Morning By Morning #4

Grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

2 Peter 3:18

From the pen of Charles Spurgeon:

“Grow in grace”—not just in some grace—but in all grace. Grow in the root of all grace, which is faith. Believe God’s promises more firmly than ever. Allow your faith to increase in its fullness, firmness, and simplicity.

Grow also in love. Ask God to stretch your love and make it more intense and practical, to the point of influencing your every thought, word, and action.

Grow in humility too. Seek to be unnoticed and to more fully recognize your own nothingness. Yet as you grow “downward” in humility, also seek to grow “upward,” where you will have closer times with God through prayer and more intimate fellowship with Jesus.

May God the Holy Spirit enable you to grow in the “knowledge of our Lord and Savior.” If you are not growing in the knowledge of Jesus, you are refusing to be blessed. To know Him is “eternal life” (John 17:3) and to grow in the knowledge of Him is to increase in happiness. If you do not long to know Christ more, then you do not yet know Him at all. If you have sipped of this wine, you will thirst for more. For although Christ certainly satisfies, He brings such a satisfaction that your appetite is not quenched but simply whetted.

If you know the love of Jesus, “as the deer pants for streams of water” (Ps. 42:1), so too your thirsty heart will pant for deeper drinks from the well of His love. If, however, you do not desire to know Him better, you do not love Him—for love always cries out, “Nearer! Nearer!”

The absence of Christ is hell—but the presence of Jesus is heaven. Never rest or be content until you have an ever-increasing intimacy with Jesus. Seek to know more of Him, to know more of His divine nature, His humanity, His finished work, His death, His resurrection, His ever-present glorious intercession on your behalf, and His future return as “King of kings” (Rev. 17:14).

Cling to the cross of Christ and search out the mysteries of His wounds. A growing love for Jesus and a more complete understanding of His love for us is one of the best tests of a life truly experiencing spiritual growth in grace.

From the pen of Jim Reimann:

Many professing Christians lack a passion to know Jesus intimately, and as Spurgeon says, “If you do not long to know Christ more, then you do not yet know Him at all.” Paul said to us as believers, “I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better” (Eph. 1:17).

Spiritual health means being on a path to know Christ better, and one of the beautiful aspects of walking with Him is that we will be discovering the endless depths of His love and grace forever.

Paul says, in effect, to know something that is actually unknowable. “I pray that you…may have power…to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God” (Eph. 3:17-19).

Father, may I be filled with the wonderful knowledge of Your Son—yet not filled to my meager human standard of measure, but Your divine measure!