When the Growing Ceases (And How to Avoid It)

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Sometimes it feels the weather lurches into fall—temperatures dropping, leaves coloring and floating through crisp air like magic. The suddenness is a clear marker of a new season. The time for growing grass and growing flowers and growing tanner gives way, releases its mirth. And it appears all the things stop growing.

Perhaps, my mission-minded friend, that is what it feels like for you today: that all that is good and life-giving in your life has ceased growing.

You are facing fall—falling hard into fall—in your relationships, your career, your dreams, or your spiritual journey.

There is an emptiness that dulls the senses, a nonchalance that can settle in when the horizon looks hopeless—and you feel it.

But for just a moment, I invite you to entertain a question: Does growing always show?

If growth is confined to what is seen by the external eye, then we can deduce that some seasons are marked by growth and some by the lack thereof. And try as we might, we can’t stall the approach of winter.

Could it be that we are trying so hard to avoid winter that we overlook the growth that winter welcomes?

Jennifer Dukes Lee gently reminds us in Growing Slow that “the most beautiful things in this grand old world began as seeds that waited in the dark.” Even the waiting is part of growing. So is the growth of roots below the surface in the seasons it appears nothing is happening. So is beginnings small as seedlings.

Each season is equally necessary; all are part of the process of growing. And being missional means loving God and people well through the growing pains of each unique season.

This I’m learning to embrace: growth is not always above ground, and the deepest cultivating often takes place on the inside.

Maybe we need to stop comparing our current season to everyone else’s. Maybe we need to stop the try-harder attitude that tries to perpetuate the sunny seasons. Maybe we need to focus less on the external aspects of spiritual growth and invite the deep work that grows us on the inside regardless of the season.

The missing ingredient for growth

Let’s read Philippians 2:12b-13 TPT together:

Now you must continue to make this new life fully manifested as you live in the holy awe of God—which brings you trembling into his presence. God will continually revitalize you, implanting within you the passion to do what pleases him.

Perhaps we’re not growing because we’ve forgotten what it means to live in awe of God—and this holy awe is what brings us expectant into His presence where He fills us and changes us.

Could it be that not living in awe is where our course has gone awry? Are we not growing because our faith has become familiar and stale and we’ve started taking God for granted?

I know I’ve experienced it—this familiarity that leads to lackluster faith. Rarely do I veer off course with an intention to leave. Rather, the fire of my love for God diminishes when I stop nurturing it. Like flames licking lower, slower, I lose my passion when I don’t stoke the fire.

I shared once how I learned this simple truth on a mission trip: tend the fire if you want it to keep burning. The post is titled “Better Than a Roller Coaster High” and you can read it here.

Sometimes the truest things take us in circles, but each circle winds higher, like a spiral staircase. And so I ponder whether awe brings us into God’s presence, and being in His presence refuels our awe, and the now overflowing awe makes us all the more aware of His wrap-around presence that never leaves us.

Perhaps the one feeds the other, and vice versa, and the spiraling higher continues.

Growing deeper rather than bigger

To the one who feels stuck in stagnant water—

To the one spinning her wheels and getting nowhere—

To the one for whom faith feels like a rule-imposing burden—

To the one who has yet to see fruit from the long-waiting—

To the one who feels far behind, forgotten, or unable to measure up—

To the one pegging on empty—

To the one comparing her winter to another’s summer, or her fall to another’s spring—

Take heart, dear one. The seasons do not all look the same, nor are they meant too. They each in their own rite grow us. Some grow patient hope, others produce strong roots, others show visible growth, and others yield long-awaited harvest.

It may be that the seasons where it appears the growing ceases actually have the most potential for rooting us deep into Christ.

So come to Him when it feels like you have to do it all, and when it feels like there is nothing at all you can do to make it better. Come to Him when the harvest is more than you can handle, and when the earth looks cold and dead. Come to Him when the praise flows easily, and when thanksgiving is a sacrifice. Come to Him, Who is all, in all the seasons, and with everything within you.

Ask Him to fill you with awe.

Ask Him, because He hears, and He answers.

A prayer for today

Lord, You are with us in our today seasons as You were in our yesterday seasons and will be in our tomorrow seasons. It is in the near-You place that we learn what pleases You. Draw us closer, Jesus, and give us eyes to truly see You so our hearts might fill with awe as we behold Your glory, Your goodness, Your grace, and Your love. This we pray in Your precious and holy name, Jesus. Amen.

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Coming Up!

Join us for the third annual Uncommon Normal gratitude challenge this November.

In case you missed it!