatical desire to believe that God is speaking to him or her, or an ego gratification at stake? When I felt a swell of pride at hearing from God, the line immediately went dead. Meditation and devotional moments can be helpful. If it is telling me that it is okay to cheat on my wife, it is probably not God speaking. Or to jump off the cliff.

Even Jesus rejected such devilish dares. Did the ancient prophets actually hear God speak? It is much more likely if you believe in God at all than that they took the liberty to attribute to God merely what they themselves thought. Look at the circumstances. More often than not, they were quite surprised to hear God speaking to them and resisted the assignment God gave them. What of all the other prophets and seers? Here we have to exercise spiritual discernment, and it is not easy. Because of my own experience, I have a bias in favor of giving some credence to their reports, but always keeping in mind that we are all fallible.

In my own case, it is clear that God speaks to me in my own language and using my own concepts which are sometimes challenged. God answers questions as I have framed them. Someone else would have asked different questions. Later in the book, I am told to read the ancient scriptures of the various religions and ask about them. I am told that the divine reality has many sides, both personal and transpersonal, both immanent and transcendent. One reason the various revelations differ is that the divine reality manifested different sides of itself to different peoples, and I am told why.

I am told what parts they got right and what parts less so. What status should a reader give to what God has told me? First, I am fallible as were the seers and prophets. Second, I was told explicitly that God was not giving me any authority. Well, it certainly could be the voice of God, as I believe it is, so I think you and other readers should take it seriously. You should read it with an open heart and mind, guided more by your own spiritual attunement than by more distant doubts and worries, and take in those parts that speak to you, as if you alone were their intended audience. I have not answered all your questions, Matthew, and I would welcome further discussion.

Maple Green Beans January 17, Reply. I really enjoy you sharing your message, THE message, because I do believe their is one unifying message. There is, a for lack of better terms, a harmonic expression that is in all living things; it permeates all that we are and every living thing around us, and we are part of that too.

When we have something to tell someone,we communicate through words. To be hear, which is a vibration. To truly feel the greatest story ever told.

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In the Bible it says in the beginning was the Word. So powerful that it caused men to write IT down…for what? What could possibly be so important that men were moved to put what they were experiencing down onto paper. The energy is always there because it comes through us, not to us. A lot of people are waiting for that perfect AH! Its like waiting for the phone to ring rather than picking it up. Waiting like a lover. For me, we were taught trinity, 3 in 1. He comes with a lot to share and it is unlimited: Wisdom, understanding, counsel, fortitude, knowledge, piety and awe!

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I think the main thing is to be at peace with the idea that there is a higher power, that we are NOT the be all end all and that we are connected to every single living thing…when you get plugged into that, it really is a WOW! Look forward to reading more! Jerry L Martin February 4, Reply. Yes, waiting for that perfect Ah, an undeniable epiphany, a clear communication like, as you put it, the phone ringing, is a mistake.

Yes I have true experience with God, in the year ,I had a major accident. I was in I. U at that time I did not know how many days had passed. I was unconscious there— all of a sudden I was conscious and I felt there is God near me who saved my life fractures,14 blood bottles and many operations and fully 9 months rest. Jerry L Martin October 20, Reply. The worst experience of your life became the best. And, to this day, you know with palpable certitude that God is with you.

I pray that you will always be blessed in this way. I used to be a person of the world, wallowing in the pleasures and desires of the flesh and laziness. I would sleep with my girlfriend, masturbate, watch pornography, engage in sexual talks, flirt with other women, lust after many others, buy sex toys, over eat, and curse like a sailor; whilst calling myself an adult.

I talked my girlfriend out of her walk in Christ for that reason. As a result, she started loving me more than God. I became content and stagnant; no longer seeking more out of life or putting forth any effort to go places sloth. I was just some overweight sinner gluttony. Then, it all happened in a year: The surgery was a success but my life was threatened with my head pumping out too much CSF Google it. So, I had another surgery to put a shunt in. That shunt failed, so another was installed.

I had radiation treatments. Got fired from the hotel I worked at, and I got fired from a school I worked at later in the year. Then, the truly crippling thing happened. I came down with radiation side effects which caused swelling in my brain and a loss of some cognition balance, memory, nystagmus eyes, left eyes stuck left, drooling, slurring speech like my mouth was full, could not swallow food so it came out through my nose, could not get an erection, double breathing at times, mild hallucinations of a bright light behind my eyes that shined, and feeling like my eyes were moving around my face On top of that, I lost all of my friends, but not my girlfriend.

No one else could understand me when I talked, but she could. That is still so precious to me.

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Sadly, she broke up with me from being stressed out at my condition. Ultimately,she told me goodbye when I explained my love for her will never die. I was depressed and hurt.

I tried to accept the fact that she was gone, but then I felt something. I loved her, that went without saying, but what I felt was a love that was more powerful than anything ever a love that makes you do anything for that other person regardless of you or what happens , true love. I knew that she is the one. Here I was, happy and on top. Now, I was this broken, disabled guy. I wondered why God had this happen. Why I was being punished. I thought that he hated me. I started going to church for guidance, looking for some solution.

Shortly after that, I made a decision to get my own bible, understanding that God hates no one, and things happen for a reason. About a day after I had it, my speech improved a little. I read passages, scriptures, verses, and started living a more Christian lifestyle, meanwhile slowly getting back my physical traits that were gone speech is nearly all returned to normal, balance has gotten much better, and everything else is recovering.

I joined a church in my neighborhood, and look forward to Sundays. Now, all that remains is her. I am waiting on her to come back. God told me to just wait, to stay and endure my situation. I still love her very much after all, and I can say that with a big smile. I hope my story helps someone. Jerry L Martin September 6, Reply. Your story reminds me of the time my parents and a church group visited an inner-city mission.

It was the sort of place where someone who is down and out can get a hot meal and a clean bed for the night. We were given a tour and told about the work of the mission, and then we ate with the street people who were there that night. After a bit of talk and singing, anyone who felt moved to say something was invited to do so. To our surprise, one of the most respected members of the church, a solid family man who had a Ph.

He told everyone about his own wasted youth, his days as an alcoholic, and how it ruined his life until God, as he felt, turned him around. It was the most moving testimony I had ever heard, and I hoped it did as much for the street people as it did for me. Yours is the story of a different but equally destructive addiction, which sent you to the very bottom. One never knows which moments of despair also contain latent hope, an offer of grace.

As for your girlfriend, you do need to be careful. The feeling that God is promising to do for us the very thing we most desperately want can just be the echo effect of our own earnest desires. I hope that, if it is right for you and right for her, your dreams will come true. And, if it is not right, may God bless you in His own way. Letitia July 2, Reply. I would like your input on my situation. Rabbi asked me to make an appointment to speak with him about my experience in attending services. What I felt and what my thoughts were.

He wanted to know my thoughts and feelings knowing I am coming from the Catholic Faith into Judaism; where I always felt I belonged since I was around 8 years old. When I first began to attend he told me to continue my services at the Catholic Church while I feel my way at Shabbat Services. I did set up my appointment with Rabbi. We spoke, he saw some changes in me. He asked what bothered me the most about services. I told him getting the Hebrew pronunciation correct and keeping up during services in Hebrew.

He gave me a book to take home to study. He told me to now set up an appointment with the priest at the church to discuss my possible conversion. I never did believe in going on Sunday man-made law. I spoke to the priest that I had forgotten to call him last week to set up an appointment.

He stared at me as if he saw the devil because I was wearing the Star of David. I spoke to him after services. He was rather rude and nasty to me and told me I needed to make up my mind. Will just happen so much quicker and easier. I told HIM I was at a crossroads in my life. I asked for guidance in what direction for me to go. I started attending Torah study two weeks ago. I am planning a trip to Israel with the Congregation in February.

I hope there is still room left for me to go at such a late notice. That is if things work out that I can make it. Jerry L Martin July 8, Reply. The decision facing you is not uncommon, Letitia. God calls some people to stay in the tradition in which they were raised; He calls others to a different place. The rabbi was wise in asking you to speak to your priest. Sometimes people change faiths for light and transient reasons — the minister was boring, or they took offense at something.

The question is not about particulars you like or dislike. It is about your relationship with God. It is about where God is most available to you or wants you to be. As far as I can tell, you are going out this decision exactly this spirit. Thank you for sharing this with us. Jenny May 29, Reply. Your latest chapter, 65, has filled me with wonder and recognition. This has been the crux of His message to me for the past two years.

In these past two years, He has drawn me closer and closer to Himself. At first, I had the sense of His presence as something like the Shekinah cloud of presence- I had been accustomed to experiencing Him in this way from early mystic experiences and from a year or so in a Pentecostal church. Then His presence became almost palpable- as if He was with me in person, but not visible.

At this time, I began to do research on the Christian mystic tradition and discovered that Teresa of Avila claimed that Jesus was with her for three years, but invisibly. In fact, the mystics, especially in the Catholic traditions had, it seemed to me, extremely bizarre interactions with God and yet they believed them fully. I realized that God does not always make human sense. Also, later, I began to realize that God bends down to us where we are, and that their interactions with Him were as much a product of who He was as who they were and their own era, their own religion.

It was as though their own selves were the lens through which God suffered Himself to be seen, so there was some natural distortion of Himself. He has told me that the way I understand Him is through the lens of who I am and how we speak and how we understand Him now, in this era.

He said that I am a mirror- and because I am human, the mirror of my spirit is not perfect, but it does not have to be. I began to know Jesus on a very personal level. I began to know Him as someone full of patience, delight in the details, delighting simply in being together, full of good humor, generous, interested, gentle, perceptive, self-sacrificing. However, I could not understand why He spent so much time with me without making me some powerhouse of religious performance- it seemed as if He was getting very poor value back for His significant investment in my life.

I continued to be the same person- eventually with less anxiety, less guilt and less religious bondage and with more joy, peace and tenderness- but still, basically the same person. And I had to laugh and put my head down on the desk in a combination of humorous wonder and frustration. I was walking with Him once, thinking about this verse that talks about the steps of a Godly person are ordained by God and that God delights in all the details of their life. After a year, my ego began to trip me up, thinking that I was somehow earning these experiences of God and then I did trip up physically and while healing, I let go of the entire idea of earning God.

Then I let the experience go, for half a year.

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It was as if my spirit were a plot of ground that had produced a large harvest and God was letting it lie fallow for a season, to recharge and regroup. That is when I was learning that phrase: Then He returned, but deeper than before. A great deal of both my anxiety and my pride were gone, leaving me open, present to Him and receptive. My experiences with Him began to become more visual. I was in the habit of resting in and talking to and worshiping Him at night, before I fell asleep.

As I was doing this, I began to find myself in that room. This was disconcerting, at first, but by then, I had much more perspective on the mystery of the presence of God, so I was able to simply accept the experience. At first, the room was closed off, but as I became more confident and comfortable, the walls came down and it became more of a front porch. Almost every night I am with Him in those rooms, talking, or just being together, or caught up in mutual love- that is, I worship and adore Him and He loves me. He has a degree of vulnerability that is breath taking.

He is filled with emotion- emotion flows naturally through Him. He frequently is caught up in pain and grief over the pain and grief of this life. But I increasing believe that He is waiting for completion- for the brokenness of this life to be healed, to wipe the tears from every eye. He seems to be hanging between now and that time, though of course, He dwells also outside of time and so He is in all times at once. But I know that this grief and pain sometimes moves through Him and He lets me comfort Him- though what comfort I can be to Him, I do not know. But He seems to long for this recognition of His emotional vulnerability and then He seems to delight in being responded to authentically.

For me, the idea of the Trinity helps explain or put into context His way of giving and receiving. It seems that the very nature of God is to be in relationship to Himself- He is caught up in recognizing, adoring, having perfect faith in, yielding to and receiving Himself as one and as separate persons. But I never completely lose the sense of myself as an individual life. Sometimes I actually want to- the pleasure is so great that I feel as if I wish to be completely enveloped into God. This seemed to delight Him very much; He did not want me to forget it. It seems to me that the things that prevent people from moving toward this kind of intimate, personal giving and receiving with God, or even realizing this is possible, is their wrong image of Him- exactly what He has told you.

People seem to be largely caught up in their religious fear of a God that is too huge, too unknowable, too far beyond reach and also in their personal feelings of guilt, shame. Or if they are like most mystics or spiritual seekers, they are seeking an impersonal oneness- the Life force, as it were. They wish to be absorbed into this; to lose consciousness of themselves. In any case, I think I am rambling now.

I just wanted you to know that God seems to be taking us on very similar spiritual journeys- and many other people are also being caught up in this- through the emerging understanding of the Trinity, for example, and teachers like Richard Rohr. As always, I eagerly await each new chapter as you present it on your book and I am grateful for your continued obedience to the guidance of God in your life, even when He takes you way outside the comfort zone in such a public way.

That is not easy. Jerry L Martin June 1, Reply. Jenny, judging from my own experience, what you write reaches to the heart of life with God, and of His life with us. Shelly April 27, Reply. Hello, I really hope I can put this in words the correct way. When I was single with two little girls. I was at the end, the father was taking me to court over and over.

I had run out of money. I had nowhere to turn, I went to a little church that I went to as a child. The girls had never seen them. I went home that night and everyone was in their bed sleeping—the house was peaceful. I took a last look at my girls sleeping.: I went to bed myself.

That night as I was sleeping a voice came to me. This was a voice in my ear not in my head…It said nothing but I hear you It was the sound of rushing waters in a voice. I never understood until I read the Bible about the voice of rushing waters. When I did read this it made me smile. The girls do not have to see Him, the girls are happy. God took care of this. But later in my life, I came to God again in times of troubled hardship. I had just gotten out of a bad relationship.

I want to hear you. That night while I was sleeping a sweet smell— such a sweet smell came in my room.

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The next day I found myself looking for this smell.. Later I got married to a wonderful man that loves the Lord. I started to hear God even more and I kept praying for more understanding guidance. I would get this feeling from within and I would pray about things that needed to be prayed about and things to come. Never did this make me feel bad. I learned to pray when I would learn to pray when I would learn to pray when I would get these feelings. I guess the cares of the world got me. I started not to hear God. I wanted to be back where I was at with our Lord.

Later my Mother got sick with mersa. I prayed, I read the bible, believing God would heal. I miss my mother also. Jerry L Martin April 27, Reply. Dear Shelly, you did not fail. I know we sometimes imagine that, if we just pray hard enough, God will surely come through. People are born, and people die.

That is the way of things. The cherished assurance you received that night was not for one moment or one day or one week; it was for you to remember for the rest of your life and sing thanks. Shelly May 2, Reply. Bucky Whaley April 23, Reply. I can see His back.

He keeps it turned to me. Just pray anyway, and tell God exactly how you feel. You can even shout and stamp! Remember also that sometimes, when people think that God is unavailable, they are the ones who are blocking the connection. Or it is there, but they are missing signals that may be faint and difficult to recognize. May God respond to your distress!

Patricia Wright March 11, Reply. One day I was driving my car and was at a stop sign. The highway was in front of me. A truck hauling rock not a pickup had its signal on to turn on the road I was on. Right then a car went past the truck that was turning on the highway in front of me. I had never seen the car before. I was so shaken I called my husband and told him God saved my life.

Eastern meditation, vision quests in California, a variety of New Age explorations and all the rest. Some of these, we suspect, are quite different from and opposed to our Catholic faith. Perhaps this might make us shy away from this term, to look for another that seems more solid or has a more overtly Catholic ring.

But that would be a mistake, for the life of a Catholic makes no sense unless it is a life of constant spiritual growth. It is our duty — and it should be our joy — to strive to grow toward Christ in the way that a flower grows toward the sun. So, it is not only good but necessary to contemplate spiritual growth.

We must make sure our understanding of it is not unduly influenced by ideas that are foreign to Catholic thought. All religions have some concept of spiritual growth. All religions see human existence as a journey toward a transcendent, eternal goal. That goal, however, is understood differently by different religions. In the Far East, for instance, the goal involves an acceptance of the idea that earthly life and even the universe, itself, are illusions.

In fact, all multiplicity is illusion. All things are believed to be actually one, and all being is divine — God. This concept of God perplexes us, however, for it is impersonal, an abyss of pure being, a consciousness that is conscious of nothing but itself. In such an understanding, the ultimate goal — union with God — involves the inevitable extinction of our uniqueness, a merging with pure being. We have only to think of what happens when a teaspoon of water is poured into the ocean to understand what Eastern religions believe happens to the human soul when it achieves union with God.

In such religions, spiritual growth may involve withdrawal from life, repudiation of all desire, and a progressive disengagement from things and people. At times it may involve what seems to us an indifference to suffering; for suffering, like everything else, is considered a transitory illusion — but one that may be necessary for the suffering soul as it makes its slow, inevitable progress toward union with the Divine. Spiritual practices in such religions may involve mediation, an emptying of the mind of all thoughts so that the unchanging divine reality beneath the outer surfaces of things may be experienced.

As Catholics, we may find Eastern spirituality impressive in certain ways. We do not find in it, however, what we believe we truly need when we try to grow spiritually. For all its accomplishments, Eastern spirituality seems incomplete to us. It ignores the love that we know to be at the heart of all being, the love that rejoices in our uniqueness, that preserves our individuality. Everything we know of our lives, of our faith, of our souls, tells us that there is more to spiritual growth, that there is more to God and more to us than an ultimate relinquishment of self.

Our monotheistic brothers, Jews and Muslims, have their own concepts of spiritual growth. Of course, these are closer to our own, but there are still great differences. For both Islam and Judaism, God is the omnipotent sovereign of the universe. The sense of the transcendence of God in these religions is great.

Here God is unimaginable, ineffable, beyond all human understanding. In both Islam and Judaism, God loves his human creation we see in the Old Testament the great love story of God for his Chosen People , yet this love is somehow remote. In Judaism, the love of God is strong yet lacks the human face of Christ and thus remains a distant love. Judaism and Islam are religions that express themselves primarily through law. These commandments affect every aspect of his life, reminding him that every act can be sanctified and offered to God.

He grows spiritually by a progressively more complete fulfilling of the Law. It is through the prism of the Law that he comes to see God. The Muslim, too, sees the relationship with God as completely circumscribed by laws which he may not understand but must not question. Again, we can find much to respect in the life of the devout Jew or Muslim. We see their constant yearning to do the will of God as something to be admired.

We agree with them that the world that God has created is one of laws, that there are some things that we must do and other things that we may never do, that our spiritual lives are intimately affected by our actions. Ultimately, as Catholics, we must realize that if we wish to grow spiritually, we cannot follow the paths or the ideas of others religions.

No amount of mediation or renunciation of the world, no amount of right living or the following of laws, will achieve for us the spiritual growth we yearn for. We must understand that our spiritual growth comes from one source, that we grow spiritually in one way alone: For the Catholic, spiritual growth can be nothing but a continual turning to Christ. In this we come to understand an astonishing truth, that spiritual growth is really a growth in relationship, a constant deepening of our relationship with Christ.

We must trust him not only with our present need but also with the salvation of our souls and those we care about. And here we have spiritual growth in a nutshell. We grow as our trust in him grows. We grow as our will becomes one with his. We grow as we repent the many little ruptures in our relationship with him that our sinfulness has caused.

Spiritual growth becomes spiritual surrender — a surrender to infinite love. We surrender to the One who gave himself for us out of love. We grow through becoming closer to him. Christ offers us many paths to meet him, many means to grow closer to him. Primary among these, of course, is faith itself. Then come the sacraments. It is the ultimate offering of intimate relationship to sinful man. In the Eucharist, Christ comes to us under the appearance of bread and wine, entering our bodies and our souls.

Here we encounter him in a way that is infinitely more profound than any other meeting we will have in our earthly lives. In the Eucharist, Christ offers us the intimate relationship that causes spiritual growth, that should make us yearn to be in unbroken intimacy with him. It is up to us only to turn to Christ, to accept the gifts that he offers us. If we do, if we turn to him and away from sin we will find that we no longer need to worry very much about spiritual growth, that such growth will become an integral part of our lives.

What does spiritual growth look like? Against such things there is no law. God works in different people in different ways. Some people grow rapidly, while others grow slowly, but steadily. Our focus should not be on comparing ourselves with others, but on comparing ourselves with God's Word. The Scriptures are the mirror to show us what we are like spiritually and to shine light on the areas that need to experience and learn spiritual growth. But the man who looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom, and continues to do this, not forgetting what he has heard, but doing it - he will be blessed in what he does.

God , the Father, sent His only Son to satisfy that judgment for those who believe in Him. Jesus , the creator and eternal Son of God, who lived a sinless life, loves us so much that He died for our sins, taking the punishment that we deserve, was buried , and rose from the dead according to the Bible. If you truly believe and trust this in your heart, receiving Jesus alone as your Savior , declaring, " Jesus is Lord ," you will be saved from judgment and spend eternity with God in heaven. What is your response? Is the Bible True? What Do You Believe?