Christian Growth Happens in the Mundane

Dr. Jim Berg wrote that stress shows our true character, like a tea bag placed in hot water.

I would like to add that the mundane also shows our character, because it is itself stressful. The Bible teaches that it often takes time to see God’s will for our life.

Abraham waited 25 years between the time that God promised Abraham to be a great nation and when Isaac was born. Moses took 40 years in the wilderness before he was ready to lead the children of Israel, at the age of 80. Joseph spent a long time as a slave of Potiphar and then in Pharaoh’s prison before seeing the vision he had come true.

It was 400 years from Malachi to John the Baptist!

Jesus waited 30+ years before starting his ministry. He has left, and will one-day return, but it has been close to 2000 years!

The best things in life take time

Even though we live a life that’s very full and very fast, most everything that is of any value takes time.

• Children take time until they are born. They take time to develop and they result in blessings for many years afterward.
• Your profession takes time to learn the job.It takes time to get proficient, and time to reap the reward
• In your Christian walk it takes time in God’s Word to grow, time in prayer to know how to pray and it will pay in Eternal reward.
• Evangelism takes time and practice to learn to share the Gospel clearly and effectively, time to go out and do it and the souls that are saved will be blessings throughout all eternity.

We need to make sure that we’re not in a rush to get to the next thing that we neglect the thing that we’re in.

God is in the process of making us into what we need to become

The mundane items in life are exactly where He works on us to make us like His Son.

We live in a world where innovation has allowed us more luxury than ever before. We can cook food faster than ever, and if we don’t want to cook, we can have food in minutes from driving to a local store. We can travel unheard of distances to get to church, school and work. Household chores are made quicker by machines that eliminate the need to take out and beat rugs, spend all day behind a washboard and let clothes line dry, etc. And this has made it so that we fill our lives with more leisure or obligations that add to the stress.

In these things we may not spend the time worshiping God during the “boredom” because we do not have boredom.

God wants to use these times to develop disciplines in our life that will grow closer to Him. He wants us to desire time in His Word, to meditate on Him and to learn to daily obey Him.