Day 28 – It Takes Time
There are no shortcuts to maturity…
Yes,…it does take time. But.. we tend to want things fast. The faster the better. The truth is that there is no fast way to becoming mature. The development of Christlike character cannot be rushed. Spiritual growth, like physical growth takes time. While we worry about how fast we grow, God is concerned about how strong we grow. Because he views us from an eternal perspective, he is never in a hurry.
The moment we open our hearts to Christ, God finally is able to start on developing maturity in us. But that’s just the start. We opened to door of our heart and invited him in, but he stands inside to door and is excited begin the life long process of making us more like him. We may have thought we gave everything to him at that very moment, but the truth is that there are areas of our lives that we are not even aware of yet. Things that we simply do not see.
The fact is that every day there is more and more ground covered and taken for Christ in our lives. Old habits do not stop in a day. It’s a day to day maturing that takes time. It a “little by little” change that happens.
Why does it take so long to mature and change? There are fiveareas that our reading today brings out.
- We are slow learners
- We have a lot to unlearn
- We are afraid to humbly face the truth about ourselves
- Growth is often painful and scary
- Habits take time to develop
How many of us have felt like we are slow learners? Same lessons, over and over again? Why don’t we learn it the first time? Frustrating isn’t it? The good news is that the lesson is repeated until we do learn it, and we change. Most of us have patterns of things that we have learned over many years.
Thank God for those who come to Christ very early in their lives because they don’t have so much stuff to unlearn. It takes time to unlearn things. They didn’t happen overnight and there is no “quick fix” here either. There is no prayer, pill or principal that will undo the damage that was done over many years. At our conversion we were given a brand new nature. It takes time to unlearn old habits, patterns and practices that need to be removed and replaced.
If we do not honestly face our character defects it keeps us in a prison that only the truth can set us free from. God has to shine his light on these things so we can see them, humbly admit them, and be set free from them. Takes time.
It’s scary to change if all we have known is a particular way of doing things, but there is no growth without change; there is no change without fear or loss; and there is no loss without pain. Every change involves a loss of some kind. We give up the old to take on the new. The problem for many of us is that the old, (self defeating behavior, bad habit) is at least familiar to us. We know it. We don’t know what we will be like without it. It’s like that old baby blanket. So comforting. It can be very frightening to start having things that we have depended upon for comfort, start being taken away so we can grow up. The very things that we identify as “that’s just my personality..hey that’s just me..” may be things that God wants to replace with something else, but we are too afraid to let go. Who will I be?
Your character is the sum total of your habits. You can’t claim to be kind unless you are habitually kind and do it without even thinking. It takes time. Like any sport you train for, it takes time to develop a habit that comes naturally after many many hours of training. Golfers know about “muscle memory.” After hitting thousands of balls, our muscles develop a “memory” of the right swing and it begins to happen naturally. It takes time to develop the good habits that define your character. To get good at something, you have to practice it and practicing character building skills is a “spiritual discipline.”
The encouragement that we need to give ourselves and those we love is this. Don’t get in a hurry and whenever it doesn’t feel like God is working, he is.
There are seasons in our lives, seasons of great growth, followed by times where it seems as if things have just dried up. We cannot be disappointed if things take time and it seems so gradual. We cannot deny that there may be miraculous transformations that happen, but for the most part it’s a slow steady change we see. Even the hardest rock is eroded over time by a steady stream of water.
We must be patient with God and ourselves in this process. We can become discouraged when we have to learn things over, feel like failures, and even hate the area of our lives causing us the pain that we know needs to change. Remember God is going to complete the work that he started in you. He is committed to us even when we don’t feel committed to him. If we are willing, he is able. Be patient with the process. Be kind to yourself. You will be able to look back on that area with gratitude and tears thanking God that he did not let you stay there. You have matured… it does take time.