Growing in Godliness (eBook)

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Live to Grow

As a child, I was always in a hurry to grow up. I wanted the privileges and freedom that came with maturity, but I didn’t want to wait through the awkward period of growing. It was this desire for unearned maturity that prompted me to ask for a makeover for my eleventh birthday. It was 1993, and a company called Glamour Shots was happy to prey upon my desire for change. For a fee, I could walk inside the local mall, and the Glamour Shots professionals promised to change my look, making me glamorously grown-up.

Right down the hall from the wafting smells of pizza and corn dogs in the mall’s food court, my hair was teased, curled, and hair sprayed until it stood up by itself. My face was painted with layers of thickly caked stage makeup, my eyes sparkled with glittery eye shadow, and red lipstick only highlighted the fact that my crooked teeth were in desperate need of orthodontia. They dressed me up in feather boas and leather jackets bedazzled with rhinestones. The makeover culminated in a photo session where I was coached to pose in laughably unrealistic ways: tossing my head back, staring solemnly into the camera, or placing my fist under my chin. After a few hours and a sizable financial investment on my parents’ part, I walked out with pictures that made me look like a forty-year-old real estate agent. Happy birthday to me.

My “before and after” transformation was bizarre. They had contoured my cheekbones and jawline, dressed me like an adult, and dramatically backlit my photos, and in the end, I sure did look different. But, creepy different. I didn’t look more mature. I looked like a little girl whose dress-up play had gone terribly wrong. When I left the mall that day, I went home and washed all the hairspray and makeup off and returned to my regularly scheduled life as a normal makeup-less eleven-year-old. Growing up required more than makeup, big hair, and a bedazzled jacket.

Sometimes as Christians, we can become so preoccupied with looking mature that we attempt to skip the process of actually growing up. Like little children wearing their mom’s high heels, we clip-clop around pretending to be all grown up before we’ve had the chance to gain the wisdom necessary to become mature. In order to avoid the Glamour Shots edition of Christian growth, we need God’s help to grasp the beauty of true growth in godliness.

The Original Picture

I love a good “before and after” reveal. I can’t wait to see how beautiful my teenage daughter’s once-crooked teeth will look after her braces come off. And I am guilty of fast-forwarding through hour-long episodes of television shows like Fixer Upper just to catch the big reveal of the beautiful house at the end. As a growing Christian, you are likely painfully aware of all your imperfections and the ways you need to grow in holiness and your ability to honor God. You know where you need God to work. But before the work begins on your before picture, you’ll need to understand the original picture.

Most before pictures aren’t complete pictures; they leave important pieces out. When my daughter’s orthodontist took before pictures of her crooked adult teeth for her medical chart, she ignored her original set of perfectly straight baby teeth. She cared only about the unruly progression of the adult teeth. As Chip and Joanna Gaines escort homebuyers and cameras through dilapidated homes on Fixer Upper, I always wonder what the homes originally looked like when they were first built. How impressive were they before the previous owners ruined them? As viewers, we never see the glorious original picture that preceded the less-than-glorious before picture. Instead, we cut in on the dirty middle. The place in need of assistance. The work in progress.

Your original picture dates back to before you were born, when God spoke the heavens and earth, planets and stars, seas, mountains, plants, and animals into being and called humanity very good (Gen. 1:31). He formed you imago Dei, in the image of God. By nature, you are wonderful because you were made to reflect God throughout creation, bringing him glory in all you do. In the original picture, your spiritual parents Adam and Eve stood smiling in the garden, still in good standing with God. They trusted him, enjoyed fellowship with him, and walked in obedience.

Like the dilapidated house ruined by previous owners, your original glorious picture eroded before you stepped foot on the scene. You wouldn’t have done any better. In Genesis 3, Adam and Eve listened to the voice of the enemy, questioned God’s goodness, disobeyed his command, and ate the forbidden fruit, and the eyes of both were opened. The Lord said to the woman, “What is this that you have done?” and in righteous anger cursed the man and woman for their disobedience. So long, life of ease and peace with God. Hello, painful labor against ground now filled with thorns, sweat-filled brows, and eventual death. You have never had the chance to enjoy the original picture.

The Before Picture

Your life picks up right where most transformations begin—in the middle of the before picture—broken and rebellious. While you were originally created by God to wonderfully reflect his image, instead you rebelled like Eve. Ephesians 2:1–3 explains “you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world” and “were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.” You are stained by the curse of sin and an enemy of God. Without God’s intervention, you are decaying and headed for destruction.

There is an answer to your brokenness. Ephesians 2:4–7 goes on to say, “But God, being rich in mercy . . . even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved—and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.” Your broken before picture has been granted the hope of redemption. God rebuilds what sin destroyed by making you alive in Christ and then renovating your brokenness until you look even more beautiful.

The After Picture

We love the part where the old is gone and the new has come because we instinctively know the after picture is always better than the before picture. For the Christian, completion waits for us in heaven. “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former [broken] things have passed away” (Rev. 21:3–4). God is making all things new (21:5) and will reveal his work in the after picture upon completion saying, “It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end” (21:6).

While we love what’s revealed in the after picture, we don’t love to wait. It’s why I attempted to find maturity at Glamour Shots and why I always fast-forward Chip and Joanna. But before any big reveal, there is always a lot of behind-the-scenes work to produce real change. The rebuilder must identify what stays and what goes, remaking inside and outside until all shines like new. As Christ works in the hearts of his people, he cleanses and prepares them to present to his Father “without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish” (Eph. 5:27). Stripping away the brokenness until you are “altogether beautiful” with “no flaw in you” (Song 4:7) takes work.

Work in Progress

As Christians, we are works in progress, awaiting full redemption. Stained by sin, we are no longer the original picture we were created to be. Made alive in Christ, we are no longer dead in our sin, decaying like the dilapidated before versions of our selves. But we aren’t yet the fully redeemed after picture either. We are in the work-in-progress stage of being made new.

We want our love to “abound more and more, with knowledge and all discernment, so that [we] may approve what is excellent, and so be pure and blameless for the day of Christ” (Phil. 1:9–10). We strive to become “blameless and innocent, children of God without blemish in the midst of a crooked and twisted generation” (Phil. 2:15), not for our own glory but for the glory of God. But right now, Christ is at work, establishing our hearts “blameless in holiness” before God at his coming (1 Thess. 3:13). Until then, we must “grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ” (2 Pet. 3:18) until the work is complete.

Growing in Godliness

From the instant God makes you alive in him, he begins working in your heart through the power of...