Peter tells you to grow in grace, not into it. Here is what Scripture says drives growth, how you can tell it is happening, and why the dry seasons do not mean you have stopped.
Spiritual growth is Christ being formed in you over time, by grace, in the company of other people. It is something God does in you that you cooperate with, not a score you keep.
You can tell it is happening less by how you feel on a given Sunday and more by what comes out of your life across a year: more love, quicker repentance, steadier trust, and less need to prove yourself.
The last thing Peter wrote in his letters was a command to grow. Look carefully at where he puts the growing.
“But grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To him be glory both now and forever! Amen.”
2 Peter 3:18Grace is the soil, not the prize. You do not grow so that God will accept you. You grow because you are already accepted, planted in a relationship with Him that you did nothing to earn. A plant does not grow its way into the garden. It grows because it is already in the ground. If that sounds too good, it is worth reading what we have written on God's grace.
This matters because a lot of believers were handed spiritual growth as a performance checklist. Read this many chapters, pray this many minutes, stop these five things, and you will move up a level. It tends to produce either a proud person who is keeping up or a worn out one who is not. Neither is growing in grace.
Peter also pairs grace with knowledge, and he means knowing a Person. That is relational language. You grow in knowing Jesus the way you grow in knowing anyone you love: time spent together, trust tested, and being known back.
Growth starts from acceptance, not toward it. If your picture of maturity makes you more anxious about God's approval, it is not the picture Peter had in mind.
“So then, just as you received Christ Jesus as Lord, continue to live your lives in him, rooted and built up in him, strengthened in the faith as you were taught, and overflowing with thankfulness.”
Colossians 2:6 to 7Start with the first phrase. Just as you received Him, continue. You received Christ by grace through trust, and you do not switch to a different system for the rest of your life. The way in is the way on.
A farming picture. Roots do their work where nobody can see them. The hidden seasons of prayer and honest trust are not wasted time. They are what everything above ground stands on.
A building picture. Growth has structure. It happens in a place, with other people, over time, one course of stone laid on another.
Paul ties strength to what they were taught. Good teaching gives growth something solid to grip.
Thankfulness sits at the top of the sentence. A growing person tends to become more grateful, not more impressed with themselves.
It is the same idea Jesus used when He talked about remaining in Him like a branch in a vine, which we walk through in what it means to abide in Christ. Fruit comes from connection, not strain.
Most of us treat spiritual growth as a private project. Ephesians 4 does not.
“So Christ himself gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers, to equip his people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ.”
Ephesians 4:11 to 13Paul lists five gifts and then says what they are for. They are not ranks. They are functions Christ gives the church so that the whole body grows up. We have written on the fivefold ministry itself. Here the point is what those functions produce.
Katartismos appears only here in the New Testament. Strong's gives it as complete furnishing, and translations render it equipping or perfecting.
The related verb katartizō is used in Matthew 4:21 and Mark 1:19 for James and John mending their nets in the boat.
Galatians 6:1, restore such a one, and 1 Peter 5:10, where God Himself restores those who have suffered.
Equipping is repair and readiness. The fivefold functions exist to mend people and get them ready for the work, not to do all the work while everyone else watches.
You can check the word and every place its verb appears in the STEP Bible lexicon from Tyndale House.
At Sound of Heaven we believe all the gifts of the Spirit are active today, and that the fivefold ministry is a set of functions, not a ladder of titles. An apostolic person pioneers and builds. A prophetic person helps people hear God. An evangelist carries the good news outward. A pastor cares for people. A teacher makes the truth clear. None of them outranks you.
That has a direct bearing on your growth. Ephesians 4:16 says the body grows and builds itself up in love as each part does its work. Your gift is part of how other people mature, and theirs is part of how you do. If you are unsure what your part is, start with spiritual gifts.
So we reject two ideas at once. One says a few gifted leaders do the ministry and everyone else receives it. The other says you can mature alone with a Bible and a podcast. Paul's picture has no spectators and no solo acts.
In Mark 1:19, what are James and John doing when the verb behind “equip” shows up?
Mark 1:19 uses katartizō for mending nets. The same word family gives us katartismos, equipping, in Ephesians 4:12. Equipping the saints looks a lot like repairing what is torn so it can be used again.
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Manage My Giving"Each of you should give what you have decided in your heart to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver."2 Corinthians 9:7
The question under most searches for spiritual growth is simple: is this actually happening in me? Here is what Scripture points to. None of it is measured in a week.
Galatians 5 lists what the Spirit produces, love, joy, peace, patience and the rest. Fruit takes seasons. Our study of the fruit of the Spirit covers each one.
Ephesians 4:14 says the mature are no longer tossed back and forth by every wind of teaching. Growth often looks like being harder to rattle.
Ephesians 4:15. You become able to say hard things kindly and to hear hard things without falling apart.
Growing people still fail. What changes is how quickly they come back to God instead of hiding from Him.
Loving people who love you back is easy. Patience with the people who wear you out is a better gauge.
The mature can disagree without making it a war. Winning an argument matters less than keeping a brother or sister.
Notice what is not on the list: how busy you are at church or how spiritual your vocabulary sounds. Those can grow while the person does not. For the longer view of how God makes a person holy across a lifetime, see our study on sanctification.
Most honest believers go through stretches where prayer feels flat, the Bible reads like a phone book, and worship is something you stand through. Many assume that means they have stopped growing. Usually it does not.
“Night and day, whether he sleeps or gets up, the seed sprouts and grows, though he does not know how.”
Mark 4:27Jesus says the Kingdom grows the way seed does, while the farmer sleeps, in ways he cannot see or explain. Growth underground is still growth. Some of the deepest rooting happens in seasons that feel like nothing is happening at all.
The psalmists pray about longing for God like a deer longs for water and like dry ground with no rain. Those prayers are in the Bible, which tells you dryness is not proof that God has left.
Right after a great victory, Elijah is exhausted and ready to quit. God's first answer is not a rebuke. It is food, water and sleep, twice, and later a gentle whisper.
Jesus went from the Father's affirmation at His baptism straight into forty days in the wilderness. A hard season followed real closeness, and it was not a punishment.
We trace that theme further in our wilderness Bible study. And Jesus told another story about seed and soil that speaks to seasons that feel shallow or crowded: the parable of the sower explained.
Be gentle with yourself. Keep showing up in small ways, even when it feels mechanical, and let other people carry some of the faith for you for a while. That is part of what a church family is for.
Dryness is sometimes tied to exhaustion, grief or depression, and those deserve real care, including from a doctor or counselor. That is not a lack of faith. If you would like someone to pray with you, send us a prayer request.
If grace does the growing, does that mean you just wait? No. Paul tells the Philippians to work out their salvation, and in the same breath says it is God who works in them (Philippians 2:12 to 13). You cooperate. You do not manufacture.
Growth is the sum of your disciplines. Miss a day and you slip backward. Do more and God is more pleased with you. Maturity is measured in hours logged.
Practices put you where grace flows: in Scripture, in prayer, at the table with other believers, in serving. They hold you up the way a trellis holds a vine. The life is in the vine.
Refuse the opposite error too. Some people hear the word grace and conclude nothing they do matters. Paul planted, Apollos watered, and God made it grow (1 Corinthians 3:6). Planting and watering are real work. They just are not the growing.
What that looks like is ordinary. Read Scripture slowly enough to hear Jesus in it. Pray honestly, complaints included. Gather with a church week after week. Confess to someone you trust. Use your gifts to serve. Rest. Our guide to spiritual disciplines goes into each one. The goal of every one of them is Jesus, not the practice.
Do the practices because they put you near Jesus, not because they earn you a grade. When a practice starts making you proud or afraid, change how you are doing it.
Ephesians 4 names the target: the whole measure of the fullness of Christ. Not a more impressive Christian, but a person who increasingly looks like Jesus in how they love, forgive, serve and trust the Father.
That is why growth cannot be a performance. Jesus did not perform His relationship with the Father. He lived from it. And He does not stand over you with a clipboard. He is the vine, the head of the body, and the One who began the good work in you. The Kingdom He announced is here now, and you are growing inside it, not waiting outside for it to arrive.
So be patient with the process and honest about where you are. Get rooted in a church family where your gifts can be used and other people's gifts can reach you. If you are on Long Island, we would love to have you with us on a Sunday.
For the bigger picture, read what discipleship is and what we believe.
Spiritual growth is Christ being formed in you by grace, rooted in Him and built up with His body, visible in fruit across seasons, and still happening when it feels dry, because God is the One who makes things grow.
Tell us where you are. Somebody at Sound of Heaven will pray with you and help you take the next honest step.
Spiritual growth is the process of Christ being formed in you over time. 2 Peter 3:18 calls it growing in the grace and knowledge of Jesus, which means it starts from acceptance rather than earning it. Colossians 2 calls it being rooted and built up in Him, and Ephesians 4 says the whole body grows together. It shows up as more love, steadier trust, quicker repentance and a life that looks more like Jesus.
Look for the fruit of the Spirit from Galatians 5 appearing over seasons: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Ephesians 4 adds stability, so you are less tossed around by every new idea, and the ability to speak the truth in love. Other signs include coming back to God faster after failure and patience with difficult people. Busyness and religious vocabulary are not reliable signs.
Yes. The Psalms include prayers of thirst for God, Elijah hit exhaustion right after a great victory, and Jesus went from His baptism straight into the wilderness. Jesus said the Kingdom grows like seed, night and day, in ways the farmer cannot see. A dry season does not mean God has left or that you have stopped growing. Keep showing up in small ways, lean on your church family, and get real care if the dryness is tied to grief, exhaustion or depression.
Not by themselves. Paul says he planted, Apollos watered, and God made it grow. Practices like Scripture reading, prayer, fasting, worship, confession and serving put you where grace can reach you, the way a trellis supports a vine. But growth is God's work in you that you cooperate with, not a total of hours logged. If a practice is making you proud or anxious, change how you are doing it.
You can know God on your own, but Scripture does not describe maturity as a solo project. Ephesians 4 says Christ gave apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers to equip His people, and that the body grows as each part does its work. Other believers' gifts reach places in you that yours cannot. If church has hurt you, start small and go slowly, but do not give up on belonging somewhere.