Craig T. Owens

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This is a weekly series with things I’m reading and pondering from Oswald Chambers. You can read the original seed thought here, or type “Thursdays With Oswald” in the search box to read more entries.

Stair-step Growth

     There are stages in spiritual development when God allows us to be dull, times when we cannot realize or feel anything. It is one of the greatest mercies that we have those blank spaces, for this reason, that if we go on with spiritual perception too quickly we have no time to work it out; and if we have no time to work it out, it will react in stagnation and degeneration. 

From Bringing Sons Unto Glory

Many people mistakenly think that their growth in spiritual maturity should be a steady, unbroken climb. They think that the line on the “spiritual growth graph” should always move upward and to the right. This is not only an inaccurate view, but an unhealthy view as well. It simply isn’t possible.

In reality, our growth looks more like a staircase. There are times of growth, times of relapse, and times of plateau. Growth and relapse we usually understand, but many of us have a hard time with the “blank spaces” when we don’t feel anything going on one way or the other. But God purposely gives us these flat times.

I’ve learned that these God-given plateaus are for two things:

1. Assimilating what we have learned <or>
2. Preparing for the next upward climb

So don’t get frustrated by the plateaus, for they are, as Chambers say, one of the greatest mercies God gives us.

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